CAPITAL LETTER. Welcome to this political slugfest

The contours of the battle for Bihar unfolded this Sunday afternoon when Congress president Sonia Gandhi joined Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan for what was called the “Swabhiman Rally”. The first show of strength by the Janata Alliance spelt out the narrative that will play out in the run-up to the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar.

Against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strong pitch for development underlined by a carefully crafted strategy to scatter Nitish and Lalu’s social support base in the backdrop of simmering communal tension, the Janata Alliance’s effort is to turn it into a vote for Bihari pride and referendum on the Prime Minister’s credibility.

Although the criticality of caste in Bihar is a given in any election strategy, besides the routine candidate selection and management, the effort here is to examine the way issues will be articulated during the campaign.

In that, the show was instructive not just because it underlined how Bihari sub-nationalism will be used as a campaign strategy. Modi’s ‘caving in’ on the Land Acquisition Act will be touted as a victory for the Alliance that has been opposing the ordinance amending legislation. Additionally, exaggerating the Modi’s ostensible ‘insults’ to Bihari pride — from references to Nitish’s ‘DNA’ and Bihar as a ‘BIMARU’ State to the manner in which the special package was announced at a rally — the effort will be to strike a blow to the BJP’s poll promises by reminding the voters of the absence of delivery on the Prime Minister’s Lok Sabha poll commitments.

Thus, the pitch from the Alliance is promises-versus-delivery, highlighting the failure to deliver on some of the catchiest slogans during the 2014 general elections — getting back black money and depositing ₹15 lakh in everyone’s bank account, calculation of minimum support price to the farmers as 50 per cent in addition to the total input cost, et al .

The idea is to pitch Nitish Kumar as a ‘doer’ versus Modi the ‘talker’, an image vividly sketched by the Bihar chief minister when he quoted a WhatsApp message to say: “ Pehle wale bolte nahin the, yeh sunte nahin hain (The earlier one [Manmohan Singh] did not talk, this one[Modi] does not listen).”

More importantly, what the rally showed was how veteran actors in the Hindi heartland are adjusting their stage manners to counter political India’s biggest showman. Modi had burst on to the national scene in 2014 with an energy and rhetoric that stupefied the established players. He razzled and dazzled while they merely moaned meekly; their slogans sapped, their promises were played out. And this was true even for the more innovative performers such as Lalu.

A year-and-a-half into his new job, Modi has not lost any of his oratorical prowess. Given the scale and frequency of his public rallies in the poll-bound State (he is addressing one more, his third in Bihar, at Bhagalpur on September 1), the Prime Minister is still the most effective campaigner and inspirational figure the BJP has.

The party and the Sangh Parivar’s multiple entities prepare the groundwork for what is essentially a Modi show. His deputy, BJP president Amit Shah, is still very much the war-room strategist who is supervising seat-sharing arrangements with allies, identification of winnable candidates and general management of elections, while Modi is the showstopper. In the absence of a projected chief ministerial candidate, Modi’s persona gets even further enhanced.

This is a familiar narrative now with the BJP and Modi’s functioning. But the khadi -clad socialists are catching up. Lalu may yet not be comfortable with pronouncing ‘tweet’ but he knows how to milk his ostensible discomfort with technology for a provincial audience. His native mannerisms and inverted snobbery still appeals, given that the loudest applause at the rally was reserved for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief.

In the distribution of work among partners, Lalu has clearly been assigned the job to trivialise the Prime Minister’s promises. And so he mimicked Modi’s style of throwing questions at the rallyists, reminding them of the auction-style announcement of the special package for Bihar in his last election meeting: “ Kitna hua pyaaz — 30 rupiya , 40 rupiya ? Chalo 80 rupiya kar deta hoon . (How much should I give you onions for — ₹30, ₹40 per kilo? Okay, I’ll make it ₹80.)”

Nitish Kumar is out to project himself as the more serious, credible candidate for the top job in Bihar who is “ jo kaha voh kiya (does what he says)” as opposed to Modi whom the Alliance is out to paint as the one who makes false promises. Nitish has also shrewdly followed Modi’s technology-intensive campaign in addition to the more traditional, door-to-door and corner-meeting style electioneering that is the norm in Bihar. From the chief minister, there is a response to everything that Modi says in relation to Bihar — a fact to counter another fact, a barb for a barb, an insult for an insult.

For anyone even remotely familiar with the Hindi heartland, it would be naïve to hazard a guess over whether the Alliance’s antics would bear fruit in Bihar. Politics is treacherous enough in this caste-ridden, complex State to confuse even the likes of Sharad Yadav who once famously sat on a hunger strike to protest against rigging in an election which he had himself won. But, the Prime Minister can be quite sure that he has a fight on hand. Indeed, it is not a somnambulant Congress, but some of the wiliest and politically surefooted rivals he is facing. There will not be a dull moment for the next two months.

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