The Hindu
23 Nov.2005
Bihar joins the national mainstream

Harish Khare

Lalu Prasad refused to understand that Bihar could not
remain a stranger to the larger process of growth and
development that characterises much of the rest of
India.

UTTAR PRADESH went to the polls in March 2002. The
Bharatiya Janata Party was in power in Lucknow and New
Delhi. The country had been whipped into a frenzy,
especially after the December 13, 2001, terrorist
attack on Parliament House. L.K. Advani was playing
sheriff in New Delhi. In Lucknow, the incumbent Chief
Minister, Rajnath Singh, had banned the Muslim outfit,
SIMI, and was threatening to put in place a POTA-like
law if voted back to power. On the other hand,
Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Vishwanath Pratap Singh
were predicting that the National Democratic Alliance
regime in New Delhi would collapse after the BJP got
routed in Lucknow. Both believed Mulayam Singh Yadav
was the ideal instrument to lead the secular offensive
against the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In the event, the BJP lost but that was about it.
After a few months of President's Rule, the BJP joined
hands with the Bahujan Samaj Party and installed
Mayawati as Chief Minister in Lucknow whereas Atal
Bihari Vajpayee went on to complete his term at the
Centre.

This little bit of recent history is recalled in the
context of the Bihar election outcome. Just as a BJP
defeat in Uttar Pradesh had no bearing on the last Lok
Sabha, the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-CPI(M)
combine's debacle cannot possibly have any
ramifications for the United Progressive Alliance
Government at the Centre. Just as the 2002 U.P. defeat
lent a degree of coherence to the Vajpayee Government,
the 2005 Bihar defeat can only have a salutary effect
on the UPA partners and friends who have of late
developed rather complacent mind-sets. In any case,
the Bihar verdict is not a licence for the NDA to
instigate disruption in the polity.

Is there anything in the latest Bihar vote that can be
construed as distracting from the raison d'etre of the
UPA at the Centre? Nothing, indeed. The vote is not at
all an endorsement of the BJP's brand of aggressive
Hindutva. It should be kept in mind that in Bihar the
BJP is not a senior partner in the alliance with the
Janata Dal (United). The BJP did not show its Hindutva
colours at any time; and, Nitish Kumar, the Chief
Minister-apparent, had been careful to distance
himself from any BJP-instigated suggestion of any kind
of calculated hostility to the minorities. If
anything, in recent months the JD(U) has not been
averse to being seen to be in agreement with the UPA
plank of some kind of affirmative action in favour of
the minorities. Whether the Bihar verdict provides Mr.
Advani any elbowroom to linger on for a few more
months as BJP president is between him and the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bosses. But there is
little comfort in the Bihar vote for the BJP
ideologues.

Is Lalu Prasad's rout a defeat of the secular platform
at the Centre? On the face of it, the vote is a
setback only because the Congress and the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) had chosen to justify their
alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal in terms of
secular consolidation. On the other hand, Ram Vilas
Paswan's single-point chant of "Muslim Chief Minister"
denied Mr. Prasad the luxury of painting himself in
secular colours. The secular "card" worked in the 2004
Lok Sabha election because the BJP/RSS/VHP combine
loomed large; by the time the Bihar electorate was
asked to vote a second time in 2005 for the Assembly,
the Hindutva threat was a distant memory. In this
round of electioneering, the RJD itself did not raise
the secular war cry. Mr. Nitish Kumar's decisive
victory will not allow the RJD/UPA leaders to point
accusing fingers at the Election Commission. A narrow
margin would have invited attention to the
Commission's bias. The nature of Mr. Nitish Kumar's
victory should put an end to all arguments as to whose
cause Mr. Paswan helped most and hurt most. Bihar was
ready for a change.

Mr. Prasad got entangled in a politics of preserving a
narrow caste support base, which had nothing to do
with the secular versus communal divide not to speak
of the larger issues of the rulers' obligation to be
sensitive to citizens' needs. He wallowed in a
partisan politics of an extremely self-serving kind,
craftily invoking caste antagonisms to his electoral
advantage. He stumbled upon the winning formula of
combining Yadav consolidation with Muslim insecurity.
Admittedly, Mr. Prasad did not invent caste or the
political usefulness of the caste appeal in Bihar; he
was merely carrying on the traditions and habits
established by the Sri Babus and the K.B. Sahays in
the 1950s and the 1960s. Like the Bhumihars, the
Brahmins, and the Kayasthas, he too finessed the art
of producing legislative majorities based on limited
caste appeals. His politics was relevant to the Bihar
of the 1990s. But he forgot that Bihar was part of a
changing India.

Obviously, Mr. Prasad refused to understand that Bihar
could not remain a stranger to the larger process of
growth and development that characterises much of the
rest of India. Though a considerable section of the
Bihar population opted to migrate out to other parts
of India in search of security and stability, the
majority (most of them poor) had to stay put, most of
the time on Mr. Prasad's terms. But those who stayed
back were not oblivious to the change and growth in
the rest of the country. In these times of
ever-increasing connectivity, the Bihar voter was in a
position to have a fairly good idea of how growth,
development, and governance were changing people's
ambitions and aspirations. This voter could not remain
content with what Mr. Prasad had to offer. What began
in 1990 as a refreshing promise of genuine social
change degenerated in 15 years into crony rule. Nobody
in Bihar was amused when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
chose to bestow the "Vikas Purush" salutation on Mr.
Prasad.

One lesson emerges. No political leader or party can
ignore the obligation to undertake some basic tasks of
governance. A strong, well-oiled party machine helps
electoral mobilisation; an emotional pitch may work
magic temporarily; but the business of democratic
politics has to centre around governance and delivery.
Democratic politics, especially if it insists on
seeking its very legitimacy from the welfare of the
masses, cannot sustain for long a leadership style
that thrives on contempt for the masses and their
minimum needs. In a way Mr. Prasad should be grateful
to the voters for their rebuff; otherwise he and his
cronies would have remained untutored in this basic
obligation.

Task for Nitish


No one knows whether Mr. Nitish Kumar himself would be
able to answer the crux of the Bihar voter's desire
for change. Bihar was always a much divided society
and politicians of all varieties have deepened those
divisions. And these divisions are now sorted out by
private armies. The only course open to Mr. Nitish
Kumar is to summon a higher raj dharma, instead of
getting sucked into numerous demands and intractable
claims of past grievances and vendettas. This would be
a very exacting task, especially because his rivals
and enemies can be relied upon to provoke violence and
animosities. The eruption recently in Jehanabad was a
reminder, if a reminder was indeed needed, that
Patna's writ does not run in large chunks of Bihar.
The benighted State needs a new idiom of argumentation
and a new political culture.

Does the Bihar vote mean the politics of social
justice has run its course in the country? Can, for
example, Mr. Mulayam Singh or Ms. Mayawati persist
with their preference for the caste idiom? This appeal
of caste-based regional parties will continue to find
favour with the voter as long as the national
political parties do not find the leadership and the
vision to tap all-India passions and aspirations. But
it is becoming increasingly clear also that a
family-based political outfit can no longer
appropriate the promise of the politics of social
justice. The voter will reject all those leaders,
political parties and outfits that refuse to observe
democratic decencies and remain indifferent to the
ruler's fundamental obligation to govern, fairly,
firmly and equitably. It would be an outright
absurdity if the NDA crowd or the third-front hopefuls
chose to interpret the Bihar vote as a mandate to
destabilise the Centre. The country is in a
business-like mood and does not want to favour
manipulators at the expense of administrators.
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