Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been staging the familiar political trapeze act for many years — and successfully at that. He switched political sides with rare ease and made friends with ‘devils’ too in the last 11 years. The JD(U) leader performed his latest colour change on Sunday by resigning as chief minister and forming another government with BJP support. In the process he ditched the RJD of Lalu Prasad and the Congress party at the precise moment when Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra was set to enter Bihar. The INDIA alliance that Kumar stood in the front to cobble received a fatal blow from his shocking exit from it to share power with the BJP. With what face can Rahul Gandhi traverse through Bihar is anybody’s guess now.
Nitish Kumar, known also as Kursi Kumar for his knack to retain power as chief minister, belonged to the Socialist bloc at whose head were principled leaders like Jayaprakash Narain, the Sarvodaya leader whose Total Revolution movement unseated Indira Gandhi from power and helped install a Janata Party government at the Centre in 1977 after the Emergency years. In course of time, Kumar functioned as Railway Minister in a BJP dispensation and later formed a coalition government in Bihar, first with the BJP and later with the RJD, only to ditch Lalu and join hands with the BJP again in 2017. In 2022 he ditched the BJP and cohabited with the RJD again. Clearly, Kumar – also known as Kursi Kumar and Paltu Ram for his ruthless somersaults – sacrifices ideology at the altar of self-interest.
Notably, this 72-year-old politician has been the curse of Bihar if in that the state failed to transform itself into a modern entity under his long years of governance. Kumar made positive changes to life in Bihar, at the start, by jailing the goons of Lalu Prasad. His principal slogan was “Sadak, Pani”, aiming to lay roads and reach water to all villages. He mostly accomplished this task and then failed to take the state’s progress forward. He lacked the vision to think anew, ensure steady growth and invite investment to Bihar. Vested interests had full play under his governance though no one has alleged he looted the exchequer. This is one positive factor that still holds him aloft in state politics. His present somersault would hit the INDIA alliance hard in the run-up to the parliament polls. Unless a miracle happens, as in 2009 past the India Shining slogan, the BJP-led NDA is likely to retain power after the 2024 polls. Kursi Kumar, for one, knows as much.
