Mandal vs Kamandal Politics is Back!!

The time for predictions and election rhetoric has come to a close as it now gives way for the actual fight to begin. The knives are drawn out, the battle lines drawn and what lies ahead is a mouth-watering contest. The Bihar Assembly elections are to be held in five phases from October 12, to let the Election Commission cope with the challenging logistics involved in the exercise. But it will be an even more challenging test for the popularity not just of the “grand alliance” of the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, but also of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is heading the Bharatiya Janata Party-led combine’s campaign. With the BJP having decided not to project a chief ministerial candidate, Mr. Modi’s personal charisma and his 15-month-long record at the Centre will be under scrutiny. The BJP’s decision is dictated not just by the failure of Kiran Bedi, who it chose to challenge Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi Assembly elections earlier this year, but also by the fact that in caste-dominated Bihar, focussing on any one individual could alienate those who do not belong to his or her community. Coming as it would less than a year after the BJP lost Delhi 67-3 to the Aam Aadmi Party, a victory for the grand alliance will give the opposition a shot in the arm. It will also give a fillip to the formation of similar alliances in the context of other State elections. A BJP victory here would bolster the belief that the party, and Mr. Modi, remain invincible.

The key to understanding the upcoming polls in Bihar lies in a rather simple question: will the coming together of Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar work on the ground? Any analysis of the 2014 Lok Sabha election results, which many consider as the lowest point for the Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)], Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Congress, suggests only one possibility — that the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) is comfortably ahead of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).With the Samajwadi Party choosing to pull the plug and exit the alliance, alarm bells have started ringing for the grand alliance. A classic fight between developmental politics and caste politics. In a country where people vote their caste rather than casting their vote, the grand alliance stands to gain hugely from their alliance.

The combined vote share of the grand alliance was more than that of the NDA by at least five percentage points. The parties in the alliance were also comfortably ahead in approximately 130 Assembly segments. This means that the grand alliance can manage a victory by simply ensuring that the voters of the individual parties from 2014 do not drift away. But rarely does 2 plus 2 add up to 4 in electoral politics that too in a tricky state like that of Bihar. The bipolar contest is reminiscent of the Mandal vs Kamandal politics in the heady years of 1990s. While the BJP stands to gain from its alliance with the HAM, LJP and RSLP, the combine of Lalu- Nitish shall surely sweep the Muslim votes. With so much at stake, it is no wonder that both sides are pulling out all the stops. As caste still remains the determining factor, Both the sides have tried their level best to get the social engineering spot on and  only time will tell how far. While the grand alliance is looking to Yadavs, Muslims and Kurmis (which is Mr. Kumar’s own community), who together account for roughly 32 per cent, for core support while working to break into the BJP’s extremely backward castes (EBCs) votes by pitching the battle as one between backward and forward castes. The BJP-led combine hopes to secure the backing of the upper castes, the EBCs and Dalits, even as it leverages Mr. Modi’s life story with the youth and the aspirational class — who account for over half the votes — to shatter the hold of caste. Mr. Kumar and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad are friends-turned-rivals-turned-uneasy-partners who between them – along with Mr. Lalu Prasad’s wife Rabri Devi — have ruled Bihar for some 20 of the last 25 years. If Mr. Lalu Prasad has not abandoned his image of an old-style socialist if backward-caste leader, Mr. Kumar would like people to describe him as a development-oriented, modern politician. The two have come together to stave off political irrelevance, and have so far succeeded in keeping their heads above the water. Mr. Kumar has even hired for his campaign a publicist-strategist who worked for Mr. Modi in the 2014 general elections. Now, it is left to Bihar’s 66 million voters to determine the direction of politics not just in this populous and backward State, but perhaps in the country at large.