Mahagathbandhan blues: Being a loser best for Lalu in Bihar
Euphoria in the Grand Alliance over its spectacular victory in the recent Bihar Assembly polls has given way to intense speculations over the future of the new coalition government in the state.
The question uppermost on the minds of the political observers these days is whether Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad has committed his biggest political blunder yet by accepting Nitish Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance. Many of them believe that a similar move had cost the Bharatiya Janata Party dear in the past.
According to them, Lalu's decision has not only deprived his party of the chief minister's post but also put him under the shadow of Nitish for the next five years. Of the three parties in the coalition, the RJD had won the maximum (80) seats in the recent Assembly polls and should have emerged as a natural claimant to the top post in the new state government. But Lalu had made a commitment to Nitish much before the polls, which he had to honour afterwards.
This decision appears to have let down many leaders in his party, and voices of dissent and dissatisfaction are already emanating from the RJD camp. Right from accepting Nitish's leadership in the run-up to the Assembly elections to accepting his seven-point resolve as the common manifesto of the Grand Alliance without demur, Lalu has backed Nitish to the hilt in recent times. He has also admonished his party leaders who have fired salvos on Nitish.
Many RJD leaders find it baffling. They believe that Lalu has chosen to play second fiddle to Nitish only to damage the prospects of his own party in the long run. Some of them privately cite the example of the BJP which had let Nitish call the shots as the leader of their alliance much to its own detriment. Hence, they want Lalu to keep the Nitish government on a tight leash instead of giving it a free hand. They believe that the RJD, being the largest party in the state Assembly, should play a proactive role within the coalition.
The RJD president, of course, has his own reason to back the Nitish-led government without any precondition. He has made it abundantly clear to his partymen that the voters had given their mandate to the alliance to serve the poor and any bid to destabilise the state government will clearly go against the verdict of the people in the state.
Political analysts, nonetheless, believe that he may well have other reasons to accept Nitish's leadership for the remainder of his tenure.
First, he knows it very well that his party cannot form the government on its own without seeking the support of the BJP. Given his political ideology, that is a near-impossible situation. Second, given his past, Nitish might restore his ties with the BJP if the RJD ever tried to rock the boat of his government. It is, therefore, a lose-lose situation for Lalu, as he is left with no option, despite having the largest number of MLAs at his disposal.
Above all, Lalu should know it by now that Nitish is his own man who would not like to be seen as a submissive chief minister. Even during his alliance with the BJP, he had disallowed anybody from the saffron party to dictate terms to him. It was primarily because of his firmness that he was able to push several minority welfare projects in those days, regardless of the reservations of his coalition partner.
In his present term also, Nitish has dropped ample hints of his style of functioning. He recently underlined his government's commitment to ensure the rule of the law and vigorously pursue the agenda of inclusive growth with justice in order to drive home an unambiguous message to his allies.
Under such circumstances, Lalu is hardly in a position to play the big brother's role. If he does anything now to create hurdles for Nitish, he will be primarily seen as a betrayer of the great Bihari cause.
The best option for him, therefore, is to remain a fence-sitter and applaud Nitish for pursuing his development agenda - just the way the BJP did earlier in Bihar. But he has to remember at the same time that it is the leader of the alliance who walks away with all the credit for the performance of his government. If he thinks his party will reap equal benefits, he may well be mistaken.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)