Bihar emerges as clear winner

We’ve often heard the maxim: “In politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies.” Nitish Kumar’s chequered, though immensely successful career, has further simplified this maxim. His career aptly reads: “Today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend and vice versa.”

With Nitish Kumar starting a new innings, supported by the BJP, time has come more than a full circle for this bright product of the anti-Emergency movement. However, instead of going as way back as the Emergency, I would restrict this article to his stint as Bihar CM.

To begin with, Nitish Kumar was a reluctant CM candidate in 2004. Lalu Yadav, despite umpteen acts of brazen thuggery, had patronised caste and religious appeasement such, that his core voters never breached their loyalty, thus making the RJD invincible. In this situation, a desperate Nitish in trying to forge a broad coalition between the BJP, JD(U) and LJP, offered the CM’s post to Ram Vilas Paswan. Paswan rejected the offer outright, refusing to have any truck with the ‘communal’ BJP. Consequently, Nitish Kumar led the JD(U)-BJP alliance, first to a hung Assembly and then to a historic win in 2005.

The reluctant CM was to soon emerge as a shrewd opportunist, extremely flexible on ideology, so long as his moves could be rationalised and power retained. Hence, after a stupendous second win in 2010, Nitish dumped the BJP over its decision to have ‘communal’ Modi as the PM candidate. In 2015, he went back to forge an alliance with Lalu, whom he had uprooted to become CM, ignoring all the grave cases of corruption against Lalu. Twenty months after another emphatic win in 2015, Nitish has dumped the obnoxious Lalu over lesser charges of land grabbing by Lalu’s son. He has instead gone back to the BJP.

This circuitous journey of Nitish makes it pretty clear that he loves adventure. Besides, he does not have an ideology. In politics, ‘ideology’, which can’t be rationalised to retain power, is anyway flawed and inadequate. On the other hand, what works in Nitish’s favour, despite all his political flip-flops, is his no-nonsense administrative capabilities. Besides, if Nitish enjoyed a pro-development leader image until a few years ago, that development agenda was largely BJP-driven. With the BJP back to supporting him, the focus once again will be on the development of the state.

Now, while the JD(U)-BJP partnership augurs well for Bihar, its repercussions on national politics will be far more humongous.

First of all, the charade of secularism will be exorcized once and for all. Let’s face it: in India, secularism has been the ‘cover-up’ word for corruption and incompetence. The ‘secular’ leaders, be it Lalu or Mayawati or Mamata or the entire Congress party, got away with the worst loot of public money. On the other hand, capable administrators were dubbed communal and ganged up against. Nitish’s dumping of Lalu will end this hoodwinking. The people of this country are wise enough to understand that ‘secularism’ was neither the reason for Nitish parting ways with BJP, nor for him to get back.

Secondly, the existential crisis for the Congress and Rahul Gandhi would worsen from here. The fact that Nitish met Rahul Gandhi barely four days before he quit and yet Rahul could not pre-empt the move, speaks very poorly of his political understanding. The illusory ‘maha-gathbandhan’ might still happen before 2019, but the bargaining capacity of the Congress now will be much weaker.

Thirdly, the fate of the 2019 elections has more or less been sealed. The already fragile Opposition stands further eroded. Moreover, in a worst case scenario, assuming for a moment that something goes wrong between BJP and JD(U) in Bihar, Nitish’s credibility will suffer. He will not be in any position to fight the BJP again.

Finally, there might be repercussions for both the JD(U) and Bihar BJP as well. It is unlikely that all JD(U) leaders will be comfortable about partnering with BJP again. Similarly, for the BJP, which has worked assiduously at the grassroots level in Bihar, playing second fiddle for too long may not be easy. In this complex situation, it might help Nitish to take a more futuristic view of the partnership. My reading, based upon the ground situation in Bihar, is that post 2019 elections, it would not be a bad idea for Nitish to shift to the Centre and let the BJP lead the alliance in Bihar in the next state elections. Political dynamics change very fast. My prediction may sound somewhat impractical today, but Nitish, given the brilliant reader of politics that he is, would already be thinking of this next big move.

For now, the best thing about BJP backing the JD(U) is that with the charade of Indian secularism coming to an end and the corrupt Yadav clan sidelined, the focus in Bihar will shift back to governance. Bihar has emerged as a clear winner in this coup.

The writer is a well-known author and spokesperson for Mumbai BJP. Views expressed are personal.