Fatuha (Patna): Development was to be the buzzword and the key to power in Bihar before election dates were announced. While Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been claiming that he is responsible for bringing the state back on the development track, the counterpunch came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who touts his Gujarat model and the work by his government at Centre since late May 2014.
But within days of the campaign starting, the development plank took a detour through the caste minefields of Bihar and nowhere is it exemplified better than Fatuha, the industrial area 22 kilometres from Patna and one of the constituencies where voting will take place in the third phase on October 28.
Even as the Janata Dal United-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress Mahagathbandhan and Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance raise the pitch in Fatuha to garner maximum votes in order to win the seat, the poor state of the industrial area is lost in the election din as getting the right caste combination on their side has become the main agenda.
Fatuha with 98.64 hectare of land acquired is the second biggest industrial area in Patna district after the Mega Industrial Park Bihta which has 269.5 hectare. But lack of infrastructure, poor condition of roads, not enough qualified workforce have meant that the Fatuha industrial area is yet to reach its full potential.
Out of the 101 industrial plots, only 40 have industries which are working while 30 are closed. There is an office of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited in one of the plots, 21 are under construction, in two construction is yet to start while one is a sick unit. One industrial unit has deposited the valuation amount while one is yet to do so. Three units are yet to start as they have not got possession out of which one is facing resistance from the public.
Fatuha has a vast rural hinterland and being well connected to Patna and so should not have faced shortage of workforce and also the poor infrastructure that it is plagued with. The only saving grace is the almost 24 hours of electricity supply which according to locals and industrialists is because of Nitish Kumar.
Agro based, plyboard/ wood, leather based, chemical/ chemical based, metal based, repairing & servicing and engineering units dominate the Fatuha industrial belt. While there is a readymade market for all the industries, yet they have failed to grow as the political will has been missing.
The two main rivals battling to represent the seat in Bihar Assembly are sitting MLA Ramanand Yadav of the RJD and Lok Janshakti Party’s Satyendra Kumar Singh. But both the camps are banking on caste arithmetic in spite of admitting that lack of industrial development is a matter of concern.
Ramanand Yadav is the sitting MLA and his supporters claim that with 1 lakh Yadav voters, around 25,000 Kurmis, nearly 12,000 Muslims and over 40,000 Extremely Backward Castes in the constituency, their victory is a foregone conclusion. RJD leader Dayanand Prasad Singh points out that the development and clean image of Nitish Kumar coupled with Lalu Prasad’s call for social justice will ensure Ramanand’s victory.
A chemistry professor at BN College in Patna, perhaps Ramanand Yadav has found that mixing the right castes together is the way forward. But Dayanand Prasad Singh takes pains to point out that once Yadav wins, he will also ensure that the industrial area is developed to its full potential.
Dismissing the LJP challenger Satyendra Kumar Singh, the RJD argues that he is an outsider and alleged that he paid a lot of money to ensure his candidature. “He is an outsider and is contesting after he paid money to the party. There was Modi wave in 2014 but the BJP won because of ‘jumlas’ (false promises). It will not happen again. Ramanand Yadav will get votes from all the castes because he has worked a lot and ensured development of the area even though he was in opposition,” adds the RJD leader.
But just a kilometre ahead at the LJP campaign office, the RJD arguments are countered by Satyendra Kumar Singh’s campaign team which is headed by Suresh Prasad Yadav, who stresses on his surname to claim that there is a division in the community’s vote bank which will ensure Ramanand’s defeat.
Although Suresh Prasad Yadav is the LJP in-charge of Raghopur in Vaishali district but claims that he has been deputed by the party supremo Ram Vilas Paswan to oversee the campaign. He adds that several Yadav dominated villages in Fatuha are now with the LJP as Ramanand went missing from the area after winning in 2010 and returned only in the last few weeks to ask for votes once again.
He adds that Kurmis, the caste to which Nitish Kumar belongs to, are also voting for the LJP as they don’t enjoy cordial relations with Yadavs while for Rajputs Satyendra is the obvious choice because he is from the same community. Just like the RJD leaders, he too fleetingly mentions about the state of the industrial area saying the NDA government will ensure its development after elections.
Perhaps the strategy of the main rivals in Fatuha sums up why development is yet to become a major factor in Bihar.
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