Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are the biggest regional success story in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009. They are being hailed as the ambassadors of a new brand of politics: politics of development. They deserve every bit of the accolades being showered on them. But in this hour of triumph, let us not be rushed into the herd mentality and be oblivious of the larger political reality.
The cases of Orissa and Bihar are different and must be handled separately. In this write-up, let me discuss only Bihar. There is no doubt that Nitish Kumar has embarked upon a huge development agenda for Bihar. The law and order situation has improved; roads and bridges are being built and there is a perceptible feeling that the government has got its act together. That is a huge difference from the days of Lalu regime (direct and proxy) when the ruling party’s vision of development was symbolized by its election symbol, lantern. Lalu Yadav pushed Bihar into the darkness. Nitish is trying to redeem its past glory. He has not succeeded yet, but he comes across as someone who is sincerely trying to change the face of Bihar.
Lalu Yadav, in his heydays in Bihar, believed that development did not fetch votes. He had an uncanny feeling that if he embarked on a path of development, it would give rise to a ‘revolution of rising expectations’, which, in turn, would prove electorally counter-productive. He thought the best way to devise a winning formula was by resorting to identity politics.
Nitish Kumar, a close colleague of Lalu Yadav for decades, instinctively knew that the latter had a feel for the pulse of the people. He had understood that Lalu Yadav lost the plot in Bihar after a decade and a half not because of the lack of development of the state, but because he gave a short shrift to wider caste alliances. His prolonged success in the bid for power made him discard the policy of accommodation of the less assertive and less privileged caste groups. His arrogance was reflected in his M-Y (Muslim and Yadav) formulation, that Muslims and Yadavs alone could steer him to power.
When Nitish kumar broke away from Lalu, he had limited support base. He was the recognized leader of the Kurmis, a relatively prosperous backward caste group like the Yadavs, but not as numerically preponderant. Even the upper caste vote that came with the alliance with the BJP was not enough to oust Lalu from power. Then Nitish Kumar devised an electoral strategy to beat Lalu in his own game of identity politics. He clutched on to a formula — devised by Karpoori Thakur, a former chief minister and mentor of both Lalu and Nitish — that called for special privileges for Extreme Backward Castes (EBCs). Nitish mobilized the EBCs on a political platform that assured them separate reservation in jobs and in panchayat bodies. The EBCs, who had been largely ignored by the Lalu dispensation, except for token representation in the ministry, jumped to Nitish bandwagon. The overwhelming support of the EBCs, which constituted about 35 per cent of the electorate, finally brought victory to Nitish Kumar.
When Lalu was trounced, the media played it up as a verdict against misgovernance, but Nitish knew it well that he owed his success to social engineering. But he wanted to live up to the media image. So he made development the major plank of his administration. But he was certain that development alone would not fetch him enough votes to sustain his power base. So he set out to build new communal alliances. Just as he brought about a division within the backward castes by propping up the EBCs, he also sought to split the Dalits as a vote bank. He set up a Maha Dalit Commission to ostensibly identify the underprivileged among the Dalits and give them special benefits.
Chamars, who owed their allegiance once upon a time to Jagjivan Ram and now to his daughter Meira Kumar, and Paswans, owing allegiance to Ram Bilas Paswan, were excluded from the Maha Dalit community. There was a sense of disaffection among a large section of the Dalit community against Chamars and Paswans who enjoyed political patronage. Nitish cashed in on that discontent.
But Nitish’s bigger master-stroke was to split the Muslims on forward and backward lines. He realized that given the huge number of Muslims in almost every Lok sabha constituency (on an average, 15 to 20 per cent), he could not achieve assured electoral success without breaking the Muslim vote bank. The Pashmanda (backward) Muslim campaign, which alleged that the forward Muslims had cornered all the benefits of the association with the ruling dispensation, had urged Lalu to undertake special measures for their uplift and give them a share in political power. But Lalu ignored their entreaties as that would have caused dismay among the forward Muslims who were more influential.
Nitish seized on it and extended open support for the cause of the backward caste Muslims. He sent two of the leaders of the Pashmanda Muslim forum – Ali anwar and Dr Izaj ali – to Rajya Sabha, much to the chagrin of his long-standing political associates whose chances to go to the Upper House were marred. By this political patronage, Nitish clearly weaned the backward Muslims away from Lalu Yadav. He even tried to appeal to the larger community by providing monthly pension to the families affected by the Bhagalpur riots, which had taken place even before Lalu Yadav came to power.
There are many other measures he undertook to win over these distinct vote banks. And he succeeded in his mission. The sweeping success that he registered in the current Lok Sabha elections owes a great deal to this painstakingly devised and enforced social strategy.
This is not to discount the goodwill that he has garnered by his developmental work. But the fact is that, in a caste-ridden state like Bihar, all such goodwill would not have translated into such a decisive victory. It is true that the people’s yearning for a better quality life is increasingly taking hold in their minds. But, at the same time, there is no denying the stranglehold of caste remains firmly embedded in their electoral considerations.
That explains the apparent paradox: in Nitish’s case, it is not development vs. identity politics. It is the juxtaposition of both. Nitish’s development plank alone would have fetched him a respectable number in the Lok Sabha elections; but his landslide victory has much to do with his skilful intervention in identity politics along with the development initiatives.
Sangharsh India 