Mad Dogs And Glory

Several months before the 1996 general elections, it had become clear that no political party was in a position to muster a majority in the Lok Sabha. Seventeen years later, in 2013, once again the writing on the wall is that the next government at the Centre will be a strange animal, a coalition of small and disparate parties, supported by either of the two ‘national’ parties, neither of which is expected to win even half the number of seats required to form a government. In 1996, there was talk for awhile of then Bihar chief minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, leading the next coalition. In 2013, there is again talk of a Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar, emerging as the dark horse to pip Narendra Modi to the post.

In 1996, Laloo had confided to this writer that he had no interest in heading a “hodge-podge” government. He had then dramatically picked up the spittoon, emptied his mouth of betel juice and hissed, “Kutta kaata hai kya? (Do I look like a man bitten by a mad dog?)” It is equally unlikely now that Nitish Kumar would be in a hurry to head any rag-tag coalition formed in 2014 or earlier. He would be far more interested in securing the certainty of a third term as chief minister in the assembly election due in 2015. There is indeed no earthly reason for him to tempt fate like what robbed one Deve Gowda of the bird in his hand as well as the bird in the bush.

While it is true that Nitish Kumar, a minister in the NDA government at the Centre, had not even “squeaked” after the Gujarat riots in 2002, he has maintained his distance from Narendra Modi after he became CM. He retur­ned the `5 crore sent by the Gujarat government for flood relief, firmly declined Modi’s offer to campaign in Bihar and cancelled a dinner when he learnt Modi too had flown into Patna and would have to be invited. Now, after setting the benchmark for any future PM—secular, democratic and with a feel for the backward states—Nitish has made it clear, without naming Modi even once, that he will walk out of the NDA the day the latter is officially projected as the prime ministerial candidate. 

His arithmetic is simple enough. Having won 115 seats and 23 per cent of the votes in the last assembly elections, JD(U) can afford to bank on minority support (16-18 per cent voters in Bihar are Muslims) even if it parts company with the BJP (16.5 per cent votes).

Battling the growing disappointment in Bihar, where his record is increasingly being questioned, his call upon all Biharis to rally around him is designed to position himself as the leader of the poor, the underdeveloped and the unemployed. He is fighting for a place in history, and not as a footnote. Nitish is known to take one cautious step at a time, steps deliberated like a mountaineer. It is worth keeping in mind that the Delhi rally last week was announced over six months ago, before the Gujarat election and before the buzz built up around Narendra Modi.

Uttam Sengupta is deputy editor, Outlook; E-mail your columnist: sengupta AT outlookindia.com