The Bharatiya Janata Party has never formed a Government on its own in Bihar. Regardless of the new alliance between lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, the ground there is more fertile than it has ever been for the BJP
Bihar is set for a compelling political contest. Ten legislative Assembly by-elections will see a direct fight between the BJP-led NDA — with two allied parties, including Ram Vilas Paswan’s lok Janshakti Party — and a combine comprising the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress. The set of by-elections brings together lalu Prasad and Mr Nitish Kumar for the first time in 20 years. To its adherents, this reunification of the Mandal twins holds hope of Yadavs and Kurmis voting as one and of the Muslim vote consolidating against the BJP.
Should this troika of parties do well in the by-elections, it is possible the alliance may be scaled up for the 2015 Assembly election. Indeed, should the NDA do very poorly in the by-elections — which would be a setback, given its impressive victory in Bihar in the recent lok Sabha election — there is even talk of Mr Kumar calling early poll. Discussion as to who will become the non-BJP chief ministerial candidate is premature. The more speculative in the political class are speaking of the Nitish-lalu duo sending an appropriate signal to the minorities and propping up a Muslim candidate, maybe even one from the Congress, a neutral but rump party.
All this is hypothetical and extremely tentative. For the moment, the BJP is justified in seeing itself as the rising force in Bihar. Irrespective of how the by-elections go, it will be optimistic about the 2015 Assembly election, and victory there would certainly be a priority for the party’s new president Amit Shah.
Bihar, like Uttar Pradesh, is moving into a post-Mandal, post-social justice era of competitive politics. A quarter-century of lalu and then Nitish-raj has exhausted the OBC empowerment process. This process had led to, first, Yadav rule and then a counter-consolidation of smaller and less-endowed OBC groups, led by Kurmis. However, Mr Narendra Modi’s advent, and the peculiar circumstances of the 2014 lok Sabha election, nullified many old postulates.
Mr Modi was at once a Hindu leader, who appealed to the traditional BJP constituency; an OBC, who won over significant slices of Mr Kumar’s and Prasad’s voters; and an embodiment of the aspirations of small-town, urban-oriented young voters looking for a narrative of economic rise. The BJP will hope to replicate this platform in the 2015 Assembly election, seeking votes for Mr Sushil Kumar Modi, who is also an OBC, and betting on a strong campaign by the Prime Minister.
On paper, a Nitish-lalu-Congress alliance is formidable. It can unite Yadavs and Kurmis, along with the most-backward OBCs, Dalit and Mahadalits and Muslims. In the past decade, these differentiated groups have voted for either the RJD or the JD(U). In minor pockets of Bihar, the Congress retains a presence. Sheer arithmetic would suggest this coalition is better placed than the NDA.
However, there are many points to consider. Chemistry is often as important, if not more important, than arithmetic in assessing an Indian election. First, Mr Kumar may be able to swing his core Kurmi vote but many of those who voted for him in the past decade did so because they saw an alternative to lalu-raj. Some of these people were BJP voters. In a three-way contest, should they have assessed Mr Kumar as well-placed in a local/Assembly election, they may well have backed the JD(U) to keep out the RJD. If the lalu-Nitish partnership survives till 2015, this segment — the non-Kurmi, non-traditional, incremental voters for Mr Kumar — will gravitate towards the BJP. lalu Prasad will repel more than Mr Kumar will attract.
Second, Yadavs comprise some 13 per cent of Bihar’s voters, much larger than the three to four per cent Kurmi segment. Muslims make up 16 or 17 per cent. The BJP alliance and deft social engineering allowed Mr Kumar to punch well above his weight. Should he tie up with lalu Prasad, however, he will be very much the junior brother. The wily Prasad will seek to rebuild his Yadav-Muslim constituency and turf out Mr Kumar, as had happened in the early 1990s.
Of course, given his conviction in the fodder scandal, lalu Prasad will not be able to present himself as a chief ministerial aspirant. He will probably seek to build a new-generation RJD under one of his sons or the first of his daughters, Ms Misa Bharti. In sum, the Nitish-lalu partnership has many hidden minefields. Success is far from guaranteed, and the likelihood of lalu Prasad emerging as the most senior rival of the BJP, pushing Mr Kumar to the margins, is very high.
While not discounting the potential of a Nitish-lalu reunion, the fact is that 2015 offers the BJP its best chance in Bihar. The party grew appreciably in the State in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in south Bihar (today’s Jharkhand). From the mid-1990s, however, it ceded space to the JD(U) in a bid to put together an effective electoral alliance. A section of the party felt the bond with Mr Kumar, though beneficial in capturing power, had come at the cost of the BJP’s organic growth in Bihar.
In 2014, in the lok Sabha contest, this theory was tested and found to be valid. Could it repeat itself in an Assembly electionIJ The BJP would be banking on the fatigue factor and on the presumption that after a quarter century of rule by either lalu Prasad or Mr Kumar (or their proxies), Bihar is tired and ready for change. In these circumstances, the BJP is the only viable option.
The party would need to run a high-octane, ‘good days are coming’ campaign, quite in the manner of its lok Sabha communication and political marketing exercise. In that sense, the two-year break from Mr Kumar — between 2013 and the scheduled election in 2015 — and the fact that BJP Ministers would not have been in office in the period before voting will help. It can restore a degree of freshness to the BJP.
This is not always easy to do. In Maharashtra, the BJP has not been power for 15 years now. Yet, so corrupt is the political culture and so pervasive the cynicism, it is difficult to sell the idea of renewal and change. Could Bihar be differentIJ For the BJP, which has never formed a Government in Patna on its own, the ground is more fertile than it has ever been.
(The accompanying visual is of Bihar RJD president Ramchandra Purbe, JD(U) State chief Vashist Narayan Singh and Congress State president Ashok Chaudhary during the announcement in Patna of JD(U), Congress and RJD alliance in the upcoming by-elections for 10 Assembly seats in Bihar. PTI Photo)