Nitish Kumar asserts himself, finally

Whether his focus on social justice instead of good governance will pay off in the upcoming Bihar elections, however, remains to be seen

As late as March 2014, survey after survey showed that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar enjoyed considerable popularity in the state. Many still considered him as the best CM the state had had in a long time. It was around the same time that the chorus of “Modi as PM and Nitish as CM” had begun to be heard all too frequently across the state. The chorus reached the CM’s ears also, forcing a change in his campaign strategy.
 
For Nitish, it meant making a transition from talking about sushaashan (good governance) to targeting others.
 
It was perhaps for the first time that Nitish Kumar seemed to have lost confidence in what he had stood for. The electoral debacle that followed made him even less confident. A series of missteps followed — appointing Jitan Ram Manjhi as his successor was just one of many. Going back to the social justice theme was perhaps another. It meant the aggressive pursuit of a combined Janata Parivar with his erstwhile nemesis Lalu Prasad Yadav by his side. Partial victory in the by-elections that followed the Lok Sabha elections was seen as an endorsement of this new strategy.

 

Even after ousting Manjhi and retaking his position as CM, Nitish has continued to look less certain about his policies. Many of his dream projects are languishing for want of funds and attention. The law-and-order situation, which he had vowed to clean up and partially succeeded in doing, has deteriorated. Anecdotal evidence suggests that migration of Biharis to states like Haryana and Punjab has resumed with full force. All of these can be attributed to his focus on social justice at the expense of his brand of sushasshan.
 
Somebody should have told him right then that Lalu Prasad can easily beat him at the game of social justice. Subsequent events have shown how Lalu has managed to grow politically at the expense of Nitish Kumar. There have been demands from the Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal that it should contest many more seats than Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), and that the outcome of the 2010 Assembly elections – which JD(U) won handily – should not be used as a parameter to decide seat sharing between the two parties.

 
Given this background, his recent assertion that his party was ready to face the electorate all alone can only be seen as a belated attempt to regain lost ground. Nudged by the Congress, Lalu eventually had to fall in line and grudgingly declare Nitish as the chief ministerial candidate of the Janata Parivar.
 
Will the upcoming Bihar elections be a game changer as is made out by scores of political analysts? For that to happen, Nitish will have to reinvent himself all over again. He will have to show confidence in what he used to stand for before the Lok Sabha election debacle – in which the electorate strongly backed Modi – forced him to change tack. This confidence must show up in his actions, too, and not just as rhetoric because time is running out.

 
The fortune of the Janata Parivar under Nitish, however, will depend a great deal on how Mahadalits and extreme backward classes vote in the coming assembly elections. These are the two groups which had got special attention from him as part of his social engineering plan. They are also the ones who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party in large number in the Lok Sabha elections. Will a seemingly more confident Nitish manage to win them back? We will have to wait for few more months to get a conclusive answer.