Makeover Master's Lost-Home Dilemma

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Lalu Prasad at his Delhi residence on Tuesday morning. Pic by Ramakant Kushwaha As he stood there, his audience rippling in ovation over the bag of bounties he'd unravelled, Lalu Prasad must have wondered for a flicker if the applause would ring hollow where he wanted it to matter most: his lost citadel of Bihar. Yesterday's generosities were clearly aimed at securing future fortunes but the railway minister may not have budgeted for history's drag on his effort. Bihar is only too used to railway ministers and to being lavished by them. A gallery of eminences has stood where Lalu Prasad stood today and bestowed benefits &mdash; Jagjivan Ram, Lalit Narain Mishra, Kedar Pande, George Fernandes, Ram Vilas Paswan and, twice, the man who snatched the realm away from him: Nitish Kumar. It can be fairly said that none of them was able to conquer Bihar by dint of what they did with the railway budget. Bihar, as Lalu Prasad probably knows best, turns not on cash or concessions, it really turns on caste. The railway budget, alas, can't delve into that arithmetic. He flagged off 19 new trains for Bihar and a few more for Jharkhand, where, too, the RJD boss fancies his chances. But what's new? Railway ministers from Bihar have a proven record of parochial pampering; on election day in the state, none of that has quite mattered. This may well have been his last stand on the railway rostrum and it was, arguably, a stellar exercise &mdash; five budgets in a row, all five surplus affairs, all five moments of cheer for the legions of railway users across the country. There were adversaries, in fact, who expected that four years of indulgence would have left the railway ledgers tight and Lalu Prasad shackled; he happily belied those expectations and, ever the populist, courted favour with aplomb. For a man who was cast out of Bihar for his fabled neglect of governance, this has been a makeover in serial enhancement; year after year, Lalu Prasad has proved himself a suddenly gifted boss of what's probably one of the world's most complex undertakings. In Bihar, he'd built a reputation for being short with matters of administration; as railway minister, he's been asked to speak from high lecterns to students of famed business schools from Wharton to IIMs. It has been an image change Lalu Prasad achieved quite desperately and despite himself; exiled to Delhi as a non-achiever, this was probably the only way he could have charted his route back. But is it working? Nitish Kumar is well in saddle in Bihar and, from all accounts, Lalu Prasad isn't being missed. He is also well aware he could lose leverage in Delhi after the next general elections &mdash; on current form, he could find himself leading a single-digit group in the Lok Sabha. The jury must be out on whether his head-down labours in Delhi, not just today but consistently over five years, will yield political fruit at home. For the moment, the numbers don't appear to be adding up. His most feted decision today was to elevate all licensed railway coolies to gangmen. Eye on the Bihari vote? Well, ballpark estimates put the number of authorised coolies across the country at roughly 40,000. Even if half of them happen to be Biharis, which is quite likely, they won't aggregate enough numbers to elect a corporator. Bihar's a far cry. Courtesy: The Telegraph