By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
The resignation of Nitish Kumar from the post of chief minister of Bihar following the decimation of Janata Dal (United) has exposed how weak actually he was without the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The message of Verdict 2014 in Bihar is clear: unlike in most other states people’s anger was directed more against Nitish Kumar than Rahul Gandhi or any Congress leader.
Nitish Kumar
The alliance Nitish wove between upper castes and depressed classes, that is extremely backward castes (EBCs) and mahadalits, got ruptured this time. The upper castes got upset with him quite early when he fixed 20 per cent seats in the panchayat and urban local bodies for the EBCs.
Apart from this, he tried to bring about land reforms by empowering the sharecroppers––who were mostly from backward caste. He imitated the pattern adopted in West Bengal called Operation Barga. He set up Bandopadhyay Commission in this regard, but later did not implement its report. He succumbed to a massive rally in Patna by landed castes under the banner of Kisan Mahapanchayat on May 10, 2010. Not only that he created a separate social group called, mahadalit, by including 21 out of 22 dalit sub-castes––only Paswans (Dussadhs) were left out.
The upper castes started resisting the social, political and economic empowerment of the downtrodden section as early as 2009 yet they backed Nitish till 2013 because they did not want the return of Lalu-Rabri raj. But after Nitish parted ways with the BJP they got a suitable alternative in the form of the saffron party. In Narendra Modi they got a leader who would cut Nitish to size.
When Narendra Modi started appealing to the backward castes by projecting himself as an OBC a section of EBCs and mahadalits switched their loyalties though they were the beneficiaries of the Nitish government. Paswans were already angry as they were the lone caste deprived of the mahadalit status.
Nitish made another political blunder. He started meddling in the internal affairs of the BJP by openly siding with Lal Krishna Advani. He flagged off the Jan Chetna Rath Yatra of Advani from Shitab Diara, the birth place of Lok Nayak Jaiprakash Narayan in Siwan district of Bihar, on October 11, 2011.
As the strongest of the three other constituents of the NDA––the other two were Akali Dal and Shiv Sena––he thought that his role would help Advani overcome the challenge from Modi. But by 2013 Advani accepted the reality. So all his camp-followers gradually changed their colour and started praising Modi. In those days Nitish’s deputy and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi would see prime ministerial material in him. After the split, he turned into the bitterest critic of his government.
Unlike the Advani faction, the JD(U) which was till recently considered as the B-team of the BJP in Bihar, was not prepared to reconcile to the fact. Nitish had taken his battle against Modi too far––from cancelling the dinner on June 12, 2010 during the BJP’s national executive in Patna to publicly berating the saffron party’s prime ministerial candidate. He started his flirtation with the Congress even when he had not divorced the BJP totally. He would make helicopter trip to Rajgir and travel in car with the Union ministers like Salman Khurshid and P Chidambaram. In Patna he even dropped Chidamabaram to the Congress party headquarters in Sadaquat Ashram––a move unheard of by any chief minister of the rival party.
Yet when the time of alliance with the Congress came it was he who developed cold feet and allowed Lalu Prasad to make a deal with it. There were far too many Congressmen who were inclined to have tie up with JD(U). But that was not to be because of Nitish’s indifference.
Now that he has lost the election, he has decided to play the mahadalit card once again by making Jitan Ram Manjhi, a Musahar, the chief minister of the state. It seems that he is at present not interested in wooing back the influential upper castes, who till recently used to be the backbone of his support base. Only time will tell whether it is a right move or not.