The Congress is on the lookout to regain some of its earlier composure in states from which it has been more or less blanked out in successive elections over the better part of 25 years. Its impressive performance in Uttar Pradesh in last year’s Lok Sabha election has whetted the party’s appetite and it is right now in the process of trying to carve out an independent, meaningful, space for itself in Bihar. Being held in six stages spread over a month, the first round of polling in the state is on Thursday, and the Congress has thrown everything it has got into the campaign. The party’s big guns have been wheeled out — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and her son Rahul, an AICC general secretary, whose appearance as the charismatic young face of the party is no longer a secret. Whatever the ambitions of the Congress, it may do well to keep in mind that a parliamentary election and a state-level one differ in many respects. The significance of local factors is amplified at the hustings in an Assembly election, while larger all-India issues are highlighted in a Lok Sabha contest. In the Bihar context, it is hard to resist the feeling that the Congress campaign has overlooked state-level sensitivities and concerns, choosing to dwell mainly on the party’s perception that it is the champion of an inclusive development agenda and of secularism. It is not unlikely that many in Bihar might go along with this view and yet not vote for the Congress as they would be driven by the dynamics of their immediate political and social environment.
Since both the Congress and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal are seeking to challenge the JD(U)-BJP alliance led by chief minister Nitish Kumar, the challengers give the appearance of overdrawing the picture in an effort to show up the weaknesses of the ruling side. A comic example of this is the RJD chief promising free “motorcycles” to students to match the free “cycles” given out by the Nitish government to schoolchildren. A smart, jovial, retort by the CM killed that line of thought. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that this is about the only so-called substantive point that the RJD sought to make in its campaign to win back Bihar. A party that had ruled the state for 15 years should have been in a position to point out the shortcomings of the government in a manner that the electorate might find persuasive. Such an effort was not even made. As for the RJD’s ally, Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, it has hardly been seen or heard of since electioneering commenced. The impression is left that the RJD-LJP alliance has no counter-narrative that might disconcert the ruling alliance. This has enabled the government side, whose sole public face is the CM himself, to breathe easy. It sat back and watched its so-called principal opponents kick the ball around in their own half of the field. As for the Congress, the main point that its top leaders sought to drive home is that the state government has not been able to utilise Central funds for welfare schemes. In Indian politics, this point is as old as the hills, as is its corollary — the complaint by state governments not run by the party in power at the Centre that it is being starved of resources by the Government of India as an act of political vendetta.
It is easy to see that Bihar’s ruling alliance has had an easy ride on account of the inadequacies of the election campaign run by its opponents. The skewed approach of the challengers could conceivably make their task more difficult.