The year 2005 had seen not one but two Assembly elections in Bihar, in February and November. The February poll was the first for the state after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar. Lalu Prasad’s RJD topped the chart with 75 seats in a House of 243. The JD(U)-BJP partnership came next. Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP was at number three with 31 seats, but LJP and RJD had fought against one another. Life would make them allies later.
Such was the fragmentation of Bihar politics that no government could emerge from the election and polls had to be called again in November. No one was ready, or strong enough, to ally with RJD and make a government. The grand old Congress was lost in the woods. The Left — once exemplified by the CPI in Bihar — was a spent force, corrupted and destroyed through its RJD association. The so-called social justice parties — offshoots of the Lohia movement — were sundered in three (RJD, LJP, JD-U), and weren’t on speaking terms.
Of these, JD(U) had chosen to team up with the Hindutva-oriented upper class-upper caste BJP. (When I met him in Patna recently, CPI-ML general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya was caustic about this, calling Nitish Kumar “the only leader of consequence in North India to go with BJP shortly after the destruction of the Babri Masjid.) But their common tally couldn’t get them into office.
People wondered if the November election would be much different from February, given the deeply fractured state of the polity. It was, as it turned out. The voters gave the backward caste-upper caste partnership of JD(U)-BJP — a new experiment — the thumbs up, and Nitish became chief minister with popular acclamation.
The lessons were two: voters weren’t ready any more to back upper or backward caste power monopolies (as in the Congress era of yore or in the Lalu period) and sought the pooling of caste equations, which, in effect, also meant willing collaboration between classes to share power within the ideological framework of the land-owning classes that have strong urban middle class associations in Bihar.
No less significant, voters were emphatically rejecting the boorish and authoritarian Lalu Raj, known for illegalities, mis-governance, and the Bonapartist tendencies of its leader. From 75 seats in February, RJD declined precipitously to 54 in November 2005, coming third.
The lessons of November 2005 appear valid for this year’s October-November Assembly election. The Nitish government is in trouble primarily on account of the fractures within the ruling upper caste-upper caste alliance, with mini-revolts rocking both JD(U) and the BJP. Also, supporters of the ruling combine seek to scare would-be deserters by raising the spectre of the possible return of Lalu.
This does seem to work like a diluted tonic, as I saw in Patna and in my travels in several North Bihar districts recently.
The political fragmentation of the state is back, with an addition this time round. The Congress has entered the picture to re-establish itself as an independent entity, and is rapidly gaining adherents at the expense of the RJD (mainly Muslims, especially of the upper caste or educated variety), and the JD(U)-BJP alliance (upper castes). From only nine seats in November 2005, many believe it could jump to the region of 25. A prominent Muslim doctor of the Madhubani area, and a trader in Samastipur, were hoping Congress might hit 40, but this could be a minority view.
The real point of interest is how the cards stack up in the post-poll scenario.
Tomorrow: Who ares for the poor?