Shahnawaz Alam
Both Lalu and Nitish were exposed against Modi wave in general elections held last year. Nitish severed 17 years old alliance for his apprehensions against Modi’s annoitment for the top job at centre. Apparently, he had to face a big jolt having reduced to only two seats from 20 seats in 2009.
All his calculations went against him. He tactically deputed a Mahadalit leader Jitan Ram Manjhi as his successor in order to consolidate almost 14% of dalit and mahadalit vote bank. He had to face another debacle soon after he paved way for Manjhi. Growing proximity between Manjhi and BJP’s central leadership caused frustration for Kumar. As soon as Kumar assumed his new role to work for organization, Manjhi had already started defying his key executive decisions. Nitish decided to topple Manjhi and scrapped some of his key decisions. On the hand other veteran socialist leader Lalu Prasad Yadav decided to extend support to JDU in order to ensure no president rule in the state after Manjhi was expelled with his supporters from JDU. Over the time Manjhi has consolidated his loyalty towards his political maste, BJP. Another rebellion, Pappu Yadav recently floated his own party after being expelled from RJD on the charges of anti party activities. Some highly placed sources establish Pappu’s proximity with BJP too. Likewise many other parties have been floated locally and almost all of them are working to stop Nitish-Lalu duo in Bihar. BJP insiders revealed that the same Maharashtra Model might also be exercised in Bihar.
It is clearly evident that Dalit and Mahadalit voters have gradually shifted their loyalty towards Manjhi from Ramvilas Paswan. However, there no clear consensus inside BJP over leadership. It is clearly evident that Sushil Modi is not an unanimously accepted face in BJP for Bihar assembly elections. If we look into public welfare strategies and decisions, hardy there is anything significant in its bag to appeal among Bihari voters. BJP has not offered anything substantial as of now for Bihar in order to uplift it’s poor human indexes, dilapidated state of healthcare and education system.
BJP is fully dependent on its social engineering whereas people of Bihar are satisfied with development programs under Nitish rule. But, it will be interesting to see how people perceive Nitish Kumar with his new partner Lalu Prasad. In the history of Bihar Lalu is one such leader who reignited socialist movement. To a large extent Lalu succeeded in giving voice to the marginalized classes. But, his party disintegrated due to a few mistakes. One such mistake was choosing incompetent Rabri for the top job as Lalu’s successor. It’s time for him to acknowledge his mistakes publicly. However, he seems to have overshadowed his all such trivial mistakes which were represented more that life in public domain. He brought an unprecedented reforms in Indian railways under UPA-1 rule. Perhaps, he is all set to fight back again but his workers at ground level are reluctant to work with JDU workers. Lalu on several occasions conveyed his workers to be ready for the bigger sacrifices and he himself said that he is ready to gulp any poison in order to stop fascist forces in Bihar. Definitely, Bihar assembly elections will set new precedence in fragmented political landscape of India.
Shahnawaz Alam is a young emerging author
Graduated from AJK Mass Comm. Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia University
No comments:
Post a Comment