Loss of credibility for Nitish, gain for BJP
THE 2015 Bihar election was fought and won on an anti-BJP and anti-Hindutva platform. Obviously, corruption was not so much an issue for Nitish then. It also didn’t matter much because after BJP’s victory in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the immediate and key
Just 20 months after he took over as Bihar’s chief minister in November 2015, Nitish Kumar surprised everyone by stepping down from the post on July 26. But the speed at which he was sworn in for the post once again the following day in an alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was not much of a surprise. Over the past one month, there were enough indications that political equations in Bihar were headed for fresh realignment. After Nitish announced his support for NDA’s presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind, it was fairly obvious that the grand alliance was under strain. The rift between Nitish and Lalu Prasad Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was deepening for quite some time. Corruption became an alibi for Nitish to end the alliance, given Lalu’s inflexibility.
Snipping ties with RJD was aimed at reclaiming the high moral ground on corruption; however, Nitish had compromised on the same when he entered into an alliance with Lalu in 2015. That’s not all. Having broken his decade-old alliance with BJP in June 2013 when Narendra Modi’a name was announced as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Nitish’s latest volte-face as regards BJP is another compromise Nitish has done to remain in power. Thus the drama of his resignation and swearing-in within 24 hours has exposed Nitish on issues of both corruption as well as his ‘secular’ credentials.
The electoral history of past two decades suggests that Nitish Kumar has never won an election on his own. Clearly he wouldn’t have risked a mid-term poll. That would have been disastrous for him. Hence to remain in power the only option open for him was to take BJP’s support, though the mandate of 2015 was for the mahagathbandhan and not BJP-JD (U) alliance. So who stands to gain from the Nitish-BJP alliance?
The 2015 Bihar election was fought and won on an anti-BJP and anti-Hindutva platform. Obviously, corruption was not so much an issue for Nitish then. It also didn’t matter much because after BJP’s victory in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the immediate and key concern of the opposition parties was to stop BJP and its allies from coming to power in Bihar. It is a well known fact that all was not well between Nitish and Lalu and the former never seemed comfortable heading the alliance in which RJD was a dominant party. Hence the overtures towards the BJP: support for demonetisation and BJP’s presidential candidate.
A product of social justice politics of the 1980s, a look at Nitish’s career of the past 25 years shows that he has spent 17 years in the company of BJP – first as minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet between 1998 and 2004 and then as chief minister of Bihar in alliance with BJP from 2005 to 2014. He was with the BJP during the communal pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat as well. Surprisingly, BJP and Modi became communal for him only in 2013. So his secular credentials have always been a suspect.
By choosing BJP over the grand alliance, Nitish has chosen to focus on 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2020 Bihar poll. His earlier terms as chief minister were marked with better growth and development. But in the last two years, Nitish’s performance on both fronts has been lacklustre. Staying in the mahagathbandhan would have meant sacrificing on the growth story of last decade and getting targeted for turning a blind eye on corruption. Thus at stake was his carefully cultivated image of a crusader against corruption. On the other hand, the cost of shifting loyalty to BJP is only a little – that is sacrificing his recently acquired ‘secular’ credentials.
In any case, in the current political discourse, secularism is not as much a big issue as corruption and development are. People have become aspirational. They want jobs and development and not pretentions and slogans. By aligning with the BJP, Nitish can hope to bargain for funds from the Centre for his development agenda over the next two years. He has also been demanding a special status for Bihar which will put the state on a faster growth trajectory. Despite double-digit growth over the past several years, Bihar is still behind the national average on key development parameters such as poverty, per capita income, social and physical infrastructure and industrialisation.
In 2014 Lok Sabha election, JD (U) won only two seats, while BJP won 22. This is a clear reflection of where JD (U) stands without an alliance either with RJD or BJP. However, with 71 MLAs in the current assembly against BJP’s 53, Nitish will hope to bargain better in seat sharing talks in the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019 as well as in assembly poll a year later. However, who gets the better leverage in seat sharing negotiation will depend on how BJP fares in the 2019 parliamentary elections.
It is probably the fear of marginalisation that prompted Nitish to go with the BJP. The timing was right because the next parliamentary poll is less than two years away and he does not see the opposition mounting any formidable challenge to Prime Minister Modi and BJP. Neither did he see for himself a better chance of taking on Modi as united opposition’s prime ministerial candidate. Staying in the alliance with RJD and Congress was a liability for Nitish; he would have had less bargaining power in seat-sharing talks in the next round of parliamentary and assembly elections. For now Nitish seems to have made his move in anticipation of things panning out to his liking.
But it’s not going to be an easy ride for him. While he remains the chief minister, his position has been weakened as he is at the mercy of BJP which is not only a rising force in Bihar but an expanding party in most parts of India. BJP of 2017 is different from the party it was in 2005. In his ‘ghar wapsi’ Nitish looks to be a loser: he has undermined his image and credibility, while BJP stands to gain an important state after UP in its fold.