Dus-Hazaari Hazard

The fight for Bihar is close. But NDA's scheme of Rs 10,000 to women could swing votes in its favour

- SATISH PADMANABHAN

The liquid in the swamp is thick as grease, and about the same colour.

The stench—of dead rodents, rotting vegetables, faeces—and the fumes of chemicals make the nose clog and the eyes water. In this swamp are about a dozen people, from children of about six to seven years old, many women and an elderly man with greying hair, wading through the slush reaching up to the waist of the grownups and up to the neck of the children, hunting for ‘mudfish’. Two or three of them hold a net and swoop the muck, the children put their hands inside to hunt for mudfish, throwing out broken glass pieces, knotted plastic bags and the mud. They find one or two tiny, silvery fish, glistening like jewels.

This scene unfolds in Maner, on the outskirts of Patna, next to the rally ground where Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and the chief ministerial face of the Mahagathbandhan, Tejashwi Yadav, is giving an election speech. Among other things, he says if he comes to power he will work to uplift the people of the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs), to which those hunting for fish here belong. They form a considerable 36 per cent of the voters in these elections and are being wooed by all political parties. But the fact that none of the schemes designed for them by various governments through the years has reached this family in Maner is distressing.