Back to the soil

Why did Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad ( pictured) ask people to join his August 27 rally with a handful of soil? That, he said, was his way of reminding Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of something he had said about three years ago. “Mitti mein mil jayenge par BJP ke saath nahi jayenge (I will get reduced to ashes but will not go with the BJP),” he had said at a rally in 2014. So Prasad urged his supporters to join his rally with a handful of soil for Kumar. All that soil, Prasad said, would be kept at one place and he would ask Kumar to bury himself in the heap.