  Floods are good, they help poor people catch fish and eat it. Any comment like this seems not just ridiculous, to most of us its criminal. The fact that Bikar's de facto King Lalu Prasad Yadav made it, urlLink makes it even more outrageous. In fact anything that has come out from Lalu, starting from the introduction of urlLink kulhars (earthen pots) in railway canteens to his slapping of railway offcials in full glare of television cameras seems rediculous, if not pure madness. So why does Lalu do it? More importantly, even after doing this, almost in a clearly planned way, how come does he get the people's mandate everytime.
The fact is Lalu is the supreme God when it comes to making the medium the media. Consider this, in the ruarl hinterland of Bihar, where Lalu comes from and derives power from, flood is a perennial occurance. Most people take it on their stride, they have been facing it for generations. And the son of the soil, too must have faced similar situations and he knows for a fact that villagers actually find it the best time to catch fish. The luxury of eating fish in normal times is limited to the rich who own the ponds. Whatever the hardships, this may be the only boon admist the bad times. Or for the matter, most poor Biharis are often harassed by railway officials while travelling, invariably without tickets. To see that their messiah can actually slap those railway officials is almost unbelievable and ego boosting for them.
To his constituency, these are the things which make Lalu dear, or why else does he get elected every time? It's a fact that we have arrived at a juncture where tow Indias seprately exist. One, the middle class urban and semi-urban, aspiring-to-be-developed India and the other, the rural hinterland, where farmers are untouched by saas-bahu serials, India Shining campaings and where they commit suicide because they cannot pay the debt. And it's not the lifestyle that differs, the value system, definations of good and bad, and the way opinion is formed are entirely different.
For us to appreciate Lalu's antics is almost impossible, simply because we staying in cities can never appreciate the way he realtes to his rural constituency. It's not just a lesson for politicians, every media manager and communication expert should try and derive lessons from it. This by no means justifies Lalu's statement or logic, but it is does show the reason behind such a statement and why it often makes sense, things that often eludes us. Talking of floods. The hostage crisis in Iraq which involves three Indians being held hostage seems to hog media attention. The fact that more that more than urlLink 1000 people have died in North and East India, including urlLink 641 in Bihar alone seems to have escaped our collective conscience. Is it becuase it's easier for the media to report on Iraq rather than cross the ravines in Bihar or across Bharmaputra? urlLink Shekhar Gupta has posed an interesting question of how this obsession with the Iraqi crisis can be damaging for the nation.
Not just politicans should take note of this even journalists too should make note of it. In the IC 714 Khandahar hijack case, the media should be equally held responsible for the way the nation dealt with the crisis and the way we succumbed to the terrorists. 
