Nitish Kumar's Kiddishness

A well performing Chief Minister and a man with least petty political behaviour is finally jumping into the dirty political bandwagon. Nitish Kumar, Bihar C.M's onslaught against Narendra Modi and trying to create a secular image will backfire on Kumar. The alliance between BJP and JD (U) can win majority of seats in the upcoming assembly elections. If Nitish Kumar thinks that he can win alone a majority then he is living in his sand castle when there is warning about political storm. It is better in the interests of Nitish Kumar to maintain silence and carry on with the alliance to continue the good work done for Bihar.



Shivanand Tiwary and Giriraj Singh debates in The Deccan Chronicle, 17 June 2010


To talk about this is to state the obvious. After five years of running a successful government in Bihar, with the cordial cooperation of a long-trusted, mature ally like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mr Nitish Kumar certainly needs the BJP to win hugely in the forthcoming Assembly polls, and return to power.

In a coalition government, success springs from the healthy functioning of every link in the chain. We in the BJP are proud to have contributed whole-heartedly to the historic success story of Bihar’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, and place it on the path of getting Bihar out of the list of “Bimaru” states. Mr Kumar and his Janata Dal-United (JD-U) have always been appreciative of the BJP’s concrete support.

Although JD(U), a regional party, and BJP, a national party, are two distinct entities with ideological differences, it is their coalition that has won the hearts of Bihar’s people. The empathetic coordination and understanding between them has made our two parties almost inseparable.

Without the BJP, it is unimaginable for Mr Kumar to return to power. That is simply because it was as much the BJP’s solid network of committed cadres across Bihar as the JD(U)’s regional appeal that ensured victories of candidates of both the parties in the past elections.

Shortly after Bihar’s 2005 Assembly polls, it was the BJP that played a crucial role in making Mr Kumar the Chief Minister in the face of stubborn internal bickering among JD(U) leaders who were unwilling to accept him as head of the JD(U)-BJP government.

It is completely incorrect to describe the BJP as a weakened political force in Bihar. This impression is partly caused by the media’s projections of the NDA government in Bihar. Just because the face gets better visibility, and becomes the recognition point, it does not mean the rest of the body is defunct. The BJP is a cadre-based party. It functions in Bihar at the grassroots levels with the help of several cultural organisations working actively with a nationalist zeal. Our people are active in each of Bihar’s 54,000 polling booths and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh runs 32,000 schools across Bihar. The Chief Minister understands this.
The BJP has never compromised with its self-respect anywhere, including Bihar. With its sheer cadre strength, proven commitment, and greatly widened appeal in Bihar, the party’s future is very bright in this state.
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Bihar needs Mr Nitish Kumar. His government’s epoch-making achievements have placed him in a class apart, making him the man that Bihar needs more than anything else.
Being a leader who is naturally acceptable to every section of society, regardless of caste and religion in a fiercely identity-driven state, Mr Kumar is going to be the natural choice for Bihar’s electorate. Although he ran a coalition government, he strived hard to put the good of Bihar over everything else in the past five years. His successes are visible across the state after the long darkness of the 15 years of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Congress misrule.

The JD(U) and the BJP in Mr Kumar’s coalition government have assiduously stuck to their common minimum programme so as to create development milestones in the face of obstacles by Opposition parties. But behind every success story written by this government stands the towering leadership and vision of the chief minister. To deny this is to falsify facts.

While the minorities and the dalits of Bihar had got almost nothing other than lofty promises and resounding pronouncements of secularism from previous governments, Mr Kumar’s vision and action gave them solid benefits and raised their self-confidence. It is Mr Kumar who, as the face of the JD(U)-BJP government, inspires faith and hope in Bihar’s Muslims. Bihar has been free from any communal tension in Kumar’s regime. Its dalits who wonder why other parties, involved in dalit politics did so little for them.

The JD(U), the senior partner in the state government, is on a superbly solid platform today. Last year’s Lok Sabha poll results bore ample evidence of this. While alliance with the BJP helped the JD(U) to come to power in the 2005 Assembly polls, the JD(U)’s reach has penetrated remote corners of the state due to the chief minister’s leadership, and the attention paid by his government to implementation of welfare projects. No other chief minister has visited as many villages and spoken to as many ordinary people individually as Mr Kumar.

Any comparison between Mr Kumar and Orissa’s Mr Naveen Patnaik (in the context of relations with the BJP) — however facile — must not overlook the fact that Mr Patnaik gained strength and legacy from his legendary father, while in Bihar Mr Kumar built his strength brick by brick. The people of Bihar are wise enough to decide for themselves.

Take care of the castes Mr. Nitish Kumar

The assembly elections are due shortly in Bihar. Naturally there will be alot of politics played over caste in the run up to this election. The recent killing of 16 peoplein Khagaria shows the caste war is resurfacing in the once blood strained state of Bihar.

Overjoyed with the recent bye election victories opposition parties especially that of Lalu Prasad Yadav will be indulging in all dirty tricks to unseat the archrival Nitish Kumar from the power. The C.M should be aware about this tricky tragedy and take all the precautions to avoid giving the state's voters a chance to unseat him. Importantly he must control the law and order situation apart from delivering the welfare measures in ample doses. Additionally and most crucially he must keep tab on his party men and women from being poached by the opposition and back stabbing him during the elections.

The Times of India writes (6 October 2009)

The Khagaria massacre in which 16 people were killed is a warning that caste wars aren't a thing of the past in Bihar. Though Maoists were
initially suspected to be behind the killings, the government has now clarified that the violence was over farmland and involved Dalit Musahars and Kurmis and Koeris, two backward caste groups. Interestingly, both the perpetrators and the victims of the massacre belong to castes wooed by Nitish Kumar to be part of a social coalition he has tried to build in Bihar in recent times. The incident, coming after a lull in caste violence, could impact the political future of Nitish and his party, Janata Dal (United).

Nitish's political strategy to counter Lalu Prasad was to build a caste coalition of a few backward castes and Dalit communities. His government created a sub-category among Dalits Mahadalits that included Musahars, ostensibly to streamline delivery of reservation benefits to the scheduled castes. The move helped Nitish to forge a political alliance between Kurmis and Mahadalits that paid off in elections. The alliance could well be unravelling now. Kurmis, the victims in Khagaria, are reportedly angry at Nitish, himself a Kurmi. They have threatened to walk out on him for allegedly favouring the Mahadalits. Clearly, the political alliance has not transformed into a social coalition at the grass roots. The caste arithmetic has not helped to amicably resolve livelihood issues.

Agrarian conflicts need policy interventions that go beyond affirmative action. The chief minister has said anti-socials will not be allowed to break the law. He needs to firm up the law and order machinery, of course. But Nitish must go further and address the root cause of the conflict, which is the desperate struggle in rural Bihar to possess cultivable land. Issues like land rights, wages, low agriculture productivity and incomes call for a political paradigm different from the obsession with caste. A committee, set up by Nitish, to study agrarian relations in the state has reportedly suggested that the government should initiate land reforms. The government, perhaps wary of its political repercussions, has so far refused to discuss the report.

The social justice politics, viewed through the prism of affirmative action, has reached a dead-end in Bihar even though caste continues to be an influential factor in elections. Nitish tried to break the deadlock by focusing on economic development and good administration. He needs to up the ante on governance so that the emphasis doesn't return to building caste alliances. More jobs need to be created in industry and services to lift the pressure off land. Bihar needs to build a broad-based economy to absorb the tensions of social empowerment in a post-Mandal era. That's the challenge staring at Nitish Kumar.