By Sidharth Mishra
The poll results in this country, elections after elections, has always been driven by an X-factor. This X-factor largely goes unrecognized by the analysts covering the campaign, which post-result they find it convenient to define as under-current.
As the poll campaign for Bihar Assembly elections 2020 steams ahead, the analysts in the war rooms of the political parties are busy crunching numbers, especially on which caste goes whose way. The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) garners its confidence from the fact that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) is back with them.
The general refrain from the BJP ranks is that Nitish comes with his 15 percent vote share, which directly is a loss to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance). They are also confident that Chirag Paswan walking out will not do much damage, given the Lok Janshakti Party’s performance in 2015 polls, when they had won just two seats.
There is a merit in this argument as far as consolidation of the traditional NDA votes go but it would be immature to project it as a direct loss of vote share of Gathbandhan. In this poll the grand alliance also has Left parties as partner. It could be pointed that in past too RJD joined hands with Left but in 2020, RJD for the first time is coming together with Communist Party of India (Maoist-Leninist) Liberation.
CPI (ML) is the true inheritor in the state of the Naxalite movement. It may be recalled that even at the height of Mandal politics when class politics of CPI and CPM got subsumed into caste politics of RJD, CPI(ML) still had managed to retain its base.
The strength and seriousness of partnership between RJD and CPI(ML) is evident from the large-heartedness which RJD boss Lalu Prasad Yadav has shown towards the junior poll partner, giving them seats mostly from their own quota. To illustrate the point further, the RJD has given the Ziradei seat in Siwan to CPI (ML).
The dynamics of Siwan is that RJD in Siwan is synonymous with infamous mafia don Mohammed Shahabuddin. The incarcerated former MP is accused of the killing of rising CPI(ML) star Chandrashekhar in 1997. A former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), Chandrashekhar had in tradition of his party founder Vinod Mishra, left a lucrative job in academics to take up activism at the grassroots.
The CPI(ML) candidate is Amarjit Kushwaha, an activist like Chandrashekhar, and generally considered to be inheritor of his legacy. He has faced imprisonment several times following his involvement in agitation by landless farmhands, which has been interpreted by prosecution as cases of land dispute. He is pitted against sitting MLA, Ramesh Kushwaha of JD(U).
The JD(U) candidate is also a former CPI(ML) cadre, who incidentally had lodged FIR against Shahabuddin in Chandrashekhar murder case but had failed to record his statement in the court. He was expelled from party, joined RJD and finally landed-up in JD(U). He won the last polls with RJD’s support defeating Amarjit by a margin of 5000 votes. This time around the RJD is supporting the CPI(ML).
The Ziradei model is being replicated on 19 seats, which CPI(ML) is contesting and would have ramifications across the state. Can the coming together of the RJD and the CPI (ML) be interpreted as end of the Mandal politics?
Looking at the poll scenario from this (end of Mandal politics) perspective, one realizes that there is just Nitish Kumar, among the famous beneficiaries of Mandal politics, who is still surviving the rough and tumble of polls. The other two – Lalu Prasad Yadav is convicted in a corruption case and is in jail and Ram Vilas Paswan has passed away.
Tejashwi Yadav and Chirag Paswan, sons of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan may have inherited the political fortunes earned by their respective fathers practicing caste politics but are subtly changing gears to address issues of post-Mandal politics like rising unemployment in the state. Given the manifestos and poll promises of the political parties, politics of subsidy and welfare has for sure come to replace the politics of identity to a great extent. No wonder BJP manifesto has promised free inoculation for Covid.
This alteration has largely been impelled by the generational shift in the state politics. Mandal Commission report was implemented three decades ago, almost half of the voting population wouldn’t even recall its ramifications. Similarly Lala-Rabri’s ‘Jungle Raj’ ended 15 years ago. The first time voters in these elections would have been just three years old when JD(U)-BJP effectively emerged as the most dominant force in Bihar politics as the ruling alliance.
The continuous fusillade against Lalu Yadav by the tallest leader of BJP in Bihar, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi betrays a negative campaign and makes one feel that they are doing so because they may not be having much positive fuel to propel their poll propaganda. SuMo, as the Deputy Chief Minister is known, must realize that his outpourings are ending effectively as an inane blabber for a large section of voters.
A revisit of the composition of the grand alliance and the list of the candidates fielded by it gives credence to Tejashwi Yadav’s claim of his politics not just being about M(Muslim) and Y(Yadav) but A to Z. The Mahagathbandhan, may be inadvertently but has effectively ended up having created an image, at least on paper, of being representative of people cutting across castes and communities. The NDA war room should worry about this permutation on paper getting replicated in the battlefield.
(First published in www.News18.com)
