Nitish Kumar in proxy fight for Harnaut

KALYANBIGHA (Nalanda): CM Nitish Kumar’s ancestral house here does not have a power connection as he had earlier vowed not to have electricity at his home till the whole of Bihar gets uninterrupted power. This, despite Kalyanbigha being one of the few developed villages with 24X7 power supply.
The caretaker, Sita Ram (70), said a small solar plate is installed on the rooftop of the house for lighting two bulbs at night.The three-bed room thatched house has a cot, a few plastic chairs, a well in the courtyard and a marble bust of CM’s mother Parmeshwari Devi. The rooms are filled up with bags of foodgrains and agriculture equipment. Nitish and his brother Satish own barely 20 bighas of land.
Most of the houses in the village are pucca. This village has wide roads, linking it to Harnaut, a distance of 4km, industrial training institute, separate power substation, plus two school, hospital and good Net connectivity.
“There is no question here about who is contesting from Harnaut assembly seat,” said Brinda Singh, an agriculturist. Kalyanbigha falls under Harnaut seat. Sitting JD(U) MLA Hari Narayan Singh is again in a direct fight with an advocate, Arun Kumar of LJP. Singh is completely banking on the goodwill for Nitish.
“Singh saheb has not done anything for this constituency during the last five years but we will vote for him because Nitishji has given him a ticket again,” said another villager, Kupeshwar Paswan. “We can do anything for Nitishji because he has made this village proud. He has himself done a lot for the people of this village by developing basic infrastructure,” Paswan said.
Many other villagers echoed the same sentiment. They complained the sitting JD(U) MLA hardly visits Kalyanbigha. They are angry but silent because of Nitish, whose simplicity and lifestyle have made them proud. The good, wide road in the village has made life easy for the locals. “Now, several auto drivers make dozens of trips per day to earn their livelihood because traders do their business in neighbouring villages,” said a young auto owner.
But 125 families of the Musahar community in the village are unhappy with the CM. “He visits only his own house. His supporters never allow him to visit out tolas,” said a Musahar woman, Mukni Devi. “We are yet to get five decimals of land as promised by him, or employment. After a day’s work, we hardly get four kg of raw foodgrains,” said Yogeshwar Manjhi.
They also complained about discrimination in the allotment of Indira Awas Yojna houses. Some of them still live in mud houses, while the influential families have pucca houses. There are complaints galore about the non- distribution of foodgrains among them for months. “We are hapless here. They have also removed our man as the CM of Bihar. There is nobody with whom we can lodge our complaint,” said scores of Musahar women.