Nitish Kumar has resigned as the Chief Minister of Bihar to become the Chief Minister of Bihar… this was one of the many memes that flooded social media on the day the Janata Dal-United stalwart pulled the plug on his sweet-today-sour-tomorrow alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and hopped on to the Mahagathbandhan bandwagon once again.
Much like the British truism, ‘The King is dead, long live the King’, Nitish shed one avatar to get into the skin of another by pulling off a self-orchestrated change of guard in his home state that did not really surprise his friends or foes, who probably saw it coming. Nitish had had few peers in political somersaults over the years. He has changed his alliances, shifted his ideological goalposts, and yet come out unscathed with consummate ease. This time it was no different.
