Look at each face, multiply the anguish.

(From Indian Express)

RAM B YADAV, asst accountant 3 CHILDREN Salary due since 1 year BIHAR SMALL SCALE INDUSTRIES CORPANJAN KUMAR, peon no. of children: NA Salary due since 1994 BIHAR STATE HANDLOOM & HANDICRAFT LONGI DEVI, sweeper 2 CHILDREN Salary due since 2000 AARA NAGAR PARISHADR P GUPTA, health worker 4 CHILDREN Salary due since February PRIMARY HEALTH CENTRE, MANERC S SINGH, timekeeper 5 CHILDREN Salary due since 1998 BIHAR STATE ROAD TRANSPORT CORPRAMBALI YADAV, peon 6 CHILDREN Salary due since April PRIMARY HEALTH CENTRE, MANERS K DUBE, peon 7 CHILDREN Salary due since 1993 BIHAR STATE PHARM & CHEMICAL CORPJ P SINGH, salesman 4 CHILDREN Salary due since 1994 BIHAR STATE HANDLOOM & HANDICRAFT KAMAL KANT JHA, peon 4 CHILDREN Salary due since 1993 BIHAR SCOOTER FACTORY, FATUHASHIV NANDAN MAHATO 4 CHILDREN Salary due since 1993 BIHAR STATE AGRO INDUSTRIES CORPMORE [angle quotation mark, right] 'Let the Press rant, since when has that affected us?' These faces are not our fantasy. They are closer to a nightmare that nobody wants to see, least of all the people that turned them into what they are: the Bihar government. For months, in most cases, years, it has denied them a key basic right: wages for labour extracted. For years, it has slowly ground them into helplessness and penury, driven them to debt and destitution. It has reduced them to a spectacle, pleading and begging for what is their just due. It is the Bihar government that has made a story out of these faces. It has now chosen to kill that story with its silence. Everyday for a week now, The Indian Express has reported the scandalous dereliction of the government of Bihar. From doctors and university teachers, down to stenographers and factory hands and peons and sweepers, salaries of thousands of people have been either delayed or denied by the government. We began last Sunday with the story of Chandan Bhattacharya, who set fire to himself because his father had not been given his wages for 10 years. It has not bothered anyone that the sordid story continues. The government will not deny anything because there is nothing to deny. The government will not react because it has become inert to pleas these faces are making. The government will not do anything about them because they do not matter. If Bihar has fallen off the national map, these faces have fallen off the Laloo-Rabri-Congress scheme of things. ''Kya bolenge is baare mein?'' asked a senior minister in the Rabri Devi government who is also conscience-keeper of Bihar boss Laloo Yadav. ''Yeh koi nai baat hai kya ki Bihar mein log bina vetan ke mar rahe hain? Isse hum logon ko kya fark padta hai?" The reaction of the Bihar establishment has progressed from indifference to fleeting indignation. At the beginning of the week, Laloo Yadav was focused on protesting the ''deliberate ...