PLAIN POLITICS
Sushil Kumar Modi is a man used to strife; but he never loses his cool. As Nitish Kumar’s right-hand man (he was deputy chief minister and finance minister in the Bihar government), but from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he took the flak uncomplainingly — whether it came from his own party or from Kumar’s constant and sometimes mocking provocation of the BJP.
Kumar never ceased to bait the BJP — in fact, he revelled in it. The Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)]-BJP government provided state funding to fence off kabristans (burial grounds) that used to be a source of a huge land-encroachment racket and the origin of all communal riots in Bihar. Muslim boys, who passed the matriculation examination in the first division, were awarded ~10,000 by the Kumar-Modi government. Similar incentives were provided for the education of Muslim girls. A demonstration by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, against the state government’s allocation of land in Kishanganj for a university on the model of Aligarh Muslim University, was lathicharged by the police. Modi, who was then deputy chief minister (and former ABVP activist) went to see the injured in hospital but his entry was resisted. What Kumar was telling the BJP was: do what you want but I will not stop what you consider is appeasement of the minorities. The BJP was often uncomfortable with the fact that the Muslims might not vote for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — but they would vote for Kumar, as in fact, they did.
It was Modi who kept the alliance going although his own party never shied away from taking potshots at him. He ignored all that and carried on with his work. In 2001, there were just two flights a day between Patna and Delhi. Today there are more than seven flights a day between these two cities. There are five flights a day between Kolkata and Patna today. Earlier there were just two. Patna had an international airport but in 2001 there were practically no international flights. Today more than 25 flights touch down every week from Bangkok, Colombo, Paro (in Bhutan) and Yangon (in Myanmar), carrying Buddhist pilgrims. He agreed with Kumar that education should be the state’s biggest priority and went along in increasing allocations. In 2006-07, just a year after the Kumar-Modi team came to power, construction activity increased by 83.58 per cent, according to the state Economic Survey. It increased 43.85 per cent in 2008-09 over the previous year. Roads, bridges and other public works contributed 13.4 per cent of the state’s gross domestic product in 2008-09 against 4.2 per cent in 2003-04. Bihar became one of the largest consumers of cement in 2008-09. Yearon-year growth in consumption was 27 per cent whereas the all-India average was just nine per cent and east India was 17 to 18 per cent. Truck sales went up 150 per cent till October 2009 over a period of seven months on a year-on-year basis.
Then Kumar and Modi — once the best of pals — had to part ways. Modi resigned and shifted to the Opposition side of the Vidhan Sabha. To his horror, Kumar took up with the BJP’s principal enemy, Lalu Prasad. Only once did he confess to his friends, his angst at Kumar: “Kya nahin kiya maine is insaan key liye... (What did I not do for this man).”
Modi’s anguish was not hard to understand. He was one of the lads who took part in the JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) movement in Bihar before the Emergency but opted to stay with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) instead of contesting elections. He was Govindacharya’s protégé — and social justice rather than Hindutva promotion was his credo. He fell in love and married Jessie George — a Malayali Roman Catholic — whom he met during a train journey to Mumbai in the late 1980s. She was in the upper berth, he in the lower — they talked all night. He retains his belief that everyone has the right to practise the religion they want and was deeply disturbed at the Graham Staines incident in Odisha, voicing his disapproval publicly.
He tried his hand at business but gave it up to return to politics. The BJP fielded him in 1990 for the first time from the Patna Central Legislative Assembly seat; he won that and has been in active politics ever since. He is unfailingly polite, always ready to listen but also keeps his own counsel: he is yet to go to Bhagalpur to campaign for the official party candidate, who is the son of a senior BJP leader and got the seat largely on the back of emotional blackmail (it doesn’t look as if the BJP is going to win that seat).
The BJP has not announced a candidate for chief minister if it wins the Assembly election. Modi is not contesting; he is a member of the Legislative Council. July 2015 led to the shock defeat of the JD(U) in the council elections when the NDA took 13 out of 24 seats. The JD(U)’s tally was down from 19 to five whereas the BJP went up from five to 12. Eight thousand four hundred mukhias were also voters in the polls, giving an inkling about the thinking in the panchayats.
The BJP is not united over its leader. If it gets the numbers to form a government, it is the Modi in Delhi who will decide the fate of the Modi in Patna.