Nitish's ATOM Politics .... Power & Politics/ The Sunday Standard/ April 24, 2016

Nitish's ATOM Politics May Well Set Contours of Confrontation for the Next Election

The road to good intentions is paved with hellfire. Any foolproof planning in Indian politics missing a clear roadmap promises more chances of failure than fortune. Slogans can ignite riots but cannot deliver victory in war. Without even waiting for the outcome of the recent Assembly polls, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has announced his vision and mission with sass and sauce. PM Narendra Modi wants a Congress Mukt (Congress-free) India, but Nitish has blown the bugle for all non-BJP parties to gather under his banner to establish a Sangh Mukt Bharat (RSS-free Bharat) to save the democracy.

Nitish began his first stint as the JD(U) chief with the ideological intention to polarise the two national parties along political groupings. His clarion cry appears to have united all non-BJP parties to oust Modi in 2019. But both his admirers and detractors are baffled about this hurry in going public. Is he convinced that Modi is losing charisma and acceptability faster than anyone expected? But Nitish’s moves clearly reveal that he has declared war on the Saffron Parivar. He has projected himself as the only credible alternative to Modi. His promoters are convinced that he is as clean as the PM. They feel his Vikas Purush tag is equally convincing if not more than Modi’s.

Since Nitish has the advantage of rallying the minorities behind him and attracting a load of liberal and secular middle class votes, they have decided to demolish the PM’s core credentials. He had venomously said, “Management is more important than event management.” It is evident that Nitish has drawn up his field guide well and formulated a strategy for a long-drawn-out battle. He had made an attempt to forge a Bihar-type Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) in Assam, but failed after the Congress refused to surrender its space.

The timing and tone, however, of the Bihar CM’s declaration are interesting. He, along with RJD chief Lalu Prasad, sprang a surprise by stopping the Modi juggernaut in the state by scoring a decisive victory over the BJP in 2015. While the BJP’s defeat raised questions over its invincibility and Modi’s popularity, it also emboldened Nitish to extend the Bihar experiment to other parts of the country. He is aware of the ground reality that almost all the non-BJP parties, including the Left, are feeling insecure under Modi’s dispensation. The Congress dreads the lethal use of government apparatus to not only topple its governments in smaller states, but also to dig up dirty pasts of many of its senior leaders and former and current CMs. To add fuel to the fire, the Modi government is moving at bullet train speed to dismantle all the institutions controlled by the Left and anti-RSS elements.

In reality, Modi’s direct confrontation with non-BJP parties, including some of its regional allies, is creating a favourable environment for the creation of a political alternative. Historically, credible substitutes have emerged against powerful personalities and their actions, which their opponents projected as a threat to democracy. Nitish’s plan is to portray Modi as an intolerant and arrogant leader, who along with the RSS, his ideological mentor, poses a serious threat to the nation’s unity and secular character. In 1977, Jaiprakash Narayan brought all non-Congress parties together to oust Indira Gandhi after she imposed the Emergency and suspended fundamentals rights.

Parties, from the north to the south, sacrificed their partisan interests with the singular aim of defeating the Congress and demolishing Indira’s leviathan leadership. The experiment lasted for less than 30 months, as the elements, which came together to challenge her, started to squabble. The first ever anti-Congress initiative died an untimely death with Indira’s triumphant return to power in 1980.

For the next nine years, the Congress once again acquired total control over national politics. It won most of the state polls in 1980 and later harvested a record number of over 400 seats in the Lok Sabha after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Rajiv Gandhi was seen as an agent of change for a better India. But his charm faded even earlier than his promoters expected. Once again, corruption emerged as the ubiquitous glue to bring all the non-Congress parties, from the CPI(M) to the BJP, occupy a single platform to remove Rajiv and his coterie. There was a difference though. Unlike 1977 when the Janata Party plunged into the electoral battle without a PM candidate, the Opposition fought the 1989 election under the leadership of Congress rebel V P Singh who enjoyed a reputation for impeccable integrity. Their motto: defeat Rajiv, who was leading a corrupt government.

For the next decade, Central governments were formed on the basis of opportunistic alliances in which individuals, not ideology, played a decisive role. But Modi changed the rules of the political battle. Soon after winning the Gujarat elections in 2012, he planned his move in advance to take over 7 Race Course. He tried to bring smaller parties together, with the weak Manmohan Singh—who was protecting and leading a corrupt government—as his target. It was for the first time that a Lok Sabha election was turned into a Presidential election by another name, in which Team Modi converted the war into a struggle between the indomitable, clean development man Modi versus Manmohan. Modi won without even a symbolic fight.

Today Nitish wants to convert the next Lok Sabha election into a conflict between two individuals backed by distinctive ideologies. He tried to lead the anti-BJP coalition when he left the NDA in 2013. It failed to take off. Even now, his resolve to forge an ATOM (alternative to Modi) has run into hurdles posed by leaders like Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav, a section of the Congress and other regional leaders. At the moment, Nitish enjoys the full backing of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. But they can also put spanners in his works in progress, and both are unacceptable to the Congress. Moreover, the Congress wouldn’t like anyone to give the impression that it has accepted Nitish over Rahul to lead the anti-Modi campaign. Rahul has the advantage over Nitish since his party and family are still a draw across the country. Nitish, however, has defined the contours of confrontation for the next election. The Opposition not only wishes Modi would lose his sheen, but also expects 900 million voters to give a chance to another individual, ignoring the absence of an ideological identity. For now, however, it is an uneven battle between the omnipresent Modi, the vaguely visible Nitish and the occasionally visible Rahul Gandhi.

prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com; Follow me on Twitter @PrabhuChawla

The Outcome of the War ........ Power & Politics/ The Sunday Standard/ June 14, 2015

The Outcome of the War in Pataliputra Will Lay Future Contours of Road to Indraprastha

Power corrupts even the saintly. The insatiable hunger for absolute power corrupts ideology, absolutely beyond redemption. An elegy of moral belief is being penned in Bihar as the countdown for the crucial Assembly elections begins. Individuals seeking power at any post and cost are incinerating ideologies. Hence, the irony of opportunism was lost on Bihar CM Nitish Kumar when he drove down to the residence of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi—who had accused him of duplicity in 2010—to strike a political deal to contest the elections. For the past 40 years, Patna’s political pugilist has survived and thrived by fighting the dynastic ethos of the Congress. Nitish and senior colleagues in the Janata Parivar have, in the past, used the choicest invectives against Sonia, Rahul and the Congress. It is indeed a paradox that on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the declaration of Emergency on June 25, 1975, the very same detainees of despotism are extending their hands of friendship to those whose party and family inflicted vicious wounds on individual liberty. Next week, leaders of all the factions of the Janata Parivar and Left parties are likely to conspire and confabulate on seat-sharing for the Assembly polls. They are flirting with each other, not for the purpose of providing an alternative model of good governance but with the only objective to put a brake on the Modi juggernaut in Bihar.

History repeats itself. In political history, new players who adopt the practices and slogans of the past are incarnated when power and populism intersect. Forty years ago, forces from the extreme Right to the extreme Left got together with the regional parties and coined the slogan ‘Indira Hatao, Desh Bachao (defeat Indira, save the nation)’. None of the Opposition stalwarts could tolerate the arrogance and the authoritarian style of PM Indira Gandhi. In the era she straddled, she was the last word in politics and governance. The Socialist parties and BJP (then known as Jan Sangh) were in her cross hairs. When they failed to mobilise enough public opinion against her, it was left to the somewhat somnolent social samaritan Jayaprakash Narayan from Bihar to wake up and lead the anti-Indira movement, which eventually led to the imposition of the Emergency, the merger of many parties causing the birth of the Janata Party, and the subsequent defeat of the Congress and Indira Gandhi herself in 1977. Since the new formation was not based on any definite ideology, it collapsed like ninepins soon after their target of removing Indira Gandhi from power was achieved.

A similar political adventurism is underway, but the playfield this time is Bihar, not India. In the eyes of his neo-secular enemies, Modi has replaced Indira. All the non-NDA parties have coalesced and conjured up the slogan: Modi Harao, Secularism Bachao (defeat Modi and save secularism). Instead of the BJP, it is PM Modi who poses a threat to their political future. They have convinced themselves that by trouncing the BJP in Bihar, they would be able to corrode Modimagic and erode his authority and confidence. The heroes of the Emergency—the BJP and Socialists—are now at war in Bihar. It is incongruous that villains of the Emergency, too, can be found in both camps. According to the latest indications, over a dozen diminutive political parties, including the Left, are likely to forge an alliance and put up common candidates against the BJP and its allies. While both factions are targeting fringe leaders like former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi and Pappu Yadav to maximise the caste matrix, anti-Modi forces have decided to set their sights on the PM. They feel the BJP is almost in a similar position as the Congress was under Indira Gandhi—if the tricolour party was a zero without Indira, the BJP without Modi is a high-powered SUV without an engine.

Like Gujarat was Modi’s laboratory to test and hone his administrative and political skills, his opponents have now converted Bihar into a high-tech tab to invent an antidote to Modi’s invincibility. Both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav aren’t only engaged in social reengineering. They want to paint Modi as the villain of social harmony and a crusader championing crony capitalism. Lalu has gone to the extent of declaring he wouldn’t mind ingesting poison if it can defeat Modi in Bihar. According to the election strategy of the united Janata factions, they are going to beat the war drums, damning the opportunistic alliances made by the BJP in Kashmir and with Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar. Additionally, the battle for the state is turning out to be a doppelgänger of the Delhi scenario. The Delhi Assembly contest was Kejriwal vs Modi, since no other BJP leader, including the parachute paragon Kiran Bedi, could come within miles of Kejriwal’s magnetism. In Patna too, it is going to be Modi vs Nitish Kumar. Taking advantage of the absence of any powerful local BJP leader, the anti-Modi phalanx deliberately chose Nitish as their gladiator to take on the BJP behemoth. Nitish may not have, of late, a credible track record of good governance like Modi, but he is considered to be the most powerful leader in Bihar for the moment. Moreover, all the parties backing him represent over 55 per cent of the total votes. In 2010, the BJP-JD(U) combine fought the Assembly elections together and won 206 seats out of a total of 243 and polled over 39 per cent of the votes. Now the JD(U), which had secured 22.58 per cent votes then, has decided to fight the BJP in cahoots with the Congress, the Left and RJD. Their total vote share was around 55 per cent in 2010. Even in the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the combined vote percentage of the anti-BJP parties was over 47 as against around 37 per cent garnered by the NDA. Bihar is not going to be a cakewalk for the BJP, since it has rarely fought an Assembly election without a powerful regional ally in the past 30 years. Modi could break caste and class barriers with his sheer appeal and charisma in the Lok Sabha polls. The voters of Bihar felt they had no alternative other than him to be the best man to rule from Delhi. With the BJP performing at below-expectation levels at the Centre, Modi’s detractors are projecting Nitish as the local alternative who can govern Bihar better than any state BJP leader who functions through remote control from Delhi.

The death of ideologies in Bihar has revived the unfinished battle for supremacy between the national icon Modi and the regional warrior Nitish Kumar. The outcome of the war in Pataliputra will lay the future contours of the road to Indraprastha.

Prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com; Follow me on Twitter @PrabhuChawla

BIHAR MANDATE / November 24, 2010

It is a clear mandate for performance and not promises. The JD(U)-BJP combine's victory wasn't unexpected but the scale of the opposition rout certainly came as a surprise. For 15 years, Lalu Prasad Yadav kept Bihar on a diet of promises without ever delivering.

Nitish did not promise much but on those that he did, he quietly delivered. The pathetic performance of the RJD, LJP and the Congress reflects not only the erosion of their credibility but the absence of a credible alternative to Nitish.

The collective might of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi could do little to spoil Nitish's party because, despite severing their ties, people of Bihar saw the Congress as an ally of the RJD. The NDA strategy was clever and it worked.

"If you don't vote for Nitish, the big bad wolf Lalu will come back to haunt you," was their campaign refrain. Lalu retorted by reminding voters that every vote for Nitish was a vote for the communal BJP.

The fact that even a lot many Muslims placed their faith in Nitish and backed the NDA could set a rethink in the BJP about moderating its political agenda to make it less communal and more anti-Congress centric. After back-to-back defeats in Delhi and in crucial states in the last few years, the resounding victory in Bihar should help the BJP emerge triumphantly out of the wilderness.

The Congress waxed eloquent about marshalling the secular votes to keep the NDA out but by fielding candidates in all 243 seats, it ended up helping Nitish by dividing the anti-NDA votes. Though the Nitish campaign harped on development, it was his government's impressive performance on the law and order front that got it the thumbs-up from voters. Nitish has made Bihar a safer place to live. Now, the people of the state expect him to make it a better place by focusing on development.