While the COVID-19 pandemic has still not subsided in India, it is shocking to witness large crowds thronging election rallies in Bihar, defying logic and safety concerns. In overlooking the gravity of the situation, the Election Commission of India has set a wrong precedent, and looking to gain out of it, the ruling parties have supported it. An indifferent Nitish Kumar, who was once seen to be the last frontier of ‘hope’ in the old socialistic bloc of Bihar, now signifies a rigid dichotomy between ideology and a survivalist political arrangement.
The writing on the wall is very much clear for him — he knows that the hour of reckoning is here and a ‘New Bihar’ is being made now. The Assembly elections this year are all about him — a mandate on his brand of politics that has made no distinction in good, bad and worse in recent times, and even in rough weather, didn’t make an improvement.
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Directly or indirectly, Mr. Kumar has ruled Bihar for the last 15 years. With Centrally-aided infrastructure projects and going the extra mile in strengthening the electricity system, he gave an impetus to growth in the State. However, one has to assess him with a fresh benchmark. His biggest failure has been to not pursue the case of Bihar’s industrial makeover in his long, heady rule; it was wrong for him or his Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Sushil Modi to blame the ‘earth’ for not giving the ‘ocean’ a passage through Bihar, when Mr. Kumar said large employment generation is not possible in Bihar since it is a landlocked State.
There is a glaring absence of a ‘grand vision’ in Nitish Kumar’s campaign. And at best, Sushil Modi echoed what was understood and interpreted by the former. Instead of comforting the masses by comparing the present with figures from the 1990s, the ruling dispensation should have given the State a forward-looking plan to boost policy, governance and economy. A lapsed engineer, Mr. Kumar also proved to be much more disappointing with his ‘social engineering’ and institutionalising of caste politics in unprecedented ways.
Once believed to be Prime-Minister material, Mr. Kumar did major injustice to himself and the State by insulting the public mandate in the 2015 election. His sudden break-up with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and revival of old ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dissociated himself from Bihar’s political DNA. His handling of the Srijan scam, encephalitis cases, the Muzaffarpur shelter home case, falling law and order conditions, floods and droughts, COVID-19 and reverse migration, also affected ‘Brand Nitish’.
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Key adversaries
With Lalu Prasad Yadav in jail and the untimely demise of Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr. Kumar’s key adversaries in the upcoming election are young Tejashwi Yadav and Chirag Paswan. Mr. Chirag’s sudden decision to fight against 143 NDA candidates, mostly from the JD(U), is believed to be a careful plan approved by the top order of the BJP. Under an unusual understanding, The BJP seems to have unofficially formed an alternative alliance with Mr. Chirag’s Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP). In a bid to re-arrange the political equation, with the reduced size of Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi, the LJP was probably given a certain space to rebel against the ruling NDA. The experiment, however, is expected to be counter-beneficial. With multi-polarisations and changed fundamentals, the JD (U)-BJP front is expected to lose a chunk of closely-contested seats, where the winning margin may be of less than 5,000 votes. Also, two political parties that quit the Mahagathbandhan, the Hindustani Awam Morcha and the Vikasshil Insaan Party, were later inducted by the JD(U)-BJP camp. Both parties, with weak turfs, are seen as loss-making entities. The BJP has also preferred other candidates over its old cadres, who served the organisation for over three decades.
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Tall promises
In contrast, in a welcome departure from its old position, the RJD’s manifesto has turned its focus to the job crisis. It has promised industrial revival and increase in the educational capacity of the State. The Mahagathbandhan has also ‘resolved’ to fill the existing 4.5 lakh government vacancies. It has also promised to create 5.5 lakh more jobs in the government. And under pressure from such progressive commitmentsmade by Opposition parties, the BJP, too, came out with a promise of ‘19 lakh Rojgar’ (19 lakh jobs). However, it was not received well, with the definition of ‘Rojgar’ not akin to formal employment.
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The RJD, the Congress, the LJP and the Left Front have been quite forthcoming in pledging to end the culture of ‘contract hiring’ and giving equal wages for equal work. The Mahagathbandhan’s manifesto also proposed to end the contentious farm Bills, and revoke the liquor prohibition that has long caused illegal trading and high rates of crimes. The LJP, in fact, goes a step further with its promise to serve the State without caste and class distinctions, and promote infrastructural development, including a world-class stadium and a film city.
Meanwhile, the JD (U)-BJP camp has nothing new to offer after its three terms, and the ploy to present themselves as the only ‘viable option’ is also not going down well with people, many of whom have either noticed or lived through acute suffering during the pandemic, coupled with the government’s extremely poor response. Public sentiment is likely to favour big-bang changes. But even so, the JD (U)-BJP groups have their social bases formidably intact, and considering the State’s conventional voting patterns, some surprises may be in store.
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Beyond these fundamentals, Mr. Kumar is at odds with the State’s original brand of politics and his own past self. He should understand that widespread anger is not merely ‘anti-incumbency’; the anger is for his act of subduing an alternative space in national politics. People have not forgotten that it was Mr. Kumar who was against Narendra Modi campaigning for the 2009 Lok Sabha and the 2010 State Legislative polls. Despite being in the coalition, he made the difficult choice. History will be kinder to him if he introspects and returns to where he belongs. At a crossroads now, an inevitable generational shift in Bihar’s politics is significant.
Atul K. Thakur is a policy professional and columnist
