Hajipur

Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP)
Won from Hajipur: 1977, 1980, 1989, 1996, 1998, 1999
Votes for Paswan: 55.75 per cent (last election)

• Floods and river erosion are perennial problems. Displaced families have received no aid.
• Kala azar and malaria kill over 200 people every year
• Agriculture in doldrums due to acute power shortage and consequent lack of irrigation

RamVilas Paswan has often said that he wants to make Hajipur a Calcutta or a Bombay. But after about two decades of representing Hajipur in Parliament, the constituency remains high-poverty, high-unemployment, high-illiteracy, with hardly any roads worth their name, scarce drinking water, scanty irrigation, two hours a day of electricity, and people dying of kala azar and malaria in hundreds every year. InManhar, Jandaha, Patepur and Raghopur blocks, every seventh person is a victim to these deadly insect-borne diseases.

Regular flooding and erosion of the Ganga’s banks have rendered thousands homeless. In Manhar block alone, 32,000 acres of land have been submerged in the last 14 years. More than 2,000 displaced families, bereft of any aid, even of waterproof polythene, live destitute lives. "Only the toughies with starched clothes and buzzing cells get proximity to Paswan," is a common refrain. A woman from Haila Bazar narrates how she went to meet Paswan in Delhi, stayed there for days and spent all of Rs 5,000 but wasn’t allowed to enter the main gate: "Whenever he is here, he declares nobody will return empty-handed from his doors, but we always return empty-handed." The banana crop, Hajipur’s main agricultural produce, is dying due to poor irrigation facilities. Yet, the MP has been promising to export bananas from here to the world.

Paswan boasts of bringing a railway zonal office to Hajipur. But it is only technically located in Hajipur and functions from Patna. He claims to have initiated more than 500 smaller projects from his MP’s fund. But these, locals claim, have mainly benefited heavyweight sympathisers. The contracts, sub-contracts and jobs have largely gone to party workers. "No MP can claim so much work as what I have done here," says Paswan. But all that work seems to have fattened only a few acolytes.