PATNA: For the first time in 25 years, Nitish Kumar will go into elections with doubts about his future, even if NDA wins. This could well be Nitish’s last election. NDA was formally set up in 1998. In the four polls since — Feb 2005, Oct-Nov 2005, 2010, and 2020 — Nitish has been the combine’s CM face.He was also the CM face when he was in alliance with the RJD and Congress for the 2015 assembly polls and went on to form the govt. In the pre-NDA period, he was the obvious choice for the post of CM when his Samata Party contested 310 of the 324 assembly seats in the then undivided Bihar in 1995 but could win only seven seats. Nitish quickly came out of the shock to forge an alliance with BJP.Even now, there is no mistaking his pre-eminence in NDA. BJP does not have anybody in its ranks who can match his appeal. Despite doubts swirling about his health, Nitish remains quite popular with significant sections: that’s why BJP has said he will lead NDA’s campaign.Whatever happens, Nitish’s political achievement is extraordinary. His caste, Kurmi, accounts for less than 3% of the population: a big handicap in caste games. The small number looks even more challenging when compared against RJD’s M-Y combination, which make up nearly one-third of the electorate.Nitish’s success therefore is a testament to his social engineering skills. An alum of class of 1974 — a reference to the student agitation in Bihar in which he, like Lalu, Ramvilas Paswan and Sushil Modi, took an active part — Nitish blended together the upper castes’ anger over their disempowerment under Lalu, the resentment of non-Yadav backwards towards the aggression and self-centredness of the newly empowered Yadav elite, and general disgust towards corruption, lawlessness and non-governance during the two decades of RJD supremacy, to forge what has been described as a rainbow alliance of diverse castes. A socialist by inclination and an engineer by training, his first term saw an impressive restoration effort in a state which on several parameters looked worse off than sub-Sahara. After voters rewarded him with a landslide in 2010, the state looked to be on its way to a complete recovery. But he made the political mistake of severing ties with BJP over Modi’s PM candidature. Voters chose Modi. Nitish then toes up with Lalu for 2015 state polls. He won big. But that victory also helped revive RJD at a time it was languishing. He returned to NDA in 2017, in the process earning the unenviable “Paltu” moniker. The reputation as a turncoat got fortified when two more somersaults followed: he left the NDA to join Lalu and the Mahagathbandhan in 2022, only to return to the camp before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. That such flip-flops have not damaged him politically speaks to the enduring gratitude of voters for rescuing the state from Jungle Raj: assured power supply, all weather roads, vastly improved law and order. Hospitals and schools also look better than they did before he took over.
But all these positives appear inadequate when contrasted with the strides made by other states that lakhs of Biharis move to for work. Nitish did not supplement his attempt to rebuild infrastructure, literally from the “zerostate” stage it had been reduced to, by seeking to attract investments because of his risk-averse approach towards land acquisition.The failure to get industry to invest in Bihar, combined with frustrations of jobless young Biharis, who are being wooed by both RJD and Prashant Kishor, has dimmed Nitish’s star. Hence the flurry of sops for different sections. The Centre has chipped in by announcing big development projects. Bihar’s longest serving CM won’t go away without a fight.
