Pavan K. Varma | PM’s Ghuspetiya Outrage: Isn’t It Too Little, Too Late?

While Bihar stands at the summit of another parliamentary election, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, in his speech at Gaya on August 22, suddenly trained his rhetoric weapons on the issue of illegal illegal involvement guests and immigrants ”. According to him, such Ghuspetiya are taking things for Bihais and taking over the lands of the locals. This raises a fundamental question: Is this the expression of a real national concern or is it an attempt to polarize, distract and divide attention?

At one level, this is a real issue. No nation can allow illegal immigrants to proliferate. But the curious, the timing of the newly found concern of the Prime Minister and the motivation behind it. Indeed, if Ghuspetiyas has become a serious problem, it makes sense to ask the central government that the leader has done for the last 11 years, especially when the government has been a part of a “double engine” in Bihar for the last eight years? Where are detailed policy proposals, data -oriented assessments, continuous administrative actions?

Security and supervision of the border and the task of preventing illegal migration are the responsibility of the government. Of course, the Prime Minister did not openly confess to his own failure. In addition, for most of the government’s term of office, this issue remained asleep in Bihar’s political discourse, and barely deserved the word in parliament debates or policy attempts. Nevertheless, while the election time was marked loudly, it turned into fiery conversations and headlines. The Prime Minister announced that a “demographic mission” was created to overcome this problem. However, no details have been given about its structure, modus operandi, timeline and goals. One is wondering that a government that has not yet achieved the multilave national census in 2021 will now implement a separate demographic mission.

The question is also where the evidence of this new threat? The Indian Election Commission (EC) made a general statement that “Nepal in Bihar, Bangladesh and Myanmar”. However, in a special intensive revision (secret) exercise in which 65 Lakh voters delete, the overwhelming number are those who die or probably vote permanently elsewhere or are voters or “cannot be prevented or in many places. Especially how many voters are the ECI or another state authority categorized as Rohingyas or Bangladesh? This figure needs to be explained to the public.

Unlike Assam, Bihar did not share a long, porous international border with Bangladesh, and historically, it was not the central base of mass illegal migration. Their struggles are inward: endemic poverty, migration, grieving infrastructure, widespread unemployment, agriculture shortage and crumbled Public Health and Education System. When the problems of this size begged for attention, it is interesting why the ghost of illegal immigrants is given priority suddenly.

The claim that illegal immigrants will usurize the works in Bihar begs the following question: Where are the works to be taken? Bihar has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Therefore, Bihais Lakhs is leaving the state to find a job in the distant corners of India, to work on low wages to be accepted and to live in miserable conditions. The state government’s claims need serious control. In fact, what works of how many numbers have been applied should be open to the public. What is known is that only 6837 appointment letters were distributed by Prime Minister Nitish Kumar in February 2025. According to the 2022 Bihar Kast-based survey, only 1.5 percent of the state population is employed in government affairs-equivalent to 20-21 lakh individuals. In the absence of any other successful employment plan, this helps to compare the scale of existing efforts. Of course, as the election approaches, there is a shower. On July 15, the Bihar Kabini approved the creation of a Crore business until 2030. If the registry of the last five years is taken as a touchstone, it is not an almost applicable or convincing promise.

The truth is that the government, which uses the work of illegal immigrants, follows the art of political attention. Governments often try to direct the attention of voters to an external “other” when they face examination and incomplete for governance records. By calling this threat, it is an attempt to transform the election into a moral Crusader to “save” from a referendum on the performance of the government. It is a tested and tested formula that is not unique to India. Moreover, the language used in such conversations usually goes beyond policy concerns for the field of identity policy. Illegal involvement guests are usually indirectly linked to a particular community. This deliberate combination, fear, anger and ultimately common division. He turns against the neighbor, transforms an ideas competition into an identity contest that should be an idea contest.

For a long time, the interests of the people of Bihar have been sacrificed in the altar of religion or caste. The cost of such politics is not only the election player; It is the slow poisoning of India’s social texture. For centuries, Bihar has become a country of cultural synthesis in which Hindu and Muslim, upper caste and lower caste, not only the area, but also the legacy. It was Buddhism’s pot, Gandhi’s Chambaran Satyagrah Country is a region that once summarized the resistance to diversity. Injecting into this environment, a separatist narrative is extremely unfortunate.

The greater danger is the Indian democracy itself. Elections should be the opportunity to evaluate citizens’ management, discuss the visions for the future, and to hold the leaders responsible. When they reduce to referendums about who ‘we’ and who is “them ,, democracy is carved from the inside.

Bihar deserves better. It deserves a choice that people struggle with real issues that shape their lives – work, education, health, infrastructure, corruption, social justice. He deserves leaders who trust their voters enough to include them in the matter instead of seducing them with fear. First of all, he deserves honesty.