In Lalu Prasad’s heyday in Bihar, politicians would say that Nitish Kumar was an excellent number two, but would he make a good number one? The outcome of the recently held polls in Bihar have established how masterly a numero uno Nitish Kumar has been.
Though 61 per cent of the voters voted against the NDA, and 39 per cent for the combine led by him, Nitish Kumar had a runaway success in terms of seats. Hypothetically speaking, even if Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan, who polled 27 per cent of the votes, had joined hands with the Congress with its 8 per cent, and the communists with their 1.5 per cent, they were still below the NDA’s 39 per cent.
There was a very large chunk of votes going to ‘others’, the smaller parties. This goes to show that even those who were opposed to Nitish Kumar did not see Lalu Prasad or the Congress as an alternative in what was largely a presidential type election.
Though JD(U) polled 22 per cent of the votes, only 3 per cent more than it had in the last elections, Nitish Kumar was clearly viewed as the leader of the ruling JD(U)-BJP alliance, and whether it was for the BJP or the JD(U), people voted for the combination led by him.
The BJP had a better strike rate than did the JD(U) because it is a cadre-based party, with better poll management, and what is more, it changed a large number of sitting MLAs, which the JD(U) did not do. Nitish Kumar had to face opposition from his own party men, even as he had successfully managed to click at the popular level.
Years ago, he had told friends that he had not slept for three nights before he took the decision to forge an alliance with the BJP. The JD(U) first joined the NDA in 1995. But he was realistic enough to know that he could not get the better of Lalu Prasad any other way.
While he showed a pragmatic streak in aligning with the BJP, he also managed to get the BJP to go along with this backward-Dalit-Muslim politics during the last five years. And he was successful in keeping at bay Narendra Modi, the aggressive face of the Hindutva forces, and this was something that Muslims commented about, some saying that he was the real mard and compelled the BJP to climb down.
Today, despite his 116 tally, he is realistic enough to know that he has to hang together with the BJP in order to provide not just a stable government in Bihar but also to deliver on some of the expectations he has raised.
Younger Muslims in particular had commented on the non-provocative politics of his deputy Sushil Modi and a good number of them voted for him despite his alliance with the BJP. Like Nitish, Sushil Modi also sports a low-profile style of functioning and the two have enjoyed a rare rapport, both going back to their days in the JP movement of the 1970s. Sushil Modi neither raised the BJP’s usual slogans about the temple, or the uniform civil code or Article 370, nor were there any riots during the five-year rule by the combine. In some ways the success of the alliance can be attributed to the understated style of both Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi.
It was not just the academics in Patna, but also young Muslims in the field, who were debating whether the Bihar victory would create a churning inside the BJP on the way forward now — the inclusive Bihar way or the more belligerent Gujarat way. Will the party come to witness a Modi (Sushil) vs Modi (Narendra) tussle in the coming months? If so, Nitish Kumar would have spurred on a manthan inside the saffron forces, even as, like Jayaprakash Narayan, he legitimised the BJP twice over.
The importance of being Nitish Kumar today is the benchmark he has set — that the development plank can yield votes and that performance pays, and this is no small lesson for politicians elsewhere in the country, particularly when scams are the order of the day and the widespread belief has been that adept political management, money power, and caste equations win you elections.
For the first time in the history of Independent India, a still largely feudal Bihar saw women voting as a group for a leader, their hopes aroused by the peace and security Nitish managed to bring to Bihar in place of the Bahubali raj, facilitating the schooling of girls in smart uniforms cycling to school, and reserving 50 per cent seats for them in the panchayati raj institutions. The determined show by women coming out in large numbers to vote could presage social change of an unforeseen kind.
It goes without saying that Nitish Kumar’s biggest challenge will be to meet the huge expectations he has aroused. He is handicapped by having no real party machinery to boast of, with his own party leaders having opposed him openly. He also does not have much of a delivery system in the government machinery at his command.
Second terms have never proved to be easy for incumbents, and no one is more aware of this than Nitish Kumar himself. Knowing his track record, he may well go in for some broad brush strokes sooner rather than later. There is of course the oft emphasised need to generate power but this is not likely to take place overnight though the BARH I and BARH II projects which had run into trouble are on track and there is the Nabinagar project coming up in Aurangabad. But even with the best of intentions the power situation can only improve in three to four years.
That being the case, he may well focus on food security. There are differences between the Centre and state government on the figures of those below poverty line, and it has been Nitish’s case that Bihar has not been getting an adequate supply of foodgrains.
He realises that corruption is agitating people widely and threatens to become an emotive issue as it was in the Eighties. It was only recently that the Bihar Special Courts Act for speedy trial of corrupt persons holding public office and confiscation of the properties involved, modelled on a similar law in Orissa, was given central assent. This is expected to bring into its ambit corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, and the chief minister may well use it to confiscate ill-gotten properties and start schools in them to signal that he means business about combating corruption.
It is early days to make predictions — and at his first press conference he scotched speculation about prime ministerial possibilities for him. Nitish Kumar has emerged head and shoulders above others as a future leader of what can loosely be described as the third pool of politics, if such a platform were to be formed again
neerja_chowdhury@yahoo.com
About the author:
Neerja Chowdhury is
political editor,
The New Indian Express