Rabri Devi revisited

Is there more to this woman than most people assume? AMMU JOSEPH writes on the person behind the image.

TALK of Bihar and stand by for the groans, sighs or yawns. Mention Laloo Prasad Yadav and raise a laugh or two. Bring Rabri Devi into the picture and turn the laugh into a snigger, if not a guffaw.

Outside the once rich and glorious State there is, on the one hand, what the late Arvind N. Das (journalist and author) used to call "Bihar fatigue". And, on the other, the desire for comic relief to lighten the overwhelming burden of the "Bi for Bihar" heading the list of four contiguous States collectively known as "bimaru" - literally "ill."

Former Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav deliberately plays to the gallery, using his assumed role of State jester to cock a snook at those, especially outside "The Republic of Bihar," who underestimate his political prowess. His wife and present Chief Minister Rabri Devi does not. In sharp contrast to her seemingly irrepressible husband, she continues to retain the sober demeanour and quiet dignity that were evident from the moment she was catapulted into public life four years ago.

Her husband's colourful image and reputation, her sudden and controversial appointment as Chief Minister, her political inexperience and lack of preparedness for her new role, together with her State's obvious and desperate need for good governance, may have all contributed to the derisive and dismissive manner in which she has been dealt with in the public realm. That she is a woman - and one who makes no bones about the fact that she is a wife, mother and housewife above all - has clearly not helped her to be taken more seriously.

She has often been referred to as "Laloo's seat-warmer" and seen as a mere puppet on a string pulled by her wily husband. She has been widely ridiculed for having produced a "brood" of nine children in a State notorious for its galloping population growth rate. Only rarely has she been acknowledged and appreciated for - if nothing else - the serene self-confidence that has enabled her to remain true to herself and resist the temptation to reinvent herself in somebody else's image.

Forgotten now, it seems, is the fact that a few months after she took over the government in 1997 she was described as "Bihar's most dignified Chief Minister in living memory" by India Today. And that as she crossed the 100-day deadline for her descent, set by critics, there were at least a few media reports that registered - with some incredulity - the fact that she had established her own method and style of functioning, and thereby gained the grudging respect of a broad range of people, including senior politicians and bureaucrats, and even an industrialist or two.

She was at the time known for clearing files at a rate almost unheard of in a State where thousands of pending files routinely piled up on the Chief Ministerial desk. She was then said to approach official work "with the unhurried efficiency of a housewife going through the daily chores" and for handling her cabinet "as she would the servants in her kitchen."

The gender stereotypes implicit in those descriptions would not have bothered Rabri Devi. Even today she is unabashed about her wife-mother-housewife image and, in fact, sees those roles and the qualities they require as assets in her new and still unwanted role as head of government.

Intrigued as I have been by her ever since she came into the limelight, I took the opportunity of a recent visit to Patna to meet her. A number of local friends and colleagues seemed puzzled or amused by my fascination for their unusual Chief Minister and warned that I would probably find myself listening more to her loquacious husband than to the woman with a reputation for being reticent, at least among strangers.

Instead I found her relatively relaxed and willing to talk, with occasional flashes of humour accompanied by quick smiles and sparkling eyes that hinted at a private persona quite different from the public facade.

Perhaps it helped that the small group who went to meet her comprised only women. Perhaps she warmed up to us because we seemed to understand that she had been thrust into a situation not of her choosing. Perhaps she was reassured by our insistence that we had come to talk to her, not to her hovering aides (who subsequently made themselves scarce). Perhaps it was fortuitous that her husband was away in Varanasi when we arrived - although, to his credit, he did not make the slightest attempt to butt in even on his return half-way into the interview: and perhaps that, too, had to do with our being mere women!

In any case, Rabri Devi was only too happy to admit that she was a "gharelu" (home-bound) woman when she was suddenly forced into the Chief Minister's chair in the wake of her husband's last- minute resignation as the controversy over his role in the "fodder scam" threatened to engulf him. According to her, she cried inside the house, behind closed doors, surrounded by her children, when she realised that she had no choice in the matter - ostensibly because party members would accept no one else as leader. She reminded us of the terrible situation the family was in at the time, with Laloo Yadav about to be incarcerated for alleged corruption. "I wondered how I would manage," she confessed, likening her fearful feelings to the apprehensions of a bride entering her in-laws' house for the first time.

Clearly common sense soon prevailed over the initial trepidation. "Women can look after a State just as well as they look after their households and families," she said, obviously concurring with early media reports that suggested that she had used "her rustic intelligence and domestic instincts to give the State a stable administration and to consolidate her husband's political base."

Nevertheless, she left us in no doubt about her priorities: "I am a mother first. That is my first priority. I always find time for my children. Then I make time for my other work." According to her, all the children - the youngest of them now just eleven years old - had been extremely co-operative towards her in her new role, and her older daughters had supported her by taking on some of her responsibilities on the home-front. She also gave credit to her husband for always having been attentive to his family, including the children, unlike many other men.

She disputed the widespread assumption that her husband was the de facto CM while she merely danced to his tune, claiming that this false impression was created by the indisputable fact that they are married and share a home. "He does give me advice," she admitted. "And I do listen to his suggestions. Don't most husbands and wives guide each other? I know that as my husband he will never give me wrong advice. We cannot help the fact that we are husband and wife. We cannot get divorced just to prove something. I am not willing to go that far!"

At the same time, she admitted that she was still a reluctant CM, often at odds with her husband about the situation she has found herself in. "I am not a political person," she said. "I still fight with him about having to go here and there to fulfil official duties. Sometimes I even refuse to go out anywhere. But then he persuades me to do what I have to."

During her first stint at the helm of Bihar's affairs she was reported to have regularly spent several hours a day in the CM's office. Today she is accused of hardly ever going there. Admitting that she now tends to use her residential office more than the official one, except when her presence at the Secretariat is deemed vital, she maintained that this had no negative impact on her functioning as head of government. "I clear my files regularly," she pointed out. "Ministers and officers who need to meet me come here." She refused to accept that this practice could make it difficult to enforce discipline, not to mention accountability, among ministerial colleagues and government servants.

According to her, when she first began to travel around Bihar and learn more about the problems of poor people, she felt she should do something for women of the State. However, her ideas on what that something might be do not appear particularly perceptive, let alone original: enhancement of the allowance for pregnant women (to enable better nutrition and healthcare) from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500; an allowance of Rs. 500 to families to support the endangered girl child; the registration of government-provided houses for the poor in the joint names of husband and wife; compensation in cash and/or through jobs for widows of men killed in the massacres that seem to be a routine feature of life in the State; special women's police stations in districts exceptionally notorious for crimes against women; and so on.

The State Commission for Women was constituted just a short while ago. And only recently did her government choose to act on the Supreme Court's 1997 order on sexual harassment at the workplace by amending the State's Service Conduct Rules, 1976. Although a committee headed by a senior IAS officer had reportedly been formed to oversee the constitution of committees to deal with complaints of sexual harassment in each government department and district office, local women activists did not seem convinced about the seriousness of the government in this regard, calling attention to at least two recent cases in which officials who had harassed women working under them had survived unscathed, while the complainants had been further victimised.

According to Rabri Devi, she supports the hitherto ill-fated legislation to reserve seats for women in Parliament and Legislative Assemblies. She dismissed the controversial comment about women with short hair made by her husband's political rival and fellow Yadav as irrelevant. "What difference does short or long hair make?" she asked, smiling in acknowledgement of the fact that three out of the four women she was with had cropped hair.

Yet the number of women fielded by the Rashtriya Janata Dal in recent general and State elections is unimpressive, although it was apparently a record high in the history of her party and saw the entry of five RJD women into the Legislative Assembly, as well as one into Parliament. In contrast, thanks to the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution, women constitute about a quarter of the candidates who won seats this summer in the first panchayat elections held in the State in more than two decades.

The Chief Minister spoke of a meeting of Mukhias (Chairpersons) scheduled to be held on October 2 but seemed unaware of any plans for a sustained programme, such as those launched by some State governments, to orient and train women for their new role as elected members of panchayat bodies. Nor did she acknowledge the State government's reported reluctance to devolve powers to elected representatives at the local level.

Likewise she seemed ill-briefed on current events in the State, including those involving women, some of which had made media headlines across the country. Among these were the recent deaths of Saida Khatoon and her six children in Chakahladbad, Muzaffarpur, allegedly due to poverty and hunger, and the recent killing of six Dalits, including one woman, and the alleged rape of three women, in Bataruha village, near Masaurhi, apparently by a Yadav gang. According to her, she does not rely solely on the reports of government officials for information about such incidents, but takes into account inputs from party workers in the area. But it was clear that she had neither personally inquired into these and other recent events nor kept herself fully apprised of their details.

Yet there was a time when she reportedly did make it a point to visit disaster and massacre sites and survivors. Could it be that Rabri Devi herself has fallen victim to a touch of Bihar fatigue? As one who is quite evidently not in politics for the love of the power game or the prizes to be won through it, it could well be that she is increasingly frustrated in the job she never wanted in the first place, having learnt the hard way that looking after a State - especially one like Bihar - was not quite akin to looking after home and family.

She herself admitted that much remained undone in terms of improving the condition of the people of Bihar. She blamed the State's poor record on a number of important aspects of development, such as education and healthcare, partly on the intractability and intransigence of the lower-level bureaucracy. "How many people can one suspend or dismiss?" she asked, adding that some work got done despite everything.

But she also laid a large part of the blame for Bihar's plight at the doorstep of the union government. Accusing the central government of "stepmotherly" treatment (her word), she asserted that Bihar's problems were largely due to the centre's callous attitude and indifferent approach to the state. She also criticised the attitude and behaviour of Members of Parliament from Bihar who, according to her, were more interested in promoting their own interests than those of the State and its people, even though they had not been sent to Delhi "to procure petrol pumps for themselves," as she put it.

In addition, she alluded to the additional pauperisation of Bihar by its bifurcation and the creation of Jharkhand as a separate State, and highlighted the failure of the central government to deliver on its promise of a special package to kickstart development in the truncated area now known as Bihar. "Much of the industry in the formerly unified state has now gone to Jharkhand," she pointed out. "Here there is nothing but flood and drought."

Her excuse for her government's failure to fully utilise the funds allotted to Bihar in the 9th Five Year Plan (reportedly having spent only about half the available amount in the first four years and having yet to finalise the annual plan for the 2001-2002 financial year), was the time-consuming burden of the democratic process as it has come to be. "We have had four elections in four years," she said. "Thanks to the recent panchayat elections, no work could be done for four months. Then came the rains and the floods. How can any work go on under these circumstances?"

In the end, however, she was upbeat about women and governance. "Men were ruling the State for 50 years after independence. What was achieved during that period? For the first time a woman, and a backward caste woman at that, is in charge. Let us see if she can make some difference, taking one step at a time."

She was clearly more at ease once the interview was over, as she took us around the extensive chief ministerial estate that has been turned into an idyllic oasis of rural life in the middle of urban Patna, with lush fields of grain, vegetable gardens, fruit trees, fish ponds, poultry sheds and, of course, the well-known, 50-head herd of cattle that formed the backdrop to many a television interview with Laloo Prasad Yadav during his tumultuous reign. Asked what they did with all the milk produced by the Jersey cows, she looked a little surprised but said simply, "We have always sold milk." And served us some cool, flavourful, home-produced "chaas" (buttermilk) before we left.

The taxi driver who took me back to the hotel said, "We have a Chief Minister who can hardly talk. She must have been frightened meeting women like you." I told him that she had spoken exceedingly well and did not appear to be in the least nervous in our company. I do not know if that will make any difference to his or, indeed, the public's perception of this woman - caught, as they say, between a rock and a hard place, but clearly determined, at the very least, to stay calm and collected despite the gathering clouds, real as well as symbolic.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : The foreign hand
Next     : The legend who wants to rule on