Will Lalu’s tonga enthuse young village voters?

RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s wishes turned the city’s Beer Chand Patel Path into an equestrian track on Tuesday. Horses tethered to carts, feeding on their diet of (horse) gram from sacks and the tonga-wallahs, too, biting into their lunch of gram-flour (sattu). After an overnight rest outside the RJD state headquarters, the horses will canter across the state, pulling the carts — the tongas or tumtums — to almost every ‘gram’ (village). Decked with the party symbol — the hurricane lantern — and posters, the fleet of tongas will kick off the RJD campaign in poll-bound Bihar with its retro-trot to counter the BJP’s 160-strong armada of LED screen mounted modern vehicles. Most of the tongas have ‘Bihar Tourism’ emblems and catchy names, one reminiscent of Bollywood blockbuster Victoria No. 203.