What is Bihar yearning for? Nitish, Congress - both or none?

Zeyaur Rahman

For political pundits, Bihar has been a crucial state, even after its degree of influence on the Centre has been after the creation of Jharkhand. The results of the current General Elections in Bihar have been debated and dissected to dish out hidden signs of things to come. Let me throw my hat into the ring and come up with my interpretations of a very interesting political landscape, which promises much more to follow. The revival of Congress in the Hindi heartland has been one of the dominating headlines in the post election scenario. Surprisingly, the revival is supposed to have happened in Bihar as well. Let’s have a closer look. Congress with half the number of seats than RJD and LJP is talking of the former’s revival and the latter’s rout. Goes to show to what an abyss had the fortunes of the Grand Old Party sunk in the state. It had ceased to be a power in the late eighties and did not even have a threat perception in the following decade, so much so that its candidates were famously called “Vote Katuas” by Lalu Yadav, meaning someone who can never win but only play spoilsport by bagging certain percentage of votes. It suited in Lalu’s scheme of things to raise the specter of communal forces benefiting due to division of secular votes.In the current decade, in Lalu’s assessment, the Congress even ceased to deserve the tag of “Vote Katuas” and was arrogantly given a morsel of the pie – 4 seats out of 40 with a rider - take it or leave it. To the surprise of many, the Congress still had the spine of refusing the bait and going all alone in all but 3 seats. And as we say – the rest is history. The NDA came up with its best ever performance in Bihar and along with Karnataka, the only state where it had something to show, in an election which went horribly wrong for them. It comprehensively trounced UPA, or whatever was left of it, minus RJD, LJP and the Left 32-6, 2 seats going to Independents. The irony for BJP is that even after ending on a winning side with a 32-6 score line, it is not being considered a winner but a benefactor. The credit for the victory, and rightly so, goes to the JD(U) Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. With things going wrong for the BJP all over the country, it is safe to assume that in Bihar the JD(U) votes have been transferred to BJP rather than the other way round. In a rare condescending tone, the RJD supremo lamented going into the election without the Congress on its side. If we were to analyse the would-have-beens, here is what would have played out in Bihar. A look at the vote share mustered by the parties in the elections shows that had UPA fought a combined election i.e. RJD, LJP and Congress together, instead of 32-6, the result would have been 20-19 in favour of NDA, Siwan still going to the Independent candidate. If we add Left also in the equation against NDA, which incidentally was a part of the combine till very recently, the results would have been 21-18 in favour of UPA, with Arrah and Begusarai also falling in the kitty. Though it doesn’t sound as grandiose as 32-6, even this would have been no mean achievement for Nitish Kumar who has generated a huge goodwill among the people during his reign. It is not that his image as a pro-development person that is credible, it is getting development back in the election manifestos in Bihar that is his real victory. Bihar’s leaders have been able to get the people to vote on emotive issues like Advani’s arrest, Babri demolition, caste issues for over two decades rather than on genuine issues of referendum. It is ironical that Lalu managed to retain power in Bihar by keeping development conspicuously on the back burner, only to lose an election where development was finally an issue that too after having the shed the tag of a Luddite after his successful stint at the Rail Bhavan. A very crucial trend emerges out of the scenario that even if UPA and Left were to fight elections together against NDA, Ram Vilas Paswan and Lalu Prasad would still have lost Hajipur and Patliputra respectively as would have central ministers Ali Ashraf Fatmi in Darbhanga and Raghunath Jha in Valmiki Nagar and even LJP chief’s brother Ram Chander Paswan in Samastipur. Of the 4 seats that RJD did win, Buxar and Maharjganj have been won by 2000 and 3000 votes respectively. This to my mind is the overwhelming nature of the mandate against Lalu-Paswan combine in Bihar. The three contours emerging out of the election are i) anti Lalu-Paswan sentiment, ii) Congress revival by virtue of 250% increase in vote share (from 4% in 2004 to 10% in 2009) and iii) positive vote for Nitish Kumar and in the same order necessarily so much so that the Congress revival is actually a function of the first. The theory that RJD-LJP would have won with Congress on its side is fundamentally flawed because Congress has been able to win back vote share by forsaking Lalu-Paswan. It would have been confined to periphery with a low single digit vote share had it fought the elections with Lalu-Paswan. In fact that scenario would have been a more comprehensive victory for NDA with no opposition to talk of. Today at least there are faint hopes of anti-NDA pole emerging around Congress. There are two reasons for relegating the pro-Nitish factor to the third place. Firstly, what mattered more in these elections was that RJD should lose rather than NDA should win as demonstrated in Siwan where RJD candidate and Shahabuddin’s wife Hena Shahab lost to an Independent candidate. The JD(U) candidate was perceived to be weak and got only 7% of the vote but nonetheless the mission was accomplished of defeating RJD by voting en bloc for an Independent candidate. Secondly, after all minority appeasement, Nitish is yet to cut ice with Muslims the way Lalu had. Nitish campaigned extensively in Kishanganj and made the seat a prestige issue for himself. He failed the acid test and in a sign of things to come it was Congress’ Asrarul Haque who defeated his candidate - and more importantly RJD’s heavyweight Taslimuddin finished third. That brings us to the temptation of a JD(U)-Congress tie up to seal the issue. As per the current voting trends this combine will end up winning 27 seats upfront. Minus the JD(U) how many seats the BJP will be able to defend on its own is anyone’s guess. No matter how invincible the position seems, Congress must resist it. It has to rise above the short term temptation - to begin with capturing the opposition space in Bihar politics rather than straight away heading for power(sharing). By aligning with JD(U) it will only be exchanging one set of masters for another and continue to be an irrelevant or a side player in this crucial state. It has been rewarded for standing up all alone and there is no doubt why its vote share can’t rise as exponentially if the same set of policies is continued. The mantra has to be – ekla chalo re.