Bihar Elections 2025: Lalu Yadav And The Story Of The Charwaha Schools

Long before he stood on the floor of the Lok Sabha and delivered his signature one-liners, making even his opponents laugh, Lalu Prasad Yadav's story began in Bihar's Phulwaria village. From Phulwaria to Patna Secretariat and then to Parliament, he's spent over 50 years in the political corridors.

Politics, his lifelong battlefield, is now fronted by his son, Tejashwi Yadav, the heir apparent to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). As Bihar prepares for another election, Lalu remains an indomitable figure. At 77, he may not be as active in politics, but his socio-political legacy lives on.

The Shepherd's School

Formed in the 1990s, when Lalu was Chief Minister, the "Charwaha Schools" were institutions with classes that welcomed children in barefoot who spent their days herding cattle.

It began after Lalu, on one of his many impromptu tours of rural Bihar, stopped to chat with a group of children grazing goats. They told him they couldn't attend school because someone had to look after the animals. His solution was to bring the school to them.

So came the Charwaha Vidyalayas, classrooms without walls where attendance was flexible, livestock grazed nearby, and children learned their lessons in between chores. They could come and go as family duties demanded. Sometimes, food was offered to lure them to education.

The Rise Of A Socialist

Born into a family of poor Yadav farmers in Gopalganj, with illiterate parents who never recorded his birth date, Lalu Yadav emerged from student activism at Patna University in the early 1970s. The young man with a thick mop of hair and a ready wit became the president of the university students' union and soon found himself under the wing of Jayaprakash Narayan, the socialist leader who mentored a generation of revolutionaries.

When Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, imposed the Emergency in 1975, Lalu was jailed. Two years later, in the post-Emergency era, he was elected to the Lok Sabha on a Janata Party ticket as one of India's youngest MPs.

There was no stopping him after that. By 1990, the "messiah" of the backwards and minorities, as his followers called him, and the champion of the gareeb-gurba (the poor and powerless) was Bihar's Chief Minister.

When journalist Nalin Verma worked with Lalu on his autobiography Gopalganj to Raisina: My Political Journey, he discovered a man who could never stay on script. "I aimed to steer our conversations toward politics," Verma recalled, "but Lalu invariably wandered." He would talk about sattu, aalu-baingan, and the village folk songs of Gorakhnath.

Asked about Jayaprakash Narayan, his mentor, Lalu's eyes would soften. He recalled to Verma how "Babuji" once handed him Rs 200 to care for his wife, Rabri Devi, and their newborn daughter, Misa.

The Fodder Scandal And The Fall

In 1996, the Rs 900 crore fodder scam surfaced and single-handedly ensured Lalu never returned to the chief minister's office. As investigators forced his hand, Lalu was left with no other option but to install his wife, Rabri Devi, a political novice, as Bihar Chief Minister.

In 1997, Lalu split from the Janata Dal and founded the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Rabri Devi would remain in power until 2005, when Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), brought an end to the RJD rule.

Twenty years on, today, Lalu's son, Tejashwi Yadav, is the INDIA alliance's de facto chief ministerial candidate in Bihar. The RJD, in alliance with Congress and the Left, faces the NDA, under the leadership of Nitish Kumar.

The Bihar assembly elections will be held in two phases on November 6 and 11. Results will be out on November 14.