RJD supremo and former Bihar Chief Minister lalu Prasad had no hesitation in insulting serving Prime Ministers when he believed they were not rushing to his assistance. Will Nitish Kumar be sparedIJ
In politics, it is more difficult to manage a friend than confront an adversary. Bihar Chief Minister-designate Nitish Kumar will most probably realise this sooner or later after he gets down to the serious business of governing once he is sworn in as Chief Minister two days from now. He will not, unlike in the past, be leading a coalition where a junior partner (then the Bharatiya Janata Party) led by the affable Sushil Kumar Modi offered him ample political space to promote an agenda of good governance. The BJP had bent over backwards to accommodate Mr Nitish Kumar for close to eight years to the extent that Mr Sushil Kumar Modi’s sterling performance as Finance Minister in turning the State’s situation around for the better, remained underplayed and the Chief Minister walked away with the credit and the various awards. Things can be different now — not because his new-found friends will want to bask in glory (there will be no glory if they have their way) but because Mr Nitish Kumar may just not be allowed to function effectively.
It will soon be obvious to Mr Nitish Kumar that his new partner, the Rashtriya Janata Dal with lalu Prasad at the helm, is a different animal from that of the BJP. Even if the historical differences between the two leaders get papered over for now, the euphoric moments and the honeymoon period are not going to last long. This may sound needlessly Cassandra-like, but lalu Prasad is not the sort to play a secondary role — especially not when he commands the largest number of seats in the Bihar Assembly and is in the driver’s seat, although Mr Nitish Kumar appears to be holding the steering wheel. Two situations can develop in a worst-case scenario: The first is that Mr Nitish Kumar succumbs and drags on listlessly like Mr Manmohan Singh did in the last years of his second term; the second is that he puts his foot down and dares the RJD to dislodge him (this can open up a new set of political possibilities including the Janata Dal-United’s return to the NDA fold). But we are going ahead of time. For now, we need to understand why there are many sceptics who do not see a bright future for the Nitish-lalu alliance.
There are many fault-lines, and one (or some) of them can trigger a crisis in the relationship between the two leaders. Perceptions on what constitutes good governance can clash; caste loyalties can create friction; questionable actions of individuals close to either of the two leaders can lead to acrimony; the desire by the majority party (here the RJD) to dominate in decision-making can produce ruptures; effective policing and general law and order issues which Mr Nitish Kumar will seek to promote can rub the RJD the wrong way and antagonise lalu Prasad; and the anti-Modi glue can wear off over time. The list is not comprehensive.
Supporters of the strange reunion can counter this alarmist tendency with one stroke: What if the cynics are misreading lalu Prasad or maligning him without fresh empirical evidenceIJ In other words, the RJD supremo may well have turned a new leaf, and we must wait and watch. So we shall. For the moment, though, we must fall back on The Brothers Bihari, a book by commentator and author Sankarshan Thakur, to refresh ourselves with lalu Prasad’s conduct, because it offers us some understanding, without explicitly meaning to, as to why the RJD chief is unlikely to have changed. Pithily put, lalu Prasad will not change because he never in the first place believed that he had been wrong. And why should heIJ He has now won on the strength of his old self. His brazen casteist politics — during the election campaign he had termed the contest with the BJP as a “battle between the backward castes and the upper castes” — has paid dividend; and his dismal governance record of the 90s has been brushed aside.
But before we delve into the book keeping the ‘lalu factor’ in sight, let’s consider one development immediately after the triumphant return of the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal. Smiling from ear to ear, both lalu Prasad and Mr Nitish addressed the media in Patna. Mr Nitish Kumar, magnanimous in victory, said he bore no ill-will towards his political adversaries and hoped that the Centre led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi would whole-heartedly cooperate with the new Bihar regime for the State’s welfare. On the other hand, lalu Prasad said the result was a slap in the face of “Fascist Modi” and grandly announced that he would tour the country to “expose” and uproot the Modi Government from New Delhi. He patronizingly added that he would leave Bihar’s affairs to Mr Nitish Kumar and play a larger, national role. The message is clear: lalu Prasad will use the central stage to not just trouble Prime Minister Modi but also remind his Bihar ally on who the boss is.
The Brothers Bihari is the political story of lalu Prasad and Mr Nitish Kumar. It’s a tale of the latter’s enormous and in many ways successful efforts in turning around Bihar’s grim image, as also some of his shortcomings; the book is also a narrative of lalu Prasad’s many instances of misgovernance and feudal behaviour, with a few compliments — for instance, Sankarshan Thakur does not hesitate to acknowledge that lalu Prasad is the biggest vote-catcher Bihar has had or that his first few months as Chief Minister were full of promise. Nevertheless, it requires no deep study to understand whom Sankarshan Thakur trusts in the end, with the benefit of hindsight.
The author narrates how lalu Prasad double-crossed his benefactors — VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar and Devi lal — along his journey to the top. He writes of how the RJP supremo rudely castigated Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda and the mild-mannered Inder Kumar Gujral when he was faced with crises over the fodder scam. Sample this: Speaking to Mr Deve Gowda when he smelt the Central Bureau of Investigation at his doorstep, lalu Prasad said, “Kaaji Deve Gowda, isi liye tumko PM banaya thaIJ Ki tum hamare khilaf case taiyar karoIJ Bahut galti kiya, tumko PM banake.”
And to IK Gujral, he had this to say in connection with the CBI’s moves in the same fodder scam: “Kya ho raha hai yeh sabIJ Kya bakwas karwa rahe hain aapIJ Ek PM ko hata ke aap ko banaya, aur aap bhi wahi kaam karwa rahe hain!” If this was the man’s tone when he was about to be picked up by the CBI and on the verge of losing his chief ministership, imagine what he is capable of at this moment, when he is Bihar’s uncrowned king. Mr Deve Gowda and Gujral were Prime Ministers he ‘made’. Similarly, Nitish Kumar is to be the Chief Minister that he has ‘made’. Given the bitter experiences the two Prime Ministers had, one wonders what lies in store for Mr Nitish Kumar.