Why Nitish Kumar should have aligned with Congress

When long-standing rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad decided to bury the hatchet to pursue their common agenda of preventing the Bharatiya Janata Party from capturing power in Bihar, it was considered to be a political miracle of sorts.

Although both leaders emerged from a socialist background, they hardly shared anything in common since they parted ways more than two decades ago. In fact, they remained diametrically opposite to each other in their fundamental approach to the politics of power during their prolonged separation.

While Nitish remained an unabashed votary of development-centric politics, Lalu looked down upon growth as an absolutely redundant factor in his political scheme of things. Doubtless, it seemed that the twain would never meet on the same path, or see eye-to-eye.

But politics is the game of endless possibilities, more so in Bihar. The disastrous performance of their respective parties in the 2014 General Elections brought them back, hand in hand, with a common objective to take on PM Narendra Modi. Nitish and Lalu apparently believed that they would not be able to halt the winning march of the BJP, without forming an alliance in the state.

Lalu, whose party did not have any favourable outcome since the 2004 General Elections, had always called for the unity of secular forces in his bid to prevent the rise of what he called "communal" forces. But it was Nitish who took the lead in forging such a unity after his acrimonious split with the BJP. He not only offered an olive branch to Lalu but also initiated steps to bring together all the erstwhile Janata Parivar parties on a common platform at the national level, before the Bihar elections.

Of course, things have since not moved the way Nitish would have liked. The proposed merger of the Janata Parivar has been put on hold on "technical grounds". And it is no longer a certainty he and Lalu will ultimately contest the upcoming polls together given the recent problems besetting the JD(U) and RJD over the seat-sharing formula.

The RJD'S recent demand that it should get a bigger share of seats on the basis of its performance in the Lok Sabha polls has raised questions over the future of the alliance. Now, it is being debated in political circles whether it was a judicious decision on Nitish's part to embrace Lalu as an ally in the first place. It is also being speculated whether he would be happy to allow Lalu to call the shots within their proposed alliance in his "stop-the-BJP" campaign.

The JD(U) cadres and all his supporters elsewhere would certainly not approve of it. After all, Nitish had captured the imagination of the people by ceaselessly working on the development front, something Lalu did not want to do when he was at the helm in Bihar. In fact, Lalu's dismal track record in governance had made it easier for Nitish to consolidate his image as a development man. As a matter of fact, many of Nitish's supporters were baffled when he had sought to build bridges with Lalu after the polls.

But Nitish has had his own reasons to do so. The last Lok Sabha poll results had apparently made him realise that the NDA had romped home primarily because of the split in the votes of the secular parties in Bihar. In the polls, the JD(U), RJD and the Congress together had polled about eight per cent more votes than the BJP and its two allies. That was, undoubtedly, the most important reason behind his unexpected reunion with Lalu.

Still, it remains a moot point whether Nitish needed Lalu to take on the BJP after his poll debacle. Many of his supporters believe he should have gone for an alliance with the Congress and the left instead.

They would also have expected him to do an Arvind Kejriwal to underline the fact that no party or individual can take the electorate for granted.