Massive Mandate for Nitish Kumar

As mega scams get unearthed one after another starting with the serious irregularities in the Commonwealth Games and Mumbai’s Adarsh Housing Society (meant for the families of the Kargil martyrs but regrettably cornered by the kin of not just leading politicians but also high-ranking retired military officers including a former Chief of the Army Staff) as well as the fraud perpetrated around the 2G spectrum, the latest being the multi-crore corporate loans scam, several important public figures, notably the Maharashtra CM, the CWG Organising Committee’s boss and the Union Minister for Telecommunications, have had to be sacked from the posts they held in the government or the ruling party, thereby bringing out the enormity of the scandals involved. What is more significant is the Supreme Court’s observations on the PM’s alleged inaction in the 2G spectrum issue. Meanwhile the Union Government remains adamant against the setting up of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the 2G spectrum affair, a demand voiced by the entire Opposition leading to the continuous disruption of parliamentary proceedings since the beginning of the winter session of Parliament on November 9.

And in the midst of all this has come the Niira Radia tapes, revealed through a petition filed in the Supreme Court, embodying details of telephonic conversations between the lobbyist for the Tatas and the Mukesh Ambani group and a section of journalists and politicians, besides others, to help the DMK’s A. Raja get the telecom portfolio. The conversations expose the extraordinary clout the corporate celebrities enjoy and their overall influence on the government and governance of the country today (Rajan Bhattacharya quoting Mukesh Ambani: “... ab to Congress apni dukaan hai”), making a mockery of the democracy we pride ourselves as our greatest asset.

This is definitely a far cry from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who, with all their faults and limitations, never let the corporates have a field day as is the case at present when the market is ‘genuinely free’ from the shackles of the licence-permit raj and the public sector emasculated beyond measure, thanks to the radical transformation of the domestic economic scene since the advent of the new economic policies based on the structural adjustment programme unveiled in 1991.)

However, these developments of the past few days have been dwarfed by the results of the just concluded Bihar Assembly polls. The outcome of those elections has catapulted incumbent CM Nitish Kumar to the centre-stage of Indian politics by the sheer magnitude and scale of the victory of the JD(U)-BJP alliance which has won four-fifths majority in the 243-member State legislature together securing as many as 206 seats [JD(U) 115, BJP 91] as against 25 for the RJD-LJP combine (RJD 22, LJP three), four for the Congress (which contested all the seats), one (CPI) for the Left, and seven for Others. While RJD supremo Laloo Prasad, the former CM, has been decisively humbled (with his wife Rabri Devi, who succeeded him as the head of the State Government, losing in both the seats she contested), the Congress (with a paltry four in its kitty, registering its worst performance ever in the State) has been all but wiped out (despite the Rahul-Sonia duo attracting huge crowds at their election rallies). It is a veritable political earthquake with the landslide win for the Nitish-led ruling front having practically no parallel in recent times, that is, since the Janata Party’s spectacular emergence on the political horizon in 1977 in the aftermath of the popular upsurge against the Emergency misrule.

While the campaigning in the last leg of the polls had clearly established that the JD(U)-BJP was way ahead of all its political adversaries, not even its most ardent supporter could forecast such a massive mandate for it. This has been variously interpreted as the triumph of hope over fear, development over divisiveness, and governance over maladministration. The BJP has predictably but unnecessarily injected the dynastic issue to reaffirm its anti-Sonia credentials (even as it has tarnished its own image by allowing the scam-tainted B.S. Yeddyurappa to continue as the Karnataka CM—a patently opportunist move to placate the powerful Lingayat community). But actually the victory is due to a combination of different factors: Nitish has reached out to the Most Backward Castes, including the mahadalits, as directed by his mentor, the late Socialist leader Karpoori Thakur, excluding the Paswans (thus dealing a fatal blow to Ramvilas Paswan’s bid to emerge as the leader of the entire SC community); he has sought to win over the Muslims by embracing the backward Muslims and ensuring that Narendra Modi did not campaign for the ruling alliance in the State (thus endearing himself to the Muslim community as a whole); he has exerted a positive impact on womenfolk in general by guaranteeing 50 per cent reservation for them in the panchayats and offering free cycles to girl students. At the same time he has brought about a perceptible improvement in the law and order situation—abductions and kidnappings have markedly declined—even as some steps have been taken to improve the infrastructure, that is, certain moves have been made towards better governance which was at a discount during the Laloo-Rabri rule and a sense of considerable insecurity prevailed. (As the The Times of India has noted, “Free cycles to girl students and pothole-free roads have been a metaphor and, as the results show—a vehicle for Nitish’s second term.”) Simultaneously another factor needs to be taken into consideration: while Nitish was busy consolidating the mahadalit or MBC support and positively influencing the Muslims, his ally, the BJP, was engaged in consolidating the upper castes behind it and the ruling alliance. Thus the JD(U)-BJP front became a really invincible combination.

The RJD-LJP combine and the Congress have been naturally stunned by the results. Laloo’s caste combination was shattered by Nitish’s strategy. The Congress has realised much to its discomfiture and too late in the day that its ekla chalo policy did not pay any dividend when the party in the State had no organisation; and also Rahul Gandhi’s whirwind helicopter tours could never be the substitute for painstaking organisational work at the grassroots, something one had repeatedly stressed after the UPA’s Lok Sabha poll success in 2009. Not only was such an effort lacking, Congress tickets were literally bought for the elections by interested elements thus exposing the depths to which the premier national organisation has sunk of late.

Several commentators have laid much stress on development and governance as the key to Nitish’s success. Those who place excessive emphasis on development and governance need to understand that these are of limited value as far as the toiling masses are concerned and it is these people, not the propertied classes, who vote in their millions in any election. Nitish generated a sense of hope, anticipation and exceptation in the future for them by his pledge—especially his promise to provide food security in the long term.

One person who played a vital role behind Nitish’s victory has been the low-keyed and unassuming Deputy CM always shunning the limelight—Sushil Modi of the BJP. He successfully steered the alliance through the choppy seas of uncertainty; the problems were mostly caused by those in his party who wanted to assert their autonomous stand to the detriment of the front’s unity. These elements will now get strengthened after the BJP’s exceptionally good showing at the hustings. Herein lies a danger. More ominous is the consolidation of the upper castes behind the BJP. This has the potentiality to torpedo Nitish’s social engineering project.

The massive mandate for Nitish Kumar has led to surging expectations among the public at large. Can the CM, now in his second term, fulfil those aspirations? This is a big question. Nitish was not known in the past to be a highly efficient administrator and/or a competent organiser. But in these State Assembly elections he has doubtless proved to be one of the most astute politicians in the country at the current juncture. And history has placed a heavy responsibility on his shoulders. With all the goodwill that he has been able to garner from the electorate, the moot question now is: can he deliver? The nation will eagerly await the answer in the coming days.

November 25 S.C.