Lalu leads while Nitish trails

Patna: The political landscape of Bihar is going to alter dramatically after 2014 elections. The winds of change are discernible in the air: Lalu Prasad is making an impact after rusting for almost a decade, riding on the caste wave. Lalu knows how to exploit his trump card to the hilt, and he is a virtuoso in the game of politics.

The incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was doing a fairly good job, considering the backwardness of the state. But the youth of Bihar is unhappy with the pace of Bihar’s development, which in practical terms meant the youth of Bihar have to seek jobs outside the state, where they seldom find red carpet welcome. In contrast, Narendra Modi keeps harping on Gujarat model that provides jobs for the youth – irresistible for the ears seeking jobs. So Modi has created a constituency in Bihar, which is difficult to counter.

Unfortunately, Nitish belongs to a caste, which is not the dominant one and hence handicapped in a caste-dominated election. To win the state, he would need the upper caste support, which naturally belongs to BJP. By ending the alliance with BJP, Nitish has cut the umbilical code that nourished his front.   

So the major players are Lalu’s RJD and Modi’s BJP. Lalu’s party will get enough support to win, but BJP will get a foothold in a state dominated by RJD.    

Lalu’s Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) combination is believed to have come into play strongly in the third and fourth phases of elections. The state’s 18% Muslim population has a strong presence in 12 constituencies and its 13% Yadav population has backed Lalu even during his worst shows. This time, the M-Y consolidation appears strong.

Although Muslims laud Nitish’s good work, they feel he faces some anti-incumbency and that Lalu stands a better chance against Modi. Lalu has been championing himself as Modi’s main challenger on the platform of secularism, using the choicest epithets for the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and regaining voters. He has also attacked Nitish and called him greedy for Muslim votes.

While pundits wrote Lalu’s political obituary after he was convicted in a fodder scam case and jailed last year, it seems to have won him the sympathy and support of voters. In fact, voters have not been talking about the case and it is Lalu who brings it up to allege a conspiracy.

On the face of it, you can’t find two contrasting personalities as vivid as Nitish and Lalu. Both emerged from the womb of the JP anti-Emergency students’ movement of the 1970s. Lalu was always the more charismatic, flamboyant mass leader, a great communicator who revelled in the glare of the camera. Nitish was, by contrast, a soft-spoken political thinker and strategist, deeply uncomfortable with the overt machismo of the Lalu brand of politics.