Can Nitish Kumar do a Kejriwal in the Bihar Assembly elections?

The former Bihar CM can take lessons from AAP's win in Delhi, but he only has a small window of opportunity

The first serious halt in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory march in the Delhi assembly elections will likely have pleased former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar the most. And for good reason, too. The last nine months have been really bad for him, personally as well as politically. The crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections cost him the CM’s post and forced him to ally with arch-rival Lalu Prasad Yadav. What’s more, his trusted lieutenant Jitan Ram Manjhi, the man he nominated to succeed him as the chief minister, turned against him. The fall in his political graph has been directly proportional to the rise in BJP’s stock all these months. 

Nitish Kumar can now take some comfort from the fact that, for the first time in many months, there are question marks about the BJP’s seeming invincibility. Does this afford him a chance to make a comeback of sorts, especially after seeing the BJP’s seeming vulnerability in a straight contest? The BJP will have to take on a combined opposition in the Bihar Assembly elections scheduled for October. For that to happen, Nitish will have to write a new script all over again for himself, borrowing heavily from his first full term as CM (2005-2010) and drawing the right lessons from the Aam Aadmi Party’s fabulous comeback story. 

Nitish Kumar and his new ally Lalu have so far relied heavily on countering what they see as a ‘communal’ BJP with a social justice plank. What it essentially means is pitting one set of identity politics against the other. The politics of caste cannot nullify the politics of religion. The AAP’s victory in Delhi has shown that politicians can shun pandits, mullahs and caste leaders and yet get a bagful of votes. 

You have to be seen to be selling realistic dreams, something like what AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal did or Nitish himself did in his first term. Simple Bijli-Paani-Sadak (electricity, water and roads) dreams can triumph over distant promises of smart cities or bullet trains. 

Another course correction Nitish Kumar has to undertake is to give up on his approach of excessive reliance on bureaucracy to deliver. The empowered bureaucracy in Bihar under Nitish alienated the political class and resulted in corruption in everyday life. The AAP’s victory may be attributed to the people’s perception about the disappearance of corruption in everyday life during Kejriwal’s 49-day rule last year. Corruption hurts and the group of the people it hurts the most is one whose votes make or break the fortunes of a political party.

Finally, Nitish Kumar has to deliver on his promised sushasan (good governance) if he gets a chance to rule the state before Bihar goes to polls. There are reports of the beleaguered state sliding downhill. The acclaimed turnaround man of Bihar – which is what commentators used to call him not so long ago – has to quickly arrest the slide. He has only a few months left to do so. But then Nitish has shown time and time again that he never shies away from a challenge. Can he do it again? It is tough. But he will have make the most of a small window of opportunity.