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The Rise, Shine and Eclipse of Nitish Kumar

Nitish's ally swap has baffled many. His national ambitions stand dashed. DNA traces the story of three decades of political somersaults by Bihar's Mr Clean

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar share a light moment at an event organised to commemorate the 350th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh at Patna in January. BJP and JD-U insiders say that it was one of the events where ice broke between the two leaders.
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As young socialists, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav made their electoral debut from Bihar in 1977, amid a massive anti-Congress wave in the country still smarting from Indira Gandhi's Emergency. While Lalu, along with many others, was elected to the Lok Sabha, Nitish lost his MLA election. In 1980, Lalu entered the Bihar Assembly. Nitish failed again. It was in 1985 that the two friends from Patna College student politics days were elected to the state legislature together.

"Failure in his first two elections had impacted Nitish a great deal. If I remember correctly, he had once told a gathering that if he lost again, he would be in politics but would never contest an election again. It was a very emotional speech," recalls a longtime Nitish friend, no more in active politics.

In 1989, Nitish and Lalu were elected to the Lok Sabha. By then a seasoned politician, Lalu became Bihar's leader of Opposition. When 'Bade Bhai' was chosen Chief Minister after Janata Dal came to power in the state in 1990, Nitish was by his side. But he shifted his focus to national politics and got active in Delhi where he was picked as Minister of State for Agriculture and Co-operation in VP Singh's government.

Early realignments

The tag of 'Lalu's right-hand man' chased Nitish. He knew he had to chart his own course to come out of his friend's growing shadow. He left the Yadav strongman and formed Samata Party with the likes of socialist stalwart George Fernandes in 1994. There was still time left before Lalu would face a matrix of corruption charges. One of the reasons for the break-up given by Nitish's camp was Yadavs' domination in government schemes.

Nitish joined hands with the CPI(ML) to fight the 1995 Assembly elections in Bihar, but suffered a humiliating defeat. He faced political oblivion and teamed up with BJP in 1996, starting an unlikely alliance that would last 17 years. These were the beginnings of Nitish's many political somersaults. "Nitish very well understood that BJP had also got a big backward caste leader in him to counter Lalu in post-Mandal politics," says a Nitish aide who later moved to RJD that Lalu formed in 1997.

Nitish was inducted into Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Cabinet after NDA's Lok Sabha victories. He was Railway Minister (1998-99) and also held the agriculture portfolio (2000-2004). Bihar never left him, though. In between his central assignment, he became CM in 2000 but had to quit in seven days as NDA failed to prove its majority on the floor of the House. Nitish got back into the Vajpayee Cabinet. In 2003, Janata Dal, led by Sharad Yadav, merged with Samata Party, marking the birth of Janata Dal (United).

Jungle Raaj

Meanwhile, in a sharply divided post-Mandal society of the 1990s, vast chunks of Bihar's population felt liberated and emerged victorious. New breeds of netas rose on both sides by breaking law. A nexus of criminals, politicians, officials and businesses took control. RJD's rule symbolised caste killings, kidnappings, extortion, widespread corruption and a complete infrastructure collapse. It was an era that was to be known as 'Jungle Raaj'.

The government was fast losing popularity. Nitish sensed an opportunity. After NDA lost the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, he once again shifted his focus back on Bihar where Lalu, caught in fodder scam cases, had installed wife Rabri Devi as CM. He campaigned aggressively against his old friend.

Nitish became NDA's CM in Bihar in 2005, ending RJD's 15-year rule. But before the 2010 Bihar elections, Nitish's run-ins with BJP had started because of his personal and political rivalry with Narendra Modi. Furious about an advertisement showing him holding hands with his then Gujarat counterpart, Nitish cancelled a dinner he had planned for BJP leaders. He also returned Rs 5 crore offered for Bihar flood relief by the Gujarat government after local papers carried advertisements about the help.

Modi was seething with anger. Nitish was still chosen NDA's CM candidate in Bihar. The combine returned to power with a thumping majority. Under Nitish, Bihar was all about repair and resurgence. Stories of 'sushasan' and development — sometimes exaggerated — routinely flooded the Press. Nitish maintained his clean image and grew at Lalu's expense. Moving with the tide, he completed long-delayed bridges, re-laid roads, revived health centres, appointed teachers, and contained criminal gangs.

Dumping BJP

When Nitish supported Congress' Presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee in 2012, he clarified there was nothing wrong with his alliance with BJP and his support to Mukherjee was only because of his stature. But the script was to change again. Nitish broke up with BJP in 2013 after Modi was elevated as NDA's prime ministerial candidate.

Nitish had tried doing what Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik had done after anti-Christian riots in his state in 2008. Patnaik's BJD had won both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections next year. But in the 2014 general elections, Nitish was humiliated in Bihar. JD-U lost 31 of the 40 seats in the state. He tried taking a high moral ground and quit. He named Jitan Ram Manjhi as CM, but soon returned at the helm in 2015 as he failed to remote-control his appointee who turned rebel.

Mahagathbandhan

In the 2015 Bihar elections, an alpha-alliance was needed to block Modi from winning the state for BJP. Nitish chose to forget his bitter rivalry of 20 years with Lalu, who had also been swept away in Modi's popularity wave. The two byproducts of the popular 1974-75 JP Movement were again together to form their Mahagathbandhan along with Congress. In the bitterly-contested election, the saffron brigade received a rare but massive state defeat.

The Opposition soon began talking about forging a Bihar-like national alliance to breach BJP's growing firewall. Nitish was seen to be a potential challenger to Modi in 2019. Nitish did not quite hide his ambitions. In April 2016, he became his JD-U's national chief and called for an India free of RSS, BJP's ideological parent.

What has changed?

But in bringing BJP back into power in Bihar, he has wrecked the Opposition's already slim chances of halting Modi's juggernaut. After more than four decades of rise and fall in politics, he killed his own national dreams. He had said he would perish but would not go back to BJP. So what changed in these 15-20 months?

He said he quit on Wednesday over his deputy Tejashwi Yadav's defiance in continuing in office despite corruption charges against him. But Tejashwi's father Lalu was a corruption convict when Nitish had embraced their RJD after dumping BJP 20 months ago. So why cry foul now?

Nitish had hoped he could always be in the running for a national Opposition leader as Modi's magic will wane with time. But that didn't happen. "Modi kept winning state after state, reducing the Congress-led Opposition to a state of irrelevance. He didn't want Bihar to go the UP way. My sense is, Nitish went for immediate survival," explains a JD-U insider in Patna.

RJD's interference was choking governance in Bihar. "Our own allies were speaking against us. By August 2016, it became clear to us that the alliance will not hold. CBI raids against Lalu and his family came at a time when Nitish was trying to break free. Sacking Tejashwi would have allowed RJD to play victim."

Thursday's swearing-in looked like a rushed event, but Nitish was clearly playing to a joint script written months ago. "It's no secret now that he had been in talks with BJP for a long time. His utterances on surgical strikes, demonetisation and stand on NDA's Presidential candidate were some of the give-aways that many didn't quite pick up. But the fact is, he never broke contact with us," says a BJP leader.

A section in JD-U also feels that the move will not just limit Nitish to Bihar, but the party's influence there might also shrink. "Though the arrangement with BJP has been quite smooth in the past, there is no reason why they won't like to use the current opportunity and expand at our cost. In fact, they might not need us after 2019," says one of Nitish's MLAs.

That could well be the end of the road for Nitish.

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