Cinderella Man

The vacuum in the Opposition, even more acute owing to the larger-than-life persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has just been filled. With his resounding success in Bihar, Nitish Kumar’s political stature has decidedly grown beyond the boundaries of his State. Indeed, those watching with dismay Rahul Gandhi’s largely ineffectual carping against the Prime Minister can now take heart. The Cinderella Man has arrived to take on the incumbent champion in future bouts.

The results in Bihar are significant in the national context for a number of reasons, prime among them being the questions it raises on the tendency of the Prime Minister and his deputy, BJP president Amit Shah, to fall back on communal polarisation as the penultimate strategy for winning elections. What started in Bihar as a campaign focused on development with Modi announcing a special package for the State, deteriorated quickly into a high-pitched shouting match about beef-eating, Pakistan, terrorism and siphoning off quota benefits to Muslims.

Indeed, the BJP president cannot blame “fringe” elements for vitiating the political discourse in Bihar. It was he who made the now infamous comment about “firecrackers bursting in Pakistan” in the event of a Grand Alliance victory. Nor can the Prime Minister shift responsibility for making the highly erroneous and provocative comment that the Grand Alliance is plotting to “take away your reservation and give it to any other community in pursuit of their vote bank politics”. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has taken the view that “comments that deviated from our main theme of development” spoilt the BJP’s chances albeit with a snub to the media about having a “fondness for those who are capable of spoiling that narrative”. Perhaps, Jaitley no longer approves of reporters who cover his party president’s speeches in this context.

Sample the contrast that Nitish Kumar provided to these ham-handed efforts to create Hindu-Muslim enmity during the election. The basic reason why communal polarisation did not work in Bihar is that both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad have been cautious and watchful. In an interaction some of us had with Nitish Kumar at the start of the campaign, he kept repeating his concern about what he referred to as the BJP’s efforts to create “low-scale communal tension” in Bihar.

His endeavour, he told us, was to convince the voters not to be provoked. In each of his public meetings, the word was that the Muslims should stay calm in the face of provocation. Similarly, for the Hindus, the message that was repeated ad nauseam was that cow slaughter and terrorism are fake issues that will be inevitably trumped up to garner votes.

All this while Nitish kept himself above the ugliness of the discourse, only venturing shock and surprise at the BJP’s tactics. At the same time, there was no compunction in unleashing street-fighter Lalu Prasad Yadav on the BJP.

The Nitish-Lalu orchestra worked well, with the Bihar chief minister posing as an icon of sobriety and restraint to Lalu’s colourful rhetoric against their rivals. The reason why this coordination and distribution of duties worked with the voters was because it actually matched the personality type of the two leaders.

Compared to the livewire, entertaining and provocative persona of Lalu, Nitish comes across as a trifle bland but never politically incorrect in his interactions. With an exhaustible capacity to work, Nitish is also given to being a stickler for detail, minutely examining policy and politics alike. As their party elder Sharad Yadav once told me, the story of Bihar’s turnaround also explains the contrast in the chalk and cheese persona of Nitish and Lalu.

With his sharp political instinct and charisma, Lalu contributed to the idea of social justice in feudal Bihar, but only at the political and psychological level. It took Nitish’s eye for detail and the painstaking hours he is willing to devote to matters of administration to erase not just the memories of “Jungle Raj” but make incipient efforts to usher in the market where the State has so far been the only driver of development.

Bihar’s performance after Nitish’s takeover in 2005 has been impressive on the growth front. The average annual growth rate of Bihar has been 12 per cent in recent fiscal years, one of the highest among all Indian States. According to the State’s Economic Survey Report for 2013-14, from 1990-91 to 2005-06, the State’s income at constant prices grew at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent. After this, the economy witnessed a turnaround and grew at an annual rate of 12 per cent, which affirms Bihar’s turnaround story in Nitish’s tenure. The State also registered a spurt in agriculture growth rate which was close to 3 per cent during 1999-2006 and recorded 5-9 per cent during 2006-13.

Even in the social sector, Nitish has at least tried to make efforts towards improvement. Although the former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey, whom Nitish engaged to chart out a roadmap for the overhaul of the education sector in Bihar, has still not forgiven him for ignoring his exhaustive report, the fact is that Bihar has made decisive steps towards improvement in girl enrolment ratio, improving access to schools, recruitment of teachers et al .

Here is, hence, a tried and tested political leader who famously jilted the BJP on the question of Modi’s leadership. His secular and liberal credentials are matched by his record in governance, and unlike other socialists, he has shown a distinct eagerness towards promoting industry. Given that the Congress has shown scant signs of revival, the quest for a strong political alternative to the BJP and Modi is taking shape in the form of an index of opposition unity. Nitish Kumar decidedly towers over the others in the index.

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