#dnaEdit: Resounding victory for socialist forces in Bihar elections

The decisive success of Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Yadav-led Grand Alliance in the Bihar assembly elections raises several critical questions. First, can the victory of the Grand Alliance be attributed to the ideology of ‘social justice’ as propounded by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Yadav, allied to the good governance delivered by Nitish Kumar? Or does it mean the defeat of the ostensible development agenda and the divisive politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? It is pertinent to note here that the BJP, in its election campaign, had strayed from the development agenda and played to the hilt its core divisive ideological card.

Let’s consider the basic parameters of these poll results: The BJP’s share of vote percentage, followed by that of the RJD, has remained ahead of every other party. Like in the last Delhi assembly election, the BJP seems to have retained its vote share in Bihar too. Though this has not been reflected in the number of seats the party has secured. The percentage of vote share for the Janata Dal (United) lags closely that of its main alliance partner, the RJD. The limited inference that can be made from these figures is that the people in Bihar voted for their known local leaders — Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav — and that Nitish Kumar’s record of good governance proved to be a winning card. By attacking its former ally in harsh language, the BJP, on the other hand, deprived itself of any advantage it could have possibly extracted from its past participation in Nitish Kumar’s good governance agenda. 
What, however, dominates the poll results is the stunning success of Lalu Yadav. One of the factors that could be behind the revival of the political fortunes of Lalu Yadav after being in Bihar’s political wilderness for a decade, was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s call for a review of the country’s reservation policy. The subsequent clarifications and denials offered by the BJP leaders, to neutralise the damage of that statement, did not assure voters. The Grand Alliance leaders, predictably, reaped an electoral fortune out of the RSS statement while the BJP struggled with its damage-control exercise at every step of the campaign.

The Muslim vote in Bihar, as anticipated, has gone in favour of the Grand Alliance. The hostile political and social ambience created by the leaders of BJP and the Sangh’s multiple outfits, who triggered anxieties among minorities with their frequent hate-remarks targeting minorities, strengthened the Grand Alliance. The killing of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri and BJP’s constant campaign refrain on cow slaughter further alienated the Muslims.

The other question that arises out of the poll verdict is whether the people have rebuffed the right-wing majoritarian ideology of the BJP, and whether this can be described as a victory for the secular forces. There is a temptation to read the Bihar verdict in ideological terms. It would, however, be inaccurate to see the electoral outcome through the ideological prism alone. It is quite clear that the rural and subaltern voter has preferred the working government of Nitish Kumar over that of the grandiose promises made in the air by Prime Minister Modi. 

If there is indeed an ideological element in this verdict, it is the urban-rural divide. Rural Bihar wants a share in the economic changes that are taking place, and the voter felt that Nitish Kumar is the man to do this job. 

The puzzle whether Nitish Kumar was riding piggyback on Lalu Yadav’s popularity will remain a teaser because there are no easy answers. It appears that Lalu had steered this tremendous victory. But the number of seats won by JD (U) and RJD show that each of them has reinforced the strength of the other. The JD (U) and the RJD contested 100 seats each, where they considered themselves strong. Nitish Kumar seemed to have attracted substantive numbers of upper caste and middle-class voters as well. In the complex caste-class structure of Bihar, there needed to be a tactical alliance between the different caste segments including the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as well as the middle classes. Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav have managed to reach out to all the segments of Bihar’s society. 

There is a temptation to extrapolate the Bihar assembly poll verdict on to the national scene and on to the assembly elections that are going to take place in the next two years. As a matter of fact, many political pundits are eager to project Nitish Kumar as a potential prime ministerial candidate of an anti-BJP national alliance in the 2019 general elections. No doubt, the Bihar poll results would strengthen the anti-BJP forces that are likely to renew themselves at the national level as well as in states. 

But, the Bihar assembly poll verdict is essentially about Bihar, and people in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Punjab and Tamil Nadu which go to the polls next year, will make their own decisions based on the local challenges they deal with. It would be useful to remember that the Bihar electorate did not trust either Nitish Kumar or Lalu Yadav during the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The argument that a JD (U)-RJD alliance in 2014 would have spawned a different outcome remains a purely a speculative one. Similarly, the assembly poll outcomes in other states are not likely to be pointers to who would win the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Besides, the political base of both Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) and Lalu Yadav’s RJD is limited to Bihar, and cannot be a winning factor across the country.  

In West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress rules the roost as does Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu. The BJP cannot hope to pull off a Bihar in these states. The only state the BJP can hope to do well in is Assam. The Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2017 are not going to be a cakewalk for the BJP either.
The expectation that the BJP would draw appropriate lessons from Sunday’s defeat in Bihar and that it will do a course correction in its future mode of campaign, or that it would temper its language and approach, may turn out to be wishful thinking. The BJP knows it cannot abandon its right-wing politics because its identity is essentially that of a majoritarian party. It is also unlikely that Modi would change the style of functioning he has created for himself during the one-and-a-half year of prime ministership. Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are likely to stick to their no-holds-barred belligerent approach of fighting elections. 

The Bihar verdict remains important in spite of the fact that it may or may not have a ripple effect on elections in other states. The poll outcome sends out the clear message that the BJP’s divisive politics and belligerent campaign have created a sense of revulsion in Bihar as well as in the rest of the country. Both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav maintained political decorum which seems to be disappearing from the political discourse, and at a dangerously fast pace. It is not just the BJP but the political class as a whole that should learn their lessons from these stunning Bihar poll results.