Jumla Babu or Janta ka CM: Who will win Bihar?

The Bihar Assembly elections have been made into a nationally important election by the entry of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his promise of lavish gifts and entitlements for the Bihari voter - from scooties to 10 decimals of land for agricultural labour, which is a fraction of an acre but important to the landless.

In a pre-poll survey by the Lokniti-CSDS for The Indian Express, the NDA is seen as getting 42 per cent of the voting intention in the last week of September 2015, ahead of the Nitish-led grand alliance (GA) with just 38 per cent of the voting intention. The urban-rural gap is very large. The NDA's vote lead is 20 per cent more the GA in the urban areas. But according to the pre-election poll, the urban areas account for just 11.2 per cent of the Bihar population. In the rural areas, the NDA's lead is only two per cent, but the rural areas account for as much as 88.8 per cent of the population.

According to the election analysts professors Sanjay Kumar and Suhas Palshikar, the honeymoon period of the NDA of only 18 months is still operating and PM Narendra Modi is still popular. The caste alliances in the NDA show their advantage in putting a disparate alliance together. The NDA is supported by the upper castes, the lower OBCs and sections of the Dalit community, mainly the influential Paswans.

In contrast, the GA is heavily dependent on the support of the Yadavs, Kurmis, Koeris and Muslims. The NDA's campaign against Lalu Yadav - for his Jungle Raj, making poll candidates of his children who have no substantial political record, and the major blunder in his claim that the OBCs eat beef - has alienated a significant section of the Yadavs, who are dairy farmers and consider cows precious.Bungles are not the sole weakness of Lalu.

RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat recently opposed reservation in toto. But that already has been passed over because of the off-the-cuff remarks of others. But these or other factors (the rest is not based on the Lokniti-CSDS survey), may change over time.

The GA is plagued by other factors. The Congress demanded and got 40 seats. This is out of proportion to its strength, including its slender presence on the ground. Veteran observers have predicted that the Congress would be extremely lucky to win 10 seats. This means that around 30 seats would go to the NDA from the GA. To make matters worse, the Left parties are contesting in virtually all the seats. This is extremely surprising to put it mildly. The Left (CPI) bastion of Begusarai has dwindled. The CPI has just one seat currently. The Left will generally cut the GA votes, further weakening the secular alliance. Lenin warned of this as a "parliamentary deviation". However, it appears that Marxist-Leninist theory is displaced by electoral manoeuvres.

Would an emphatic win for the NDA cement their popular lead nationally? Not necessarily, but it would certainly have an impact in the Hindi belt, and expose the weakening of secular forces, especially the Congress and Left. But CSDS-Lokniti survey is a pre-poll survey.

They themselves admit there can be changes. Exit polls are much more accurate. Nonetheless, this is the most exhaustive pre-poll survey yet. But the voters do play their cards close to their chest. In any case, we are in for interesting times.