Hostile YouTuber now in the same boat, BJP hopes to ride out Champaran choppy waters

At the busy Nahar Chowk in Raxaul, a town on the India-Nepal border in Bihar’s West Champaran district, Raju Mahato is a source of respite for weary travellers in the searing heat. An OBC, Mahato, 50, sells sattu sharbat, a gram flour drink, on a cart and is himself looking for respite from his “miserable” life.

“I started selling sattu on a cart 20 years ago and I am still doing the same. Forget me, virtually nothing has changed in the town. Streets are still strewn with garbage, drains are overflowing and traffic is a mess. Being a border town, Raxaul generates crores in revenues for the government, but gets nothing,” he says.

Raxaul falls in the Paschim Champaran Lok Sabha constituency, which goes to polls on May 25 and will test the popularity of three-time MP and former Bihar BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal, who appears to be facing anti-incumbency for having become “inaccessible” over the years.

In the adjacent Purvi Champaran constituency, Radha Mohan Singh, a former Union agriculture minister and the sitting MP since 2009, is also facing anti-incumbency and invokes Narendra Modi to tell voters they are voting for the Prime Minister and not really him.

To revive their fortunes, both have found a common ally: YouTuber Manish Kashyap, who recently joined the BJP. Jailed last year for allegedly making fake videos about Bihari migrants coming under attack in Tamil Nadu, Kashyap was till mid-April campaigning as an Independent in Paschim Champaran, telling voters that all established leaders were corrupt.

His hard-hitting, over-the-top videos, raising issues of unemployment, lack of development, misgovernance and corruption in Bihar, appear to have plenty of takers among the young not just in Champaran but also many adjoining