How a resurgent Lalu is Modi's worst nightmare
For Bihar's Grand Alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led combine, the Swabhiman Rally on Sunday, August 30 couldn't have come earlier. From being a Nitish-centric campaign so far, it has now been established as a wider platform. A key takeaway from the rally is that while Nitish may be listed as the man most Biharis want as the chief minister in survey after survey, when it comes to naming the most charismatic Bihar leader, the choice would undoubtedly be Lalu Prasad Yadav. This was evident in the manner the crowd and other leaders on the dias got energised the moment Lalu began speaking. Make no mistake, while Nitish may be the face of the campaign, Lalu is the crowd-puller.
Not that he required such endorsement, but after a series of personal and political setbacks in recent years, the impending election is an opportunity for Lalu to secure fresh political legitimacy. Accordingly, Lalu is shaping this campaign as his comeback vehicle and ensuring that his old-style politics comes to the fore once again.
For instance, Lalu's counter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charge that a vote for the Grand Alliance will herald the advent of "Jungle Raj-2", was that a victory for the Grand Alliance would usher in "Mandal Raj-2". By publicly reaffirming his faith in the politics of Mandalisation, Lalu attested that he remained rooted in identity politics. He backed this by warding off criticism that he and Nitish, adversaries for long, had sewn an opportunistic grouping. The new union was not the act of timeserving politicians in search of power, but the coming together of two brothers, Lalu has tried to prove. This is the way Lalu is seeking to embrace Nitish within the framework of his old-style politics. The Lalu that one saw on Sunday was "Mark-2" but his politics was old-style. It remains in Nitish's interest to retain the support of his one-time bête noir, but the challenge is to prevent being subsumed by the Yadav strongman.
Lalu considers harping on caste issues (Nitish made Jitan Ram Manjhi, who belongs to the low-ranked Musahar caste, the chief minister) and portraying the election as a contest mainly between backward and forward castes as a part of his strategy to consolidate his caste vote bank. But such strategy makes the task a tad difficult for Nitish as it has the potential to disenchant progressive voters who want to move away from identity-based politics to the real issues involving development.
In fact, Nitish has the unenviable task of marrying Lalu's caste politics with his claim of having made Bihar a better-governed state. He has his advantages as well as disadvantages. If the BJP sharpens its attack on him for rejoining forces with Lalu after more than two decades, Nitish can also accuse the BJP of having broken bread with him jointly for almost the same length of time. But if in his campaign, Lalu envelops Nitish in general disdain, the Bihar chief minister will find it tough to answer his supporters.
The reason why Nitish has been accommodative with Lalu and assented to the RJD contesting almost the same number of seats as the JD(U) is because beneath the veneer of the development discourse that the BJP and Nitish projected in the years they were together, as being of primary importance for the state, there exists a complex caste matrix. This has been the main reason not only for the survival of leaders like Ram Vilas Paswan and now Upendra Kushwaha, but also the reason why the BJP has to cosy up to them. But by being an unabashed champion of identity politics, Lalu is seeking to consolidate his position, regardless of the verdict.
Because, if the Grand Alliance wins, he will be able to pack the ministry with a lion's share of nominees and if the BJP wins, he will still be left with probably the largest caste rump and its adherers because "new politics" and its supporters would have completely shifted to Modi. Lalu is attempting to ensure that regardless of the fact that Nitish is the mascot of the Grand Alliance, he remains the "engine driver". The question is if people of Bihar will accept him in this avatar or snub his attempt.