The importance of being Nitish: Absence from rallies keeps Bihar guessing

Nitish Kumar's absence from Narendra Modi's recent rallies in Bihar has raised eyebrows. Archis Mohan's ground report looks at why it's still too early to write off the Bihar CM

Thousands from all corners of Patna and its adjoining districts converged in the heart of Bihar’s capital on Sunday evening, to participate in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s roadshow. As men, not an insignificant number of women, and young people cheered for the PM, an unsmiling Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh or ‘Lalan Singh’, who stood beside Modi, had many in the crowd wondering if all wasn’t well within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Singh, a close confidante of Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) President Nitish Kumar, was representing his party at the rally. 

 

On May 12, 2024, when the PM led his first-ever roadshow in Bihar while campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls, Kumar had occupied the spot that belonged to Singh on Sunday evening. Modi has had two more roadshows in the interregnum in the state, although unrelated to any immediate election. Modi had taken out a roadshow in Patna on May 29 this year to mark the success of Operation Sindoor where he, unlike Sunday, sat inside a vehicle. As he had told a public meeting at Rohtas district’s Bikramganj the next day, Modi said he returned to Bihar after “fulfilling” the promise that he had made in Madhubani on April 24, two days after the Pahalgam terror attack, where he had declared that India will pursue the terrorists and their backers to the ends of the earth. At the PM’s road show in Rohtas, Kumar had stood right next to him.

 

That Modi and Kumar have not shared stage during the PM’s last few public meetings, including in Nawada on Sunday, has the Opposition INDIA bloc alleging that all isn’t well within the NDA. To buttress their point, they have argued that instead of stating that it would again be a “Nitish Kumar-led government”, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has more than once said that November 14, the counting day, will see the formation of “an NDA government”. Opposition leaders have also alleged that Kumar left the NDA’s manifesto unveiling event on October 31 within 58 seconds. 

 

Off record, JD (U) sources insist that Kumar had to rush to attend public meetings, while second rung NDA leaders, such as Chirag Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha, have said that Kumar will indeed be sworn in as the NDA government’s CM for a record tenth time after November 14. With 48 hours left for campaigning to end for the first phase of polling — in which 121 of the total 243 seats will see voting —  the future of 74-year-old Kumar, known for political fleet-footedness, is of interest to Bihar’s working class.

Kumar’s close associates, who were involved in selecting the party’s 101 candidates — which is JD(U)’s share within the NDA — are enthused that their party would perform significantly better than the 43 seats it secured in the 2020 polls. 

 

A close associate of Kumar’s told Business Standard that the party has focused on the “winnability quotient” of candidates this time, instead of its earlier commitment to fielding dedicated party workers, even if they lacked resources, on earlier occasions.

 

“Neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), nor the Opposition ranks, have a chief ministerial face, even if he is ageing, with acceptability cutting across caste, gender, religious and class divides,” an associate said. Kumar’s achievements during almost two decades at Bihar’s helm are massive, and points to his policy interventions to address gender, urban-rural, and caste inequality. “The only criticism could be that he did not deliver the industrialisation that Bihar needed. But we need to remember that after the Singur and Nandigram agitations, the Bihar government found it wise to let go of the development model that required acquiring farmlands for special economic zones (SEZs),” a JD(U) leader said. 

 

While the Opposition INDIA bloc, including Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, have accused the BJP for being the party of “big business”, the most they have accused Kumar is of being a “puppet” in the hands of the BJP, bureaucrats and a group within the JD (U) that allegedly controls him. After several decades in politics, Kumar can neither be accused of corruption nor of dynastic politics. 

 

His close associates, however, are wary of efforts by some within the party to push his son, Nishant, to the forefront of JD (U). “Corruption and dynastic ambitions, or the absence of it, distinguished Kumar from Lalu Prasad and other socialist leaders and that legacy cannot be sullied,” the close associate said. 

 

When it comes to governance, Kumar has been a trailblazer. Within months of forming the government in 2005, he sent at least 100,000 criminals to jail, forcing several to pursue more conventional trades. “What it did was trigger a consumption and construction boom. Earlier, people were wary of buying motor vehicles or constructing houses lest they receive extortion calls,” the associate added.

 

Reservation for women in panchayats has meant of the 8,400 panchayats, 4,200 are headed by women now. Similarly, reservation for extremely backward castes (EBCs) helped end the influence of Naxalism, as dominance of upper castes in panchayats reduced. “That there have been no notable narsanhar (mass killings) since 2005 is evidence of that,” the associate said. He added that it was way back in 1992 that Kumar spoke of the need for a caste census in a speech in Parliament. 

 

As CM, Kumar had insisted that the Centre, during the UPA government’s rule, set up a national university in Motihari and not in Patna. He was also the first to start the ‘Har ghar jal’ scheme for rural areas, which the Centre replicated in 2019, according to the associate. Bicycles and allowances for girl students contributed to reducing the drop-out rate from schools and decreased Bihar’s fertility rate from 4.9 in early 2000s to 2.8 in 2023. 

 

Reforms in the electricity sector have meant that not just cities but rural areas also get power supply. When Kumar formed the government, Bihar needed 2,500 Mw of power, of which the Centre provided 800 Mw, 500 Mw of which was for Patna and the remainder for rest of the state — villagers used to wait for the two hours of power supply, which could be at any time of day or night.

 

The respect and sympathy that Kumar commands is evident across genders and age groups. On Sunday afternoon, 17-year-old Sainik Paswan, a self-confessed Modi fan, started from Bakhtiarpur to travel to Gandhi Maidan, a journey of 55 km which involved a train, several autorickshaws and a couple of kilometres covered on foot due to traffic restriction — all to join the PM’s roadshow. 

 

But Paswan, who has ambitions to become a content creator and start his YouTube channel once he turns 18, had a day earlier motorcycled all the way to Kalyan Bigha, Kumar’s village, to understand why his mother was such a big fan of the CM. “I think I understood. It was a simple house. There was no security. I couldn’t even see an air conditioner,” Sainik told Business Standard. He added that his mother, aunts, and sisters have been beneficiaries of Kumar’s efforts at empowering women over the last two decades, and recently received ₹10,000 each in their bank accounts.

 

Addressing public rallies in the Phulwari Assembly constituency for his party’s sitting legislator, Gopal Ravidas, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation chief Dipankar Bhattacharya on Sunday was careful not to criticise Kumar directly. He claimed that 49 of the BJP’s 101 candidates are from upper castes, which is “50 per cent reservation” and that it is part of a “design to bring back the feudalism that existed in Bihar”.

 

In February 2023, Kumar, who was then leading the erstwhile ‘grand alliance’ government in Bihar, had met Bhattacharya to give the initial shape to the INDIA bloc. When asked about Kumar’s legacy, Bhattacharya told Business Standard, that he “won’t write him off” and it is “still premature to talk about his legacy”. 

 

However, it would be a mixed legacy, Bhattacharya said, of a man who navigated the political landscape so adroitly over the last four decades when several leaders and parties became irrelevant while he remained at the centre of it. “While survival is his biggest skill set, at a time when social justice was just reduced to reservation, he talked about education, and expanded the whole social justice discourse,” Bhattacharya said. He said that Kumar’s slogans on good governance and development with justice are “unexceptionable”, but the CM also ended up becoming the biggest facilitator of the BJP at a very crucial time.

 

Kumar’s own caste, the Kurmis, is barely three per cent of Bihar’s population, but he commands a support base across women, EBCs and Mahadalits. While it is evident that the INDIA bloc has not shut its doors on Kumar, those within the NDA are hopeful that Kumar-led JD (U)’s support base would benefit them as well. Come November 14, Kumar might again surprise most, as he did in the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.