Bihar Wants More of Nitish Kumar

THE LAST WEEK of January 2024 was one of fast-paced political churn. On January 30, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was to share a stage with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Purnea, as part of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. A week before, the Narendra Modi government conferred the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civil­ian honour, on former Bihar chief minister and socialist leader Karpoori Thakur, a long-pending demand of the Janata Dal (United) leader. That same evening, Nitish, in a post on X, lauded the decision and added a line thanking Modi, saying it would send a positive message among the Dalit, deprived and neglected communities. The next day, while paying homage to his mentor Thakur on his birth centenary, echoing his views, he castigated dy­nastic rule, raising eyebrows of his then allies—Gandhi and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Tejashwi Yadav—both of whom are heirs to leaders of their parties.

He also rued that former governments of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at the Centre had ignored his request to confer the Bharat Ratna on Thakur. Within 24 hours, the JD(U) conveyed to the Congress that Nitish would not be attending Gandhi’s public meeting in Purnea. In less than a week, he snapped ties with the I.N.D.I.A. bloc and joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the third time. Yet, on Bihar’s campaign trail, Nitish was seldom dubbed as a turncoat and largely seen as a saviour of the marginalised classes. It was from Thakur’s book that Nitish had taken out a leaf, reaching out to the state’s Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), a motley amalgam of 112 castes, together comprising 36 per cent of the state’s population, a vote bank that has stood by him, whichever side he swings—the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan. After 20 years, Nitish not only still holds sway over constituencies he has culti­vated—EBCs, mahadalits and women— but has further consoli­dated them, even as he may have drawn support from beyond these vote banks.

This is a record tenth time that he is set to be anointed chief minister of Bihar, with the NDA sweeping the elections, crossing the 200 mark, almost wiping out the Mahagathbandhan, and reinforc­ing Nitish’s position as the NDA’s leader in the state. Nitish has always managed to avert anti-incumbency, yet his party’s tally had fallen to 43 in 2020, when he had fought in alliance with the BJP, from 71 in 2015, when he had tied up with the RJD, winning an election fought at the height of Modi’s popularity. In 2020, Chirag Paswan’s LJP (RV) had fought separately, hurting the JD(U). This time, the NDA managed to rope in both Paswan’s LJP (RV) and Upendra Kushwaha‘s Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) to ensure that the alliance consolidated the Dalit and Kushwaha votes.

Unlike other leaders of the erstwhile Janata Party— Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan—Nitish, a Kurmi, who constitute just 2.8 per cent of the state’s population, did not have a caste-based vote share. While Lalu and Mulayam drew the Yadav vote in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, northern caul­drons of caste politics, Paswan, a Dalit caste, reached out to his community. In Bihar, the Yadav population is 14.26 per cent, while the Paswans comprise 5.31 per cent, according to the 2022 Bihar caste survey. The scions of the Yadav leaders—Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi—and Paswan’s son Chirag Paswan have inherited their predecessors’ vote banks.

NITISH, THREE YEARS younger than Lalu, blunted the sting of Yadav dominance by creating his own vote bank—EBCs and mahadalits, identified as a subgroup within the Scheduled Castes and given benefits of reservation. Under this categorisation, every backward caste except Yadav was EBC, and every Dalit except Paswan was mahadalit.

Nitish had granted EBCs 18 per cent reservation in jobs. He launched schemes and policies targeting them, and gave them political and social standing to counter upper caste and Yadav dominance. It was Karpoori Thakur, an EBC himself from the “nai” community, who had shown Nitish the way. In the 1970s, Thakur, as chief minister, reserved 60 per cent of the OBC quota for weaker backward castes, and visualised a core role for EBCs, diminishing the influence of the Triveni Sangh, an amalgama­tion of Ahirs, Koeris and Kurmis. After him, however, backward class politics in the state was again dominated by the Yadavs, till Nitish came onto the scene, reviving Thakur’s formula of EBC outreach. After coming to power in 2005 for the first time, he has become Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister. The EBCs, politi­cally and socially sidelined in the past, have consistently backed Nitish, an affiliation that was palpable on the ground in Bihar. This time, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), led by Mukesh Sahni, a leader of the “Mallahs”, a fishermen’s community which is a component of the EBCs, was part of the Tejashwi Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan. The Mahagathbandhan had declared him its deputy chief ministerial candi­date. Of the 12 seats it fought, the VIP has drawn a blank, further pulling down the Mahagathbandhan.

What has also set Nitish apart from his former Janata Party colleagues, all of whom had got together in the Jayaprakash Narayan movement of 1977 during the Emergency imposed by the Congress’s Indira Gandhi, is his refusal to indulge in nepotism. He has kept his family away from politics. According to a senior BJP leader, the prime minister never liked personalised comments being made against Nitish because, among the current-day socialist leaders, he is the only one who has not indulged in dynasty politics. Modi, in an interview, had lauded socialist leaders Ram Manohar Lohia, George Fernandes and Nitish, whose families had not entered into politics.

The women’s turnout in the elections this time, the highest so far in the state at nearly 72 per cent, surpassing that of men by around nine per cent, reverberates the footfall of Nitish’s outreach to the other constituency he has cultivated. Though several states in recent elections have launched direct cash benefit schemes for poor women, seeing it as a game changer, his outreach to the constituency, which obscures caste divides, goes back nearly two decades. Nitish, who came to power replacing Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi—the state’s only woman chief minister—is credited with improving the law and order situation in Bihar, the first step towards empowering women. The RJD rule was dubbed as “jungle raj”, memories of which give Nitish an edge over his rivals, particularly among women voters. Despite the RJD now being led by Lalu’s 36-year-old son Tejashwi Yadav, for women who feared the return of “jungle raj”, it turned out to be a Nitish versus Lalu election. In constituencies where a higher number of women voted, the NDA has captured a higher vote share.

“Auratein kahan vote karengi pata nahi. Vote apne man ka hota hai (We don’t know for whom the women will vote. Vote is an individu­al choice),” was the refrain of some men supporting the Mahagath­bandhan ahead of polling, conceding that the women of their clan may not be on the same page, hinting that they could back Nitish.

After becoming chief minister for the first time in 2005, Nit­ish granted 50 per cent reservation to women in Panchayati Raj institutions. Later, he extended the policy to urban local bodies. The voter turnout of women has been outpacing that of men in the state since 2010, when he returned for a second stint. He gave 35 per cent reservation to women in the police, and ahead of the

 2015 elections, promised to implement prohibition. The 2015 elections witnessed a women’s voter turnout of 60 per cent, as against 50 per cent for men. In a bid to bring down the school dropout rate in a state where the women’s literacy rate has been much lower than the national average, Nitish launched schemes like providing funds to schoolgirls for bicycles and sanitary nap­kins. The Nitish government in September transferred `10,000 into bank accounts of 75 lakh women in Bihar, as seed money to members of SHGs, a women’s collective that got a push with a World Bank-supported project called JEEViKa, to further con­solidate women voters. After the initial grant, the women are eligible for an additional support of `2 lakh, depending on the success of their businesses. The Mahagathbandhan, in an attempt to reach out to women, a constituency comprising 48 per cent of the state’s population, had promised a monthly assistance of `2,500 to women from financially vulnerable backgrounds, if it came to power.

When Dalit youth Raju Bhagat says, “Mehraru ka purdah aur sadak ka gaddha, dono Nitishji ne udaya (Nitish has done away with women’s veil and potholes on the road)”, an apparent reference to the improved law and order situation and his development re­cord. For Nitish’s supporters, his development model—roads, wa­ter, electricity, earning him the moniker of “sushasan babu” (good governance man)—overshadows his tactical shifts between back­ing the BJP and the RJD, which have kept him politically relevant and ensured victory for the alliance he leads. Amid allegations of corruption that haunt several state leaders and candidates in the fray, Nitish has remained untainted. The Opposition questioning the state of his health seems to have backfired. His alliance with the BJP notwithstanding, Nitish has retained his own identity. Two days before the results, in Patna, Nitish had visited a temple, where the presiding deity is Hanuman; the Harminder Ji Patna Sahib Gurdwara, one of the five takhts of the Sikhs; and a mazar, where he offered a chadar, underscoring his secular credentials.

“Nitish ne kaam toh bahut kiya hai (Nitish has done a lot of work)” was a familiar line heard in the state ahead of elections.

But there are challenges before him, as he prepares for his tenth stint as chief minister. What will be his priorities over the coming years?

With the youth in the state complaining of joblessness, which has forced a large-scale exodus affecting all sections of the popula­tion, the political discourse in the run-up to the elections focused on employment, stimulated further by Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj, which was fighting a caste-neutral battle, in a state where caste equations have held an enduring sway over politics. The NDA and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc had made ambitious promises of en­suring employment to the youth in the state to stem migration in the run-up to the elections. The Nitish government now faces the challenge of earmarking additional resources for delivering on its ambitious promises of jobs and industrialisation, amidst revenue constraints. Despite being the most popular leader in the state, his party has not won an Assembly election on its own. The biggest question mark before 74-year-old Nitish is the absence of a succes­sion plan, which casts an uncertainty over the future of his party.

For the NDA, which fought the election under his leadership, it is unmistakably clear that Bihar is not ready to give up on Nitish yet. As Shankar, a Patna-based driver, a graduate who belongs to the Mali community, a component of the EBCs, said, “Abhi Bihar mein Nitish jaisa koi neta nahi hai (As of now, there’s no leader like Nitish in Bihar)”.