Why Bihar matters so much for India – And Modi

It was 16 May 2014. A pensive Nitish Kumar rang up a distraught Lalu Prasad, who lives a few houses away from his 7 Circular Road residence in Patna. They consoled each other, setting the tone for what became an alliance of strange bedfellows—one who is known to be absolutely corrupt and the other who fiercely fought elections to replace what he had described as the ‘immoral’ government of the other.

“It was like a coming together of two losers,” jokes BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, referring to the phone chat between the Janata Dal (United) leader and the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief. “Strange things can happen in politics,” concedes a senior RJD leader. It was the same day Narendra Modi became the first leader after Rajiv Gandhi to lead his party to an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. Around the time Nitish and Lalu exchanged pleasantries and shared their woes, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, who had lost to Modi by a huge margin in Varanasi and failed to secure a single parliamentary seat in Delhi, was rolling on the floor, sobbing, disheartened by the poll reversal. Unlike the excessively emotional Kejriwal, battle-hardened Nitish and Lalu shed no tears. They were preparing the ground for an alternative to stop the Modi-led electoral blitzkrieg. Over the next few months, they would work towards that goal and rope in other breakaway entities from the erstwhile Janata Dal, a political entity that headed the United Front Government of 1996. The modalities of the new front are yet to be worked out.

Sushil Kumar Modi says he is disappointed that in a last- ditch battle to stay afloat in the cut-throat world of Bihar politics, his former ally Nitish has chosen the “worst option”: to align with his bitterest rival, Lalu. He agrees that the election is crucial indeed for everyone, including his party. A victory in the polls would give the BJP the “political heft” not only to thwart possibilities of a nationwide anti-BJP consolidation, but also help it break the logjam over key reform initiatives in Parliament, he notes.

Both Nitish and Lalu, who cut their teeth in politics in the JP movement of the 1970s, parted ways in 1994, and the former, along with George Fernandes, created the Samata Party, which in 2003 merged with the Sharad Yadav-led JD(U) and became a partner in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), emerging as Lalu’s key rival. During that period Lalu was the target of Nitish’s vitriolic outbursts and biting sarcasm, until he snapped ties with the BJP and fought the 2014 General Election on his own and faced a resounding defeat. His grouse was over Modi being named the campaign spearhead of his party’s then ally BJP. Compared with 20 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats it had won in the previous General Election, the JD(U) won just two parliamentary seats last year, while the BJP added 10 more seats to its kitty, winning in 22 Lok Sabha constituencies of the eastern state. For his part, Lalu was left red-faced as his wife Rabri Devi lost to BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy in the Saran seat and daughter Misa from Pataliputra to BJP’s Ram Kirpal Yadav, both by a margin of more than 40,000 votes. What added insult to injury was that Ram Kirpal Yadav was once a Lalu loyalist. Says an RJD leader, rather bitterly: “He was not just a loyalist. He was Lalu’s sidekick who was always seen alongside him.”

“[The alliance in the works] is nothing short of a marriage of convenience. And this alliance will break apart. Besides, voters will reject this unholy alliance,” says Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Petroleum Minister and the central point person of the BJP in the state.

While it is true that the proposed front earned a victory in the bypolls of July 2014, it didn’t take too long for internecine wrangling to surface among its partners. Nitish and Lalu let go of their political rivalry last July when they joined hands to fight bypolls to 10 seats in the state. Together, they won six seats. The BJP, which had held six of these 10 seats in the April-May elections, won only four. Since that byelection triumph, this new alliance had sensed that a realignment would be the best way to stop the BJP’s onslaught, steered by a ‘Modi wave’. Which explains why Lalu was ready to swallow his pride and yield to the political pressure to have Nitish as the front’s candidate for Chief Minister in the next polls, observes Professor Nawal Kishore Chaudhary, a Patna-based political analyst. Individually, they cannot hope to be anywhere near reclaiming lost glory, he adds.

Nitish’s troubles are far from over. After all, Lalu is not someone who would play a junior partner in the new coalition—of course, he shares the dais with a man who had publicly proclaimed that the Lalu legacy in the Chief Minister’s office was an old Remington typewriter and a stable on the premises. But none of that stopped Lalu from making his demands. He wanted the ousted Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi to be part of an umbrella anti- BJP coalition, but Nitish fought the proposal tooth and nail. Nitish had stepped down in favour of Manjhi following the rout in the 2014 election. However, Manjhi, who was earlier a die-hard Nitish man, began to assert himself after he became Chief Minister. Soon, Nitish began to plot to dethrone him from the post—which he accomplished in February this year. Manjhi, a Mahadalit, a loose term for a constellation of 22 Schedules Castes in the state, has since then attacked Nitish for being ‘anti-Dalit’.

A BJP leader tells Open that Mahadalits will not take kindly to “such acts” of humiliation of a fellow caste leader by Nitish. These ‘acts’ included Nitish ordering policemen posted at the 1 Anne Marg official residence of the Chief Minister—which Manjhi has refused to vacate till date—not to allow members of the former Chief Minister’s family to pluck mangoes from trees within the compound. “We will campaign aggressively and highlight what this champion of socialism and caste equality has done to a Mahadalit leader,” says this BJP leader.

Whatever that is, Nitish has, for the time being, managed to get himself named the chief ministerial candidate of an emerging alliance, fighting back from the brink amid speculation on whether the Janata Parivar would wither away or not. The Congress also put its foot down and backed him, warning that a poor outcome in the Bihar polls would make the BJP-led coalition more formidable than it is now—and therefore more assertive when it comes to pursuing its organisational goals. Finally, after days of negotiations, Janata Parivar chief and Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav announced on 8 June that Nitish will be the consensus chief ministerial candidate of the front. Prior to that, Nitish had met Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to push his case. The Congress, it is learnt, is ready to give up its vanity and settle for the seats it will be allotted. The logic, says a Congressman close to the matter, is that a poll triumph for an alliance it is part of will give the Congress an opportunity to “flaunt that it still has some influence” in the cow belt.

Lalu, known for his witticisms and tongue-in-cheek comments, justified his submission—after his initial opposition to the idea of a chief ministerial candidate—by saying he was ready to drink “poison” to crush the “cobra” of communalism, referring to the BJP’s rise in the state.

Nitish can claim some political triumph there. But how long will this gain last? The JD(U) leader will have to respond to myriad questions about why he had aligned with a leader he had slammed as one of India’s ‘most corrupt politicians’ who had presided over a depraved administration. He will also have to face a hostile Yadav vote base, which would be averse to the idea of a non-Yadav pulling in votes of the community just because he has an alliance with the RJD. Yadavs, who constitute over 14 per cent of Bihar’s voters, form the bedrock of the RJD’s support base. “Yadav voters are mostly inclined to vote for Lalu, but at the same time they dislike Nitish Kumar, who belongs to the Kurmi community, which accounts for merely 2 per cent of all votes in the state. It is too early to say how caste dynamics would play out in the elections, but what is sure to happen is that Nitish will end up alienating a section of Yadavs at least,” says a senior RJD leader based in Delhi. “You know simple arithmetic won’t work here. It is not that just because leaders from various castes come together, they can be assured of all votes from respective communities,” he adds. Besides, each constituent of the so-called Janata Parivar is distinct and there is nothing that binds them other than the opportunistic posturing of forging an anti-BJP front, says an analyst. “It is no secret that each of us is suspicious of one another,” says the RJD leader, laughing.

MJ Akbar, BJP spokesman, explains the situation in the state succinctly, “Nitish is leader without a party and Lalu [because he can’t contest polls] has a party without a leader. That is the basic problem with this alliance. Which is why I too believe simple arithmetic doesn’t work here as regards fetching votes. Transfer of caste votes is not as easy as many commentators think it is.”

Caste allegiances saw a shift in the last General Election. “If the BJP campaigns hard over the next few months and puts up candidates that suit the caste configuration of each constituency, then they are strong contenders to win, despite a major consolidation of all non-BJP votes, especially the sizeable Muslim votes,” concedes a JD(U) functionary. Muslims form 16 per cent of the state’s voters. Now, having pushed Lalu to accept his candidacy for the CM’s post, Nitish has only won the battle, but not the war. And by accepting Nitish as the new front’s spearhead in the coming polls, Lalu may have lost the battle, but not the war.

“Going forward, Lalu will demand his pound of political flesh now that he has offered concessions from his side. He will fight for not only a maximum number of seats for RJD MLAs, but also demand constituencies that JD(U) may have won handsomely. Seat allocations are expected to be a major area of contention and how the parties in the front are able to wade through,” says the RJD leader. Nitish would be worried that if the RJD wins more seats than his party does, he would risk losing the chief ministerial post following the polls, points out a young JD(U) leader.

For Nitish, there are hurdles galore. Having won a huge chunk of Mahadalit votes and having endeared himself to Bihar’s ‘upper castes’ who despised Lalu for his misrule and for promoting Yadav supremacy in Bihar, he has had a smooth run over the past decade. “Lalu was hated for his scam-ridden dispensation. He also invoked Yadav pride which attracted the ire of upper castes and also non-Yadav OBCs and Mahadalits. After a gap, we are back to that stage of identity politics again where caste, religion and ethnicity and other factors have resurfaced with a vengeance in Bihar. Nitish would be held accountable for giving up and joining hands with the most corrupt elements in the state,” says Professor Chaudhary, who, however, emphasises that as of now the proposed Janata Parivar stands emboldened by the turn of events, which they assume are in their favour. “Such a level of confidence has shocked local BJP leaders to a small extent. They are all pinning hopes on Modi,” says a Patna-based BJP leader.

‘The Manjhi factor’ will favour the BJP. “He wanted to align with Lalu, but when you have Nitish in the same camp, he is left with no option but to have a truck with the BJP,” observes Professor Chaudhary. Mahadalits account for close to 13 per cent of the state’s population and therefore are a vote bank to reckon with. ‘Upper castes’, who are expected to be swayed by the ‘Modi wave’, form 12.1 per cent, non-Yadav OBCs 15.4 per cent, ‘most backward castes’ 22.4 per cent and Paswans 5.3 per cent

Meanwhile, Prashant Kishor, a marketing professional who has switched loyalties from the BJP to the JD(U), is now operating out of the Circular Road home of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in Patna. He has, it seems, successfully sold the idea that he could be a rainmaker for the embattled Nitish. Kishor, whose team, Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) had conceived the ‘Chai pe charcha’ campaign and executed the 3-D hologram rallies for Modi last year, is now hardselling the feats of a man his former mentor perhaps dislikes the most. Kishor, a former UN official, it is believed, is behind Nitish’s Bihar2025 campaign, launched on 9 June, which will reach out to 40 million people across 40,000 villages of the state, including 10,000 government and civil society members, over the next 10 weeks to elicit their views on various sectors of governance, including health, electricity, education, employment and other fields of development. The ambitious programme is aimed at combating anti-incumbency in the run-up to the crucial state elections this year-end and to connect with people across communities and of various income levels, some of whom are upset with the new alliances the Chief Minister has cobbled to ensure his political survival.

For his part, Sushil Kumar Modi calls it a ‘publicity stunt’ and not a quintessential government programme. Brandishing his achievements comes easy for Nitish whose stint as Chief Minister saw the state’s economy grow at a faster clip and registered rapid improvement on various social indicators, earning praise from the likes of Nobel laureate and celebrated economist Amartya Sen. Under the NDA’s watch, per capita income nearly doubled from Rs 7,914 in 2004-05 to Rs 14,904 by the 2012-13. Nitish assumed office in 2005. During the period, the state’s economy grew 2.1 times. Literacy rate between 2004 and 2012 went up by 16.8 per cent. Life expectancy at birth also showed a marked increase. “He, with the solid support of the BJP, has done extremely well compared with the ‘jungle raj’ of Lalu Prasad and wife Rabri Devi. It was he who built new roads—Lalu had said that new roads will lead to the death of cattle that wish to roam freely. Nitish increased road length in the state by 50 per cent, constructing 1,151 new bridges. It was he who ensured that many parts of the state—which in Lalu’s time hardly had access to power—had 24-hour power supply,” notes Professor Chaudhary.

BJP leaders who Open spoke to argue that Nitish could post electoral victories thanks to his long alliance with the BJP. “He was never interested in building the organisation. He survived as a politician in Bihar thanks to the BJP. Now to build an organisation from scratch is not easy, with just a few months left for the polls,” says Pradhan. For the BJP, winning in Bihar is crucial for securing enough legislative support to forge ahead with its reform plans. “Besides, if the Lalu-Nitish formula succeeds in Bihar, then it will embolden non-BJP parties to group together in a similar fashion in the elections to come afterwards, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh,” admits a BJP leader.

This BJP leader hastens to add that neither Uttar Pradesh nor Bihar is a bellwether for the entire country. “Who rules or leads in Uttar Pradesh in state elections, or for that matter in Bihar, is hardly an indicator for what the rest of India thinks. But then, we are taking these elections seriously and we expect to win handsomely in the state despite this consolidation of anti-BJP parties,” he insists, adding that the Prime Minister’s emphasis on governance and development will “easily wash” with the common man who has a deep distrust of politicians who play “wild games” merely for political survival.

For the time being, Nitish is busy with Bihar2025, which is pitching hard for a revival of Bihar’s lost glory: it showcases the state as the seat of the great Maurya and Gupta empires, the land of Aryabhatta and Kautilya, home to ancient universities Nalanda and Vikramashila. The campaign claims that Bihar’s prominence waned in the decades after independence and that the man who can put it back on track and ride out the bad times is Nitish.

Invoking the past may have its uses, since it appeals to Bihari pride and ambition, but only in the short run. Prashant Kishor may be able to create ads of Nitish’s feats, but can’t help the leader build an organisation, points out a Patna-based analyst.

The Modi Government at the Centre is leaving nothing to chance either: it is readying a Rs 1 lakh crore package for Bihar, especially in the light of the BJP’s debacle in Delhi. The BJP might also stand to gain by not pitching any chief ministerial candidate so as to attract votes from across the social spectrum, feel some analysts.

“At the same time, the perception that Sushil Modi, an OBC, may be a front runner for the CM’s post will have tremendous appeal among the backward classes,” claims a BJP leader who adds that a BJP dispensation would want to convert Bihar into one of the best administered states in the country. The BJP definitely has an edge: while it has remained a non-interfering partner of the JD(U)—to the extent of being subservient in the state—it has invested a lot in creating a formidable organisation.

For the BJP, expectations of voters coming under the Modi spell are high indeed. With Nitish backing the man whose raj he helped dismantle, the idea of change might just click.

Bihar Assembly electionBJPJU(U)Lalu PrasadMulayam Singh YadavNarendra ModiNitish KumarPrime MinisterRJD