This rally, organised on 18 March 1994 around the 20th anniversary of the JP movement that had taken place in 1974 in Bihar, was a call to launch a militant movement across Bihar for thoroughgoing social transformation and democratisation of Bihar’s society and polity. At a time when Bihar was choking under the stranglehold of feudal forces and the mafia, this rally called for a huge mobilisation against massive corruption and criminalisation of Bihar’s politics. Slogans of “Satta parivartan ab naara hai, laloo ko maar bhagaana hai”, rent the air and thousands of cadres from across Bihar assembled with lathis, spears and swords. This rally was intended to send a clear message: real change, parivartan, was possible only through a radical transformation of Bihari society. It sought to expose the limitations of the ‘change’ which the likes of Jayprakash Narayan’s followers such as Laloo Yadav claimed to champion. This rally, which was extensively covered by the media in Bihar, was in fact portrayed by the media as a ‘Red seige’ on the ‘Green belt’.
