JD(U) plus lalu Prasad will be recipe for disaster
Going strictly by reports of how new political alignments are threatening to shape up in Bihar, it appears that the State's ruling Janata Dal (United), and especially its leader and former Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, have not learnt any lesson from the drubbing the party received in the lok Sabha election. Voters had punished the JD(U) for breaking its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party on the issue of Mr Narendra Modi's leadership. Now, Mr Nitish Kumar appears on the course of committing yet another blunder, this time in the reverse direction of forging a relationship, with the discredited Rashtriya Janata Dal led by an even more discredited lalu Prasad. The JD(U) perhaps believes that a grand alliance, formal or otherwise, between ‘secular' parties such as the RJD and the Congress, will bring together all anti-BJP voters on a common plank, thus drastically reducing the prospect of a division in the votes, and helping the combine sail through in the electoral battles ahead. Things are not as simple as the JD(U) would want everyone to imagine. In the first place, the BJP's victory in collaboration with Mr Ram Vilas Paswan's lok Janshakti Party in the lok Sabha election was so overwhelming that even a combination of the ‘secular' rest would pale in comparison. The coming together of the JD(U) and the RJD is not going to be a seamless exercise. It must be remembered that the very existence of Mr Nitish Kumar's party and his rise to prominence rests on opposition to the RJD. Mr Nitish Kumar had rebelled against lalu Prasad's leadership two decades ago and parted ways with the latter with generous help from various leaders such as George Fernandes — whom he sought to marginalise in later years. Both the JD(U) and Mr Nitish Kumar are counter-products of the jungle raaj that the RJD regimes, first under lalu Prasad and later during the chief ministership of his wife Rabri Devi, had inflicted upon the people of Bihar. How will Mr Nitish Kumar justify an alliance with the same forces that had plunged Bihar into a social and economic abyss, out of which he, along with the BJP then in alliance, had to struggle hard for many years to rescue the StateIJ
It's not just the voters that Mr Nitish Kumar will have to deal with. Earlier on, he will have to hard-sell the partnership with the RJD to his own workers and the party cadre. It is clear from the simmering revolt in the party that this is going to be a near impossible task. Such is the gravity of the situation that Mr Nitish Kumar had to plead with the RJD for support in the recent by-election from the State to the Rajya Sabha. lalu Prasad obliged, and he will seek to extract a price if the JD(U) needs his help in the coming weeks and months. If Mr Nitish Kumar indeed forges an alliance with a leader he had rebelled against on a matter of ‘principle’, he must be prepared for a serious fall-out. It could be as bad as the one he suffered after snapping ties with the BJP.