By Arun Srivastava
Bihar has voted decisively. As the elections in Bihar set the national agenda, provide an insight into the future politics, obviously the people especially the pollsters and experts prefer to keep a sharp eye on the developments and the results. Usually the elections are the occasions for diagnosis and prescription, what’s wrong, what can right it, clearly a keen debate has surfaced in the political circle about the nature, implication and possible outcome of the result.
The defeat of Nitish Kumar as projected in the exit polls is being viewed as the end of political era of triumvirate; Lalu Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar, the original players of the Mandal politics. But the likely defeat of NDA has put the entire BJP leadership in a precarious situation. The main challenge before them is to how to salvage the situation.
With the exit polls predicting the defeat of the NDA, the BJP leadership has launched a campaign to protect the image, charisma and political stature of their leader Narendra Modi. His leadership quality has been at stake. Though the NDA and especially BJP leadership from the beginning has made it clear that the election would be fought under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, the reality has been the election virtually turned out to be a referendum on the performance of Modi.
The BJP leadership was quite hopeful that with falling popularity of Nitish, projection of Modi as the public face of the NDA would help the party reclaim its lost glory. In an unprecedented manner the prime minister of India addressed not less than 14 public meetings in the state. This is a pointer to the seriousness and importance of the election. It was none else but Modi who chalked and defined the agenda to be raised during the election. In his initial meetings he raised the issue of brining development to the state, but once he came to know that it was not working he shifted to maligning the image of Tejashvi by calling him the heir of Jungle Raj. After this issue also failed to catch the imagination of the common Biharis, who had suffer immensely during the pandemic, he took a leaf out of his old religious and nationalism epic. Modi also used the old slogan of Lalu and Nitish to create a Naya Bihar.
Modi and Nitish also used the mechanism of emotional blackmailing of Biharis. While just a day ahead of the last phase of polls, Nitish announced that the ongoing polls would be his last brush with electoral politics, Modi in a last-ditch effort wrote a letter addressed to a common Bihari seeking to invoke the fear of ‘jungle raj’ if the Opposition alliance came to power, underlining the need for order in the state for development. He underscored that he “needs” a Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in the state to ensure development. But these machinations failed to work.
The exit poll results nevertheless send the message that this gamble of the BJP leadership has miserably failed. Modi has proved to be a non-starter. His charisma did not work. He failed to reach out to the people. Now with the intention to bail Modi out of the crisis and save his image from being maligned an all-out tirade has been launched against Nitish to hold him responsible for the miserable defeat. The party has been trying to convince the people that the image and charisma of Modi was not at all at stake. He merely campaigned. But the fact is known to people of Bihar.
It is really a matter of concern for Modi and his party men. What has been incongruous is the people were reluctant to subscribe to Modi’s assertion “better infrastructure” and “rule of law” were imperative for the social and economic prosperity of Bihar. He claimed that since 2005 in the state, change has been ushered in and continuance of the “double-engine” government (the NDA at the Centre as well as in the state) was needed to take the process forward.
The infighting within the NDA has also emerged in the form of some BJP leaders claiming that absence of a charismatic Dalit leader cost the party. One more development was clearly visible in this election and it was the averseness of the OBC and EBC castes towards the NDA, especially towards Modi and Nitish. Though Nitish tried to identify himself with the EBC and in his endeavour also created a new class of mahadalits, these people refrained from responding to their overtures.
If the exit poll results are really any indicator then it can be construed that dalit voters threw their weight behind Chirag Paswan, son of dalit leader Ram Vilas Pswan. Dalits of Bihar who constitute nearly 16 per cent of the population preferred to support Tejashvi and his RJD though Chirag Paswan had staked claim to his father’s political legacy. No doubt he has gained a certain amount of acceptability among the Dusadh, this is not enough to establish him as the dalit leader.
The BJP leadership nursed the hope that the Dalits would respond to the appeal of Modi and accept his argument that under the RJD government their rights would be denied, it failed to happen. The younger generation of dalits, like the youths of other castes, preferred to rally behind Tejashwi. (IPA Service)