Twenty-five-year-old Neha Singh Rathore is a poet. She writes poetry in Bhojpuri, her mother tongue. She calls herself the voice of ordinary citizens and uses wit and satire to share her thoughts on the way life is today. As a people’s poet she asks questions of those elected to power by ordinary citizens like herself.
She is not a court poet, therefore her songs tease those in power who make multiple promises and raise slogans but do nothing to improve the lot of the majority of citizens.
Her latest song is about the bulldozer of the ruling party that is made to work overtime in different parts of Uttar Pradesh (UP) today to silence mainly those who are powerless in society. Like a bull in a china shop, the bulldozer is used to ruin the lives of citizens by bringing down buildings and often running over them.
Neha’s song questions the government over the death of two women by a bulldozer in Kanpur Dehat and is titled ‘UP Maa Kaa Baa’ Season 2 or ‘what’s up in UP’?
In ‘UP Maa Kaa Baa’ Season 1, Neha’s song had highlighted the mismanagement by the government of affairs at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic that had proved tragic for a large number of citizens.
As if her song will make things worse than they already are in UP, Neha was visited by the police early this week. For not being a citizen obedient to the government Neha has been served a notice by the Kanpur Police for allegedly inciting hate and violence in society by singing for the public her latest song.
Why is the state taking on a 25-year-old woman poet at a time when crime and joblessness ought to be the administration’s top priority? Who is Neha anyways and what kind of threat do her folk songs pose to the might of a government?
Born in 1997 in Bihar, Neha launched her career as a poet with the aim of providing Bhojpuri folk songs the respect that they deserve. Neha studied at Kanpur University and it has been her desire to showcase the lyrical beauty of the Bhojpuri language spoken mostly in eastern UP and in Bihar.
In 2022 she became a social media sensation with the release of her song ‘UP Maa Kaa Baa?’ Season 1 on the eve of the state Assembly elections in UP.
Bhojpuri was always the language of ordinary citizens but in the early part of the 20th Century, plays and poems were also written in Bhojpuri. After Independence it remained the language of Bihari immigrants and in the 1990s, vulgarity creeped into the songs written for numerous cassette companies. Lazy lyricists without talent used technology to popularise unpoetic vocabulary in songs that sold like hot cakes amongst mostly migrant workers.
“The lack of education among the masses and the fact that Bhojpuri was also not the medium of education, rendered traditional poems and songs obsolete. The literary prowess was quickly overpowered by the youthful adventure of new singers and writers, which gradually descended into vulgarity,” writes Rishabh Pratipaksh, author and literary critic.
Neha’s crusade is to save Bhojpuri from sleaze and to sing about social issues like unemployment, corruption, dowry and politics through her art. Neha is inspired by Bhojpuri poets like Mahendra Misir.
For her efforts Neha received a YouTube silver play button in 2021, after hitting 100,000 subscribers. Neha currently boasts of over 867,000 followers on her YouTube page and enjoys a significant fan following in Twitter and Instagram, too.
“I am a poet and not a criminal that the police should be after me. Everyone knows what happened in rural Kanpur where two women died during an eviction drive. I wrote a song on the incident after which the police came to my house to give me a notice”, Neha told the media, promising not to be intimidated by the police and to continue to ask questions of those responsible for providing a better life for all citizens.
The Good News
The good news is that the opposition party in UP is at last awake, and kicking.
Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at the police for liking only those citizens who praise the government.
Senior SP leader Shivpal Singh Yadav is leading the opposition from the front with a smiling Akhilesh by his side. Ahead of the start of the UP Assembly session, SP legislators participated in a protest raising various issues like the plight of farmers, and the deteriorating law and order situation in UP. However, the country was shocked to wake up to the news of reporters, and camerapersons covering the protest by the SP attacked by marshals of the state Assembly.
Shivpal and about one hundred of his party MLAs were protesting beside the statue of Chowdhury Charan Singh, the area normally used for such protests. The Assembly's marshals are mandated to ensure order within the house, not in the area outside it. The marshals came out of the building to allegedly beat up both the protesters and the journalists.
The UP journalists have been complaining that access to the Assembly is being increasingly restricted, with officials refusing to give many of them entry passes. There are reports of a growing number of attacks on the media in UP and the Delhi Union of Journalists had immediately released a demand signed by president SK Pande and General secretary Sujata Madhok for the immediate dismissal of those who attacked the media persons.
Undaunted, the next day saw SP legislators attend Parliament in black sherwanis or jackets to protest what they said was the ruling party’s hounding of SP veteran Azam Khan and his family members. The wearing of black sherwanis and calling himself an untouchable recently are seen as Akhilesh’s attempt to attract Muslim and Dalit votes to the SP in the 2024 national elections.
The Budget Yogi 2.0
Akhilesh Yadav trashed the state’s annual budget presented by the ruling party for the financial year 2023-2024 calling it without direction. Senior SP leader Shivpal Singh Yadav found no solutions in the budget for existing problems faced by the state.
The 2023 UP budget assumes significance also because of the Lok Sabha elections, slated for April-May 2024. As the country's most populous state, UP sends 80 members to the lower house of Parliament.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati called the budget a ‘vadon ka pitara’ just a box full of promises ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. Mayawati said that the budget is a betrayal of the hopes of nearly 24 crore people who are suffering inflation, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, anarchy and backwardness.
Richa Singh Protests Expulsion
Meanwhile former SP leader Richa Singh has written to the Election Commission of India (ECI) against her recent expulsion from the party as undemocratic. In her letter dated February 21, Richa, a former and first female president of the Allahabad University Students’ Union, said that the SP expelled her for speaking out against senior party leader Swami Prasad Maurya’s comments on the Ramcharitmanas, a text considered sacred by Hindus.
Apart from Richa, the SP has also expelled spokesperson Roli Tiwari Mishra from Agra within hours of issuing guidelines to party cadres to avoid debating communal and religious issues.