Bihar's staff, pensioners' dearness allowance up 10%

In what appeared to be a festival gift toBihar government employees and pensioners, the state cabinet on Tuesday approved a proposal to increase their dearness allowance (DA) by 10%, thereby making it on a par with central government employees - with effect from July this year.

The state employees will thus get 90% DA which will calculate to an additional financial burden of Rs 850 crore annually.

State cabinet secretary Brajesh Mehrotra told reporters soon after the two-hour cabinet meeting that the cabinet also approved the revised proposal of the building construction department to build an international convention centre and civilization gate near the Gandhi Maidan at an estimated cost of Rs 490 crore. The convention centre, Gyan Bhavan, will have a seating capacity of 5,000 people. The construction work will start next month after the demolition of some existing bungalows of district judge and civil surgeon, he said and added the estimated cost of the project was earlier Rs 274.2 crore.

The cabinet also approved the public holiday list of Bihar government and its affiliated offices for the year 2014. It OK'd 11 holidays in government offices (barring three holidays on Sundays) under its executive orders, including the birth anniversary of Kabir. It also approved 17 holidays under the NI Act (barring two holidays on Sundays).

The cabinet sanctioned Rs 2.4 crore as a grant for the salary payment of the employees of various language academies for the current financial year. The Bhojpuri Academy will get Rs 39 lakh, Maithili Rs 30 lakh, Magahi Rs 25 lakh, Hindi Granth Academy Rs 80 lakh, Bangla Rs 8 lakh and Sanskrit Rs 22 lakh.

The cabinet also sanctioned a revised amount of Rs 9,215 crore as against the existing Rs 8,364 crore to the Bihar State Power (Holding) Company Limited and its subsidiary companies for undertaking projects under special plan of the Backward Region Grants Fund (BRGF).

The cabinet also approved the extension of the term of the judicial commission probing the police firing in Madhubani (October 12, 2012) till April 17, 2014. The term of the commission expires on October 18 this year. The cabinet also extended the term of the judicial inquiry commission on Kosi floods till March 31, 2014. The term of this commission expired on October 1, 2013. The cabinet also approved the home department's proposal to create additional posts to assist the judicial inquiry commission probing Bagaha police firing.

The cabinet also approved the creation of a new women's industrial training institute at Forbesganj in Araria district.

In order to increase the production of wheat as per the agriculture road map, the cabinet approved a sum of Rs 30.34 crore under the state plan. Under the national agriculture development scheme, the cabinet approved Rs 86.8 crore for initiating work under the Green Revolution sub-plan project.

The cabinet also approved a grant of Rs 15 lakh to Bihar Sangeet Natak Academy for its establishment cost in the current financial year. The Bihar Lalit Kala Academy will get Rs 17 lakh as its establishment cost.

Source: TOI

Bihar’s unsettled political equations

Old relations and loyalties have collapsed, but new bonds are yet to be forged, resulting in an intense political churning in the State

The political ferment in Bihar throws up a picture so complex that old categories of understanding the State are becoming redundant.

Change

A young Paswan photographer in Madhubani supports the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Narendra Modi in the coming polls, for only Mr. Modi can “fight Pakistan, which keeps killing our soldiers on the LoC.” A Yadav shopkeeper asserts that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad’s “era is over.” An upper caste philosophy professor in Bhagalpur argues that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar must be defeated for walking out on the BJP. But at a Patna middle-class home, Brahmin professionals reject the Modi “hawa” as artificial, and praise Mr. Kumar for his governance.

In Patna city, a group of Muslim migrant workers from Bihar Sharif wonder whether Mr. Prasad or Mr. Kumar will be a better bet for them. On the outskirts of Darbhanga, a Mahadalit farmer says his family has always voted for the Congress since they had benefited from the party’s early land reform initiative. But his neighbour, also of the Mahadalit community, supports Nitish Kumar for giving them a new identity.

Now examine the big picture

For 20 years, the State’s politics has been fundamentally bipolar, with Lalu Prasad representing one end, and forces opposed to him constituting the other end of the axis. Today, politics has turned triangular, and in some pockets, even a four-cornered contest.

Fluid social dynamics

Mr. Prasad is in jail. But his party — due to deep caste and patronage networks, the power of his personality, and a strong, senior crop of senior leaders — remains a formidable force. The BJP-Janata Dal (United) alliance, which dislodged the seemingly invincible Mr. Prasad from power and brought together a coalition of castes from opposite ends of the spectrum, is dead. The break-up has been so bitter that the BJP says Mr. Kumar — under whom party leaders served in the State cabinet till not so long ago — should suffer the same fate as Mr. Prasad for his alleged role in the fodder scam. Despite being the weakest of the four forces in the State, the Congress is being wooed assiduously by the two strongest regional forces.

All of this indicates an intensely competitive and fluid political landscape. Old equations have collapsed, but new alliances are yet to be born.

Old loyalties of particular castes to particular leaders do not hold anymore, but new bonds are yet to be forged. And while traditional categories are fading, new frames of understanding are yet to be devised.

Each social group is grappling with its own dilemmas. Take a few examples.

Yadavs, who have been loyal supporters of Lalu Prasad and credit him for giving the backwards dignity and a voice, are exploring alternatives. The RJD has been out of power in the State for eight years. On the ground, the Yadavs have been traditionally at the forefront of tensions with Muslims. And given that Mr. Prasad is not a key factor at the Centre, there are views within the caste-group to back the BJP for the Lok Sabha. But there are many other Yadavs — probably the majority — who remain loyal to Mr. Prasad and will stick by him in the face of adversity.

For the upper castes, the BJP has been a natural choice for the last two decades. They supported Nitish Kumar since the BJP was a part of the alliance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that large sections of the so-called “forwards” are furious with the Chief Minister for not supporting Mr. Modi. This is coupled with resentment that the government has not been able to pull off the next generation of reforms — on power and employment — in its second term. But like other social groups, upper castes are not a monolith either. The presence of strong Rajput leaders in the RJD — and its recent victory in Maharajgung by-election — shows that sections of the community back Mr. Prasad. Others, like the Patna middle class residents alluded to earlier, fear a return to RJD rule, and are happy with the security and infrastructure under Mr. Kumar.

Nervous parties

A small section of the Muslims had begun to shift away from Mr. Prasad to Mr. Kumar in the last elections itself, given the Chief Minister’s emphasis on backward Muslims.

The trend of switching sides is expected to accelerate further in light of Mr. Kumar breaking ranks with the BJP. Across Muslim pockets, residents are closely watching Mr. Modi’s actions in order to assess whether he presents a threat and this will determine their voting patterns.

Given this fluidity in the social coalitions, political parties are nervous.

The JD (U) knows it has a tougher job at hand, fighting polls on its own without the backup of the BJP’s strong organisational network and upper caste opinion-makers. The RJD knows that this will be a battle of political survival, and their only hope is capitalising on the “victim card.”

And the BJP, while banking on a Modi hawa, is acutely aware that unless it can chip away Yadav votes from the RJD and extreme backward caste votes from Mr. Kumar, it will have difficulty in stitching up a winning coalition. The Congress is being wooed by both regional forces, in the hope that the alliance will be seen by Muslim voters as the real secular alternative to the BJP. But the Congress, despite flirting with Mr. Kumar, has kept its options open.

With this almost unprecedented churning, Bihar promises be the site of the key battles that will define the 2014 election — secularism and majoritarian-laced communal politics; the various forms of development; and newer forms of caste assertion.

Source: Hindu

Is Nitish dragging Pranab into his war with Narendra Modi?

It’s an all out NaMo versus NiKu war. And it’s one that has an unprecedented twist with President Pranab Mukherjee‘s name dragged into it, consciously or coincidentally. First, the facts. It has been known for months, confirmed in June in fact, that Narendra Modi will address his first ever rally in Patna in Gandhi Maidan on 27 October, appropriately named the Hunkar (bugle) rally to challenge Nitish Kumar on his home turf. The BJP has planned to make it big, bigger than Lalu Prasad Yadav’s once awe-inspiring Garib Raila. Of a magnitude that Patna, capital of Bihar, has not seen since the peak of the JP movement in 1977. Modi will address a huge rally in Patna on Oct 27. 

AFP On Thursday, last week, Bihar BJP leaders heard that President Pranab Mukherjee was coming to Bihar around the time that Modi’s rally is to take place but could a get confirmation from senior state officials only on Saturday evening. The two-day tour of the President to grace the IIT Patna convocation ceremony on 26 October and unveiling of a statue of Babu Jagjivan Ram, father of Speaker Meira Kumar, in Chandwa village, in Ara district, 50 kilometers from Patna, on 27 October has made the BJP cry foul and claim that a nervous Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was indulging in petty politics to create roadblocks, if not fully obstruct Narendra Modi‘s rally. If BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Sushil Modi upped the ante with a series of tweets on Sunday, the JD(U) is not taking it lying down either and is asking whether Narendra Modi’s arrival in a city implies that no one, not even the President of India, be allowed to land in the same city and honour a state function. The quantum of success of Modi’s Hunkar rally will guide the BJP’s future electoral strategy in Bihar. If it’s a success the way BJP wants it to be then it may even set into motion, a process of a new kind of social engineering. The emerging political situation in Bihar has become more direct and exciting between JD (U) and BJP after Lalu Yadav’s conviction in the fodder scam. Bereft of the presence of its supreme leader amid elections, the RJD’s only hope in Bihar is a sympathy wave. 

Modi’s rivals JD(U) and RJD are therefore keeping a close eye on events unfolding in the BJP and would watch with great curiosity to see what happens in Gandhi Maidan on 27 October. For both Nitish and Modi, it’s about consolidating and expanding their existing social support and, should the RJD disintegrate in Lalu’s absence, to go for the Muslim-Yadav spoils. The Congress is inconsequential in Bihar if it fights alone but can be a force multiplier if it aligns with Nitish or Lalu. Though Modi has never held a public rally in Bihar, at least not in the last 12 years and never in the historic Gandhi maidan, he is still the most talked about leader in all parts of the state, the denials from his rivals notwithstanding. His name got even greater currency and helped consolidation of upper caste votes in favour of his party after Nitish Kumar terminated a 17-year-old mutually beneficial relationship with the BJP only because of Modi’s elevation as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. BJP leaders thus allege that inviting the President on the same day to Bihar is part of political scheming by Nitish and his friends in the Congress. Sushil Modi says, “Nitish Kumar is playing all tricks to put hurdles in success of NaMo ‘s Hunkar Rally on 27th Oct.. First they tried to obstruct by allocating only half of Gandhi Maidan and when we foiled that they have come out with this”. Firstpost spoke to Sushil Modi and a close confidante of Nitish Kumar who requested anonymity. Bother argued bitterly against each other. First, the JD(U) leader charged that it was yet another trick of the BJP to keep public and media sensitivity alive on the Modi rally, which was not being talked about so much in the state. The BJP counter-charged that Nitish’s purpose of inviting the President on the same date was angled at acquiring some degree of media space and popular mindspace on days when it would otherwise be Modi and Modi all along. Second, the JD(U) leader claimed that the Nitish government had nothing to do with organizing the President’s programme on those dates because IIT-Patna was under the Union HRD ministry and as such a Central issue. So was the other function in Ara, organized by Speaker Meira Kumar who took the consent of President Pranab Mukherjee to visit the state on a date that coincidentally clashed with Modi’s rally. The BJP’s counter to that is that the President’s visit is never finalized without a due consultation process with and prior consent of the state concerned, and Nitish always knew that Modi’s Hunkar rally was to take place on 27 October. Third, JD(U) charged that Sushil Modi’s “outbursts” reflected the BJP’s mindset. How could they stop anyone, least of all the President of India, to visit the state just because Modi was to address a public rally in same state on that day? Should Patna and Bihar come a standstill because Modi is visiting for a few hours? The real contention between Nitish and Modi’s protagonists lies here. The BJP says that if a rally of this magnitude (five lakh expected in 11 special trains, three thousand to four thousand MUVs and buses) is to be held on 27 October, people would start coming from October 26. Incidentally, President Pranab Mukherjee’s programme is at Ravindra Bhawan, on Bir Chand Patel Path. The BJP’s party office is on the same road, and is in close proximity to Ravindra Bhawan. As such the party office would be the hub of all activity on that date. But since the President is coming there late afternoon, barricading has to be erected from the airport to the Governor’s House including along Bir Chand Patel Path. Along this route are official residential quarters of some leaders, including those of the BJP, where a section of those coming for the rally would be staying. Again the next day, while President would take a helicopter to fly to Ara and return, the area around the airport would be sanitised till afternoon. The airspace too could be blocked for some time. That could make Modi alter his landing time in Patna. The BJP’s argument is that since vehicles coming from various parts of the state for the rally will be stopped in the outskirts of the city and those coming from central Bihar districts are usually parked in an area close to the airport, the Presidential protocol would create grave obstructions. The BJP is so far maintaining that Nitish and the Congress have played mischief with the President and are trying to use the Head of the Nation as some kind of political shield against a major Modi sway. Besides Sushil Modi’s tweeting, the party is also collecting signatures from public urging him not to get dragged into an electoral war of two rival political groups. A state BJP delegation may even meet the President on his return from his ongoing two-nation tour abroad. Whatever the outcome, the BJP has got a juicy talking point against Nitish, much before Modi can thunder in Bihar. The JD(U) is equally happy that via the President’s proposed visit, they have already scored a political brownie point and made BJP cry foul. The two rallies on October 19 in Kanpur in UP and October 27 in Patna, Bihar will shape the intensity of the Modi wave, if it is there. These two states will be critical for all parties, with a combined tally of 120 seats, one fifth of the total strength of Lok Sabha.

Source: FP