Opportunity for Bihar

Nitish Kumar must deliver on his impressive victory

An impressive vote of confidence from the voter and a return to office for the second term are no guarantee of good times. This is a lesson that the victorious Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, should remember every day of his historic second term in office, drawing the appropriate lessons from the wayward course of the second United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi. All the clichés in the media about Mr Kumar’s return to power are factually correct. A focus on development, rather than caste or communal identity, on better governance (if not entirely good) and on the future rather than the past has given Mr Kumar a new lease of political life. Whatever doubts he may have had about the wisdom of his alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is now firmly linked to them. The Congress party may yet woo Mr Kumar, hoping to get an all-in-one unity in Bihar against the BJP, given its own dismal performance. Clearly, the magic of Rahul Gandhi’s appeal has not worked for the Congress in Bihar. It is, therefore, understandable that the Congress moved quickly to at least save its one fortress in the south, Andhra Pradesh, against a potential coup of sorts. While the Congress and the BJP can be left to worry about their larger national plans and agendas, Mr Kumar must, for the foreseeable future, concentrate on Bihar.

The task at hand in Bihar is enormous and its importance only increases given the nature of the vote of confidence reposed by the people in Mr Kumar’s leadership. Bihar is among India’s poorest states. The vote for Mr Kumar is as much a statement of hope, and a vote for the future, as it is a vote of thanks, and an approval of past record and recent promise. There is an air of optimism in Bihar and its people expect the state government to deliver on the promises made. If Mr Kumar stays at home, not seduced by New Delhi, and can increase investment in Bihar in education, health care, manufacturing, power, roads and such like, he can transform the state and with it the country. Getting that done is the task at hand. Only when that happens, should he even think of a political career beyond Bihar.

The Bihar result may enthuse the BJP but it must also come to terms with the fact that unless it sets its own house in order, which it is unable to do in Karnataka, it is unlikely to re-emerge as a challenger to the Congress at the Centre. Finally, the message for the Congress party is that the voter expects it to get down to doing a better job at the Centre before hoping to regain the trust of voters in states. This lesson it must learn quickly and in time for the assembly elections of 2011.