On a day the BJP took another step forward to consolidate its Maharashtra alliance with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, expanding the ministry to induct nine ministers from each group, the saffron party lost Bihar to yet another Machiavellian turn by JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar. While Paltu Babu — as Nitish has come to be called in political circles — will continue to be chief minister, this time at the head of an omnibus gang-up of almost all parties represented in the Assembly, the BJP will be virtually alone on the opposition benches. The latter is not such a bad thing provided the party makes something of its isolation and expands its social base, absorbing all those who can rise above narrow caste considerations to seek productive governance. In a way, the roles of various parties in Maharashtra and Bihar have undergone vital change in a matter of weeks. While the omnibus anti-BJP alliance in Maharashtra, which sends the second highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha, came apart once Shinde walked away with a majority of the Sena MLAs to renew the alliance with the BJP, Nitish yet again broke with the BJP to form a government of virtually all non-BJP groups in Bihar. If Uddhav Thackeray is crying betrayal from the rooftops, it is the BJP’s turn to taunt Nitish for back-stabbing. However, increasingly in cutthroat politics these days such accusations of bad faith matter little — winning power being the sole criterion of assessing winners and losers. By that yardstick, the BJP is a winner in Maharashtra and a loser in Bihar.
Yet, as in life, nothing stands still in politics too; in both States the situation is set to be fluid. If Uddhav Thackeray will try and upstage the ace rebel Shinde, even by weaning away the BJP from him to renew the old bonds with the original proponents of the Hinudtva, in Bihar the BJP might want to build on the opportunity to end its reliance on slippery customers like Nitish Kumar and expand its social and economic base beyond the traditional upper castes. It is important that the state unit of the BJP had for long been pressing for breaking the alliance with the JD(U), arguing that despite it being bigger in the Assembly it ends up holding the thin end of the stick due to Nitish’s perfidy. It is Nitish’s good fortune that despite his belonging to a caste, Kurmi, who number a little over five percent in the caste-ridden politics of the State, he has managed to stay on top. However, his embrace of the Laloo Yadav’s RJD yet again, which boasts of a 30-percent Yadav-Muslim (MY) duopoly in Bihar’s caste calculus, is always hazardous. How he will restrain the RJD ministers from reverting to their pastime of money-making and muscle-flexing, a charge he had levied while dumping the party to re-hitch his wagon with the BJP, remains to be seen. The fact that the RJD is the largest group in the Assembly followed by the BJP, JD(U)’s poorer numbers will further hobble Nitish in keeping the wayward RJD ministers from going haywire. With the Opposition BJP and the Centre keeping a hawk-eye on the omnibus anti-BJP coalition in Patna, Nitish will need to tread gingerly. It is remarkable that thus far the Enforcement Directorate has not shown up in a major way in Bihar.
If the new coalition holds till 2024, the BJP will have a fight on its hands in the parliamentary poll, though the popularity of Modi far outstrips the pull of caste in Bihar. Here again, Nitish will ideally wish to be projected the joint prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition to add heft to his claim on the Biharis’ vote, but whether the Gandhis will surrender their birthright to rule this country in perpetuity is one of the imponderables of our politics. Of course, the gloves are off in the coming no-holds-barred fight in Maharashtra and Bihar. The Modi-Shah duo can be relied upon to do everything possible to retain control over Maharashtra, and snatch back Bihar from the anti-saffron elements. Really, interesting times lie ahead. Bihar may have offered a ray of hope to the down-in-the-dumps national Opposition. Nitish had long ago lost his sheen as “Sushaan Babu”, unable to control lawlessness and widespread racketeering over prohibition. The state’s poor infrastructure and the resultant migration of Biharis for jobs to other states needs urgent attention. Unfortunately, when its rulers are engaged fulltime in keeping power from slipping from their hands there can be little progress on the socio-economic front. In this respect, Maharashtra is miles ahead, though in recent years its fragmented politics too has held back faster development. Broken politics in the two key states in the Union needs an early fix for the sake of stability and purposefulness in governance.
