In the Bihar constituency that once brought BJP leader MJ Akbar into Lok Sabha (in 1989), nobody's heard of the disgraced ex-MP. The young seem to know about #MeToo though
M J Akbar. Pic/AFP
Landing at Bagdogra airport, 90 km from Kishanganj constituency in Seemanchal (North Bihar), the Tinder app suddenly explodes into a bevy of attractive women from various ethnicities looking to be swiped right for a potential date.
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This is explainable, for if you drove left from the airport, what would follow is the relatively swanky Siliguri 20 kilometres ahead, and hill-towns Darjeeling and Kalimpong beyond. Kishanganj in the opposite direction, is deeply agrarian-rural in comparison. And conservative enough that we seriously sound like 'shehari' creeps, looking around for women on the street - "Mahilayen dhoond rahein hai (searching for women)?" Excuse me? There are hardly any in the chowks, and the few who are reticently hiding their faces, merely smile back as you ask the pollster question, "Hawa kidhar beh rahi hai? (Where's the wind blowing?)," as against the avoidably intrusive, "Who are you voting for?"
An outlier state
The reason to look for female voters on our first stop in Bihar is because gender-wise, it's an outlier state, where 3 per cent more women than men turned up to vote in 2014 (the highest in India, as against MP or Gujarat, where the ratio skewed towards as much as 10 per cent more men). Be that as it may, we responsibly change track, and use good offices of local contacts to help us connect with young, first-time female voters, to be interviewed on the sources' phones. What followed was a series of conversations with Indu Kumari, 18, Pinky Kumari,19, Amrita Kumari,19, Ruma Kumari,19, and Roshni Kumari,19, from local educational institutes -Marwari College, BN Mandal University and Saura College.
The excitement in their voices over debuting at the pooling booth only matched the carnival-like atmosphere that permeates through areas in and around Kishanganj that goes to poll on April 18, surrounded by loud, male chatter at chai-shops, and tempos advertising candidates through speakers.
What drives votes here
The young girls had varied responses to issues that would drive their vote, whether mentioning "Modi" (Roshni, Ruma: connected to us through a BJP karykarta); "those who do well for the city and students" (Indu, Pinky); or "mahila adhikar," women's rights (Amrita). What they were united in though, was a lack of response to one question - Have you heard of M J Akbar? "Sorry! M J, who?" Akbar was first elected to the Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket from Kishanganj in 1989. Following a series of sexual harassment charges from his time as a newspaper editor, over decades, Akbar stepped down as minister of state (external affairs) from the BJP-NDA government in October last year.
'Mahilaon ka soshan'
The young women of Kishanganj, with the partial exception of one (Ruma), who had to be gently prompted, had however heard of the #MeToo movement that stung Akbar. They described it variously as being about "mahilaon ka" (women's) "soshan," "dhwansh" (exploitation, destruction), and "voice towards empowering women, in public, and at work places".
They had also heard of "Pulwama" (attacks), but uniformly drew a blank on "Rafale". As for candidates, it isn't uncommon for folk here to not know the individual they're voting for. And so, at the street-corner while Durga Devi cryptically alluded to a party (haath, Congress), another one merely repeated, "teer, teer" (arrow, the symbol of Nitish Kumar's JDU, aligned with the BJP this time).
Byculla MLA in Bihar boondocks?
What is Waris Pathan, Mumbai's Byculla MLA, from AIMIM party, doing in the hinterlands of Bihar, of all places? And in particular Kishanganj? Because, it's one of the few constituencies with a remarkable Muslim majority (close to 70%). This explains that the two most serious contenders - Mohammad Javed (Congress) and Syed Mahmood Ashraf (JDU/NDA) are both Muslims. Telangana-based party AIMIM, led by Asaduddin Owaisi, exclusively represents Muslim rights, and fielding candidates at far-off elections such as at Kishanganj, is often perceived as a "vote cutter"-compounding the mix. We met Pathan on our flight to Bagdogra. He offered to have us over at an AIMIM rally scheduled for the evening in the deep interiors of Kishanganj. And yet, despite repeated calls and messages through the day, that remained unanswered, he seemed reluctant to entertain the visit. Eh? To be fair, we did bump into an old ittar seller Ghulam Mohammad, who listed Owaisi as the "third candidate" in Kishanganj.
Also Read: Senior citizens, first time voters show enthusiasm in Lok Sabha elections
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