Is Nitish losing the plot?

As a succession of pre-poll surveys are recording Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s diminishing popularity, even as arch rivals BJP, riding on the Modi wave, and a resurgent Lalu Yadav are on the upswing, Nitish seems to be losing the plot.

At one of his Sankalp rallies in Bihar last week, the JD(U) leader, who parted with the BJP as he watched Modi’s inevitable elevation as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, lashed out at the media for ignoring his work. “ Hatiye yahan se…kahe disturb karte hain…chapna-wapna to hai nahi. (Move from here; anyway you’re not going to publish anything),” he chided photographers.

Media reports quoted him saying that he did not have a face “powerful” enough to get media space. Without naming Modi, he accused the media of reporting only on the development of rich states (read Gujarat), “but when a poor state makes progress, its being overlooked”.

Nitish was obviously sore that Lalu and Modi’s rallies planned in Muzaffarpur on the same day (March 3) were getting so much media attention. Like a school kid he whimpered that when he held his Sankalp meet at the same ground earlier this month, it failed to get the media excited. Touching upon the core reason for parting company with the BJP before the anointment of Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate as he feared loss of Muslim votes in Bihar, Nitish reiterated that he had no stomach for “communal” politics.

Once again, Modi was targeted without being named when he referred to politicians harbouring dreams of becoming prime minister and doing so in the name of Ram… “ De de Ram dila de Ram, PM ki kursi de de Ram, ” he said.

The latest Times Now-CVoter survey predicts a disastrous performance for JD(U) in Bihar in the Lok Sabha polls, giving it only five from 40 seats compared to the 20 it got in 2009. The BJP gains handsomely, up from 12 to 21. A surprising factor is that Lalu’s RJD is predicted to go from 4 to 12; and the Congress’s paltry two seats will diminish to just one.

If the results are anywhere close to what this survey projects — 227 seats for the NDA (169 in 2009) and the number further bolstered by Jayalalithaa’s imminent post-poll entry to 254, the JD(U), which was with the NDA during the last two losing sessions will be the biggest loser. So, why will the JD(U) take such a drubbing despite Bihar growing at an impressive double-digit race? Is it back to the same old caste-is-king politics of the State?

Shaibal Gupta, Director of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute and an economic advisor to the Chief Minister, says that against the Cvoter poll giving the JD(U) only five seats, the earlier CSDN-CNN-IBN poll had given it 9-13 seats. While JD(U)-BJP was a “coalition of extremes” with upper castes and Dalits coming together, “after the JDU parted company there is a three-way split in Bihar.

“While the BJP leads the powerful upper castes, Lalu leads the powerful upper backwards (Yadavs). Nitish has with him the non-powerful backwards or the EBCs and the subaltern sections among the Muslims (the Pasmandas or Dalit Muslims).” In terms of numbers, he argues, this collation is numerically the largest.

But another constituency, which the Bihar Chief Minister hopes will spring a surprise in his favour, is the constituency of women that Nitish has carefully nurtured through his two terms in government.

In 2006, the Nitish Government had distributed bicycles to girls from Class 9, to stem the massive dropout rate of girls in high school, estimated then at 2.5 million a year. While statistics vary, surveys have shown that following this scheme the dropout rate has fallen by over half.

Recently, while launching yet another incentive to provide free sanitary napkins to secondary school girls to attain the same objective, the Chief Minister recalled the “huge success” of the bicycle scheme.

He has also always stressed on the empowerment and safety of women and introduced martial arts training for teenage girls.

From public platforms he has been reiterating that such training ensures that girls/women won’t have to depend on others for their safety. Apart from such direct incentives, women have been the largest beneficiaries of the improved law and order situation in Bihar over the last decade.

And hence in the 2010 Assembly polls, women’s votes had been a major factor in the resounding victory of the JD(U)-BJP combine. It will be interesting to watch how Bihar’s women vote this time.

Asked if parting company with the BJP was a blunder, Gupta says that Nitish had to take a call and test the social base he had created. “Now, this was not possible by staying with the NDA, because within that coalition his identity was not singular or distinctive.” As for the poll surveys and how accurate they could be, he is “not very sure; poll results defy all logic or ground realities.

“I may be wrong, but ADRI has been doing economic surveys for the Bihar government for eight years and on the development front he has delivered. The medium-term growth of Bihar is 12-13 per cent, with last year’s growth 11.4 per cent.”

 He attributes the upswing to Lalu’s favour “because his social base consolidated when he was sent to jail. But it has again started diminishing after his release”!

For the Third Front, a coalition of regional parties that is slowly taking shape, the JD(U)’s projected poor performance in Bihar is bad news.

But against its five seats, if Lalu’s RJD really gets 12, as projected by the CVoter poll, and the NDA is not able to make it to the post, it won’t take Lalu too long to dump the Congress and jump on this bandwagon.

And if that happens imagine the excitement and chaos we are in for with strong-minded leaders such as Jayalalithaa, Mamata, Mulayam/Mayawati and Lalu in that group, and sober players such as Naveen Patnaik in a miserable minority!

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