Is Lalu, minus in-laws, better off?

If you want to see roads in Bihar that are “smooth like Hema Malini’s cheeks”, as Lalu Prasad promised the state when he was Bihar chief minister, take the ones that go to his village and his wife and ex-CM Rabri Devi.

The villages of the husband-wife ex-Bihar CMs — Rabri’s Selar Kala and Lalu’s Phulwaria — are just a couple of kilometres apart. But the villages and the two families are quite apart in what political power did to them. The comparison also explains the estrangement between Lalu and Rabri’s brother Sadhu Yadav who quit the RJD and joined the Congress. To villagers, it also explains why Lalu, minus in-laws, “performed well” as railway minister.

Devi’s village comes first and looks much the same as any other on the route. A granite-tiled, imposing and quite out-of-the-place ‘gate’ marks the entrance to a 50-metre lane leading to Devi’s parental home. Her father Shiv Prasad Yadav and brother Prabhunath Yadav take care of the home and the crops. Prabhunath was an employee in animal husbandry department and says he resigned in 2003. He is the only brother who did not make it in politics.

He regrets it: as he said, “Who does not want to get ahead in life?” The other two brothers have made the most of their “connections” and the “break” it provided. Subhash Yadav is a Rajya Sabha MP of Lalu’s RJD. Sadhu Yadav, deprived of his constituency Gopalganj by delimitation that rendered it a reserved seat, and denied the other, Bettiah or West Champaran, due to seat adjustment with Ramvilas Paswan’s LJP, has “revolted” against his brother-in-law to contest on a Congress ticket from the latter seat.

The “exploits” of Devi’s family, especially these two, are known well enough to have made them hugely unpopular and, till the change of regime in state, also a feared lot. Now, for miles around, people talk openly about how they went around bullying everyone.

Devi’s parental home, the lane leading to it and her family’s life have improved, the rest of Devi’s village remains the same. In contrast, Lalu’s village stands out in the area. It looks more like a semi-urban settlement with decent-looking staff quarters for government employees, a school, a helipad, a post office, a transformer for power supply and a swanky railway station.

Lalu’s family – his uncles and nephews in the village – have not enjoyed the “fruits” of his power, except for an odd job in the railways, like many others in the village. Lalu’s uncle and nephew do not like to talk about what benefits Devi’s family got from him.
The crores Lalu is supposed to have amassed in the infamous fodder scam does not seem to have reached his family. The only special thing for the family is a statue of Lalu’s mother at the crossing on the highway from where the road to the village starts and another statue of hers in his erstwhile home.