That the Bharatiya Janata Party has taken away Nitish Kumar from the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance is for all to see.
But this election season, will the Nitish-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar be able to take away the credit for giving four lakh jobs and hiking the quota for the marginalised classes up to 65% from the Rashtriya Janata Dal and its leader, Tejashwi Yadav?
Veteran socialist leader and RJD national vice-president Shivanand Tivary said it will be impossible for Nitish Kumar and the BJP to spin these as successes of just Nitish alone.
“The caste-survey, the raising of reservation to 65% and giving jobs on a huge scale are part of the larger cause of social justice that is central to RJD’s politics. Nitish was compelled to do it by Tejashwi, who had promised the same in the 2020 assembly elections,” Tivary said.
Tejashwi, who has now lost his position as the deputy chief minister, had explicitly promised to give 10 lakh jobs in the event of coming to power in 2020 assembly polls. His promise clicked. The RJD emerging as the single largest party, with 79 MLAs. Nitish whose Janata Dal (United) was reduced to 45 seats in those polls had purportedly wondered in close circles as to where Tejashwi thought he would get the money to deliver this promise.
Nitish dumped the BJP and shifted to the RJD-Congress-Left alliance on August 9, 2022. In his Independence Day address on August 15, 2022, Nitish announced that he would, in fact, implement Tejashwi’s promise. By then Tejashwi had become his deputy and was present at the event. The chief minister promised more than 10 lakh jobs. He distributed 2.20 lakh appointment letters to teachers in an unparalleled spectacle at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on behalf of the education department which was understood to be under the RJD.
The flight of Nitish to the BJP on Sunday, January 28, was preceded by an advertisement war on the credit for development in Bihar. Tejashwi’s image had notably been missing on the state government’s advertisements, which had carried the picture of the CM alone.
This irked RJD cadres who displayed pictures of Tejashwi with a list of his achievements at the RJD headquarters in retaliation.
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That the BJP-JD(U)’s strategists were at work to take – along with Nitish – the credit for giving jobs became evident when the CM in his first statement after switching sides to the BJP said, “I was working hard for Bihar and they [without naming RJD] were interested in taking credit alone.”
In response, Tejashwi said that the CM had a problem with RJD getting the credit for its achievements. “We were the largest component of the grand alliance government. We had education, health, tourism, sports and other key departments in our quota. The RJD ministers worked hard to fulfil our promises to the people. How could we be denied the credit for our work?” he told reporters.
Social justice
Whatever the BJP claims, it is a fact that the Hindutva party was feeling hugely insecure in Bihar with Nitish Kumar on the alliance’s side. Bihar under the alliance had produced what looked like a potent counter-narrative with the centrality of social justice in its operations. It appeared to make good on the promise – jiski jitni bhagidari, uski utni hissedari or proportionate representation to the marginalised classes in governance apparatus. Issues of disparity, deprivation, livelihood, health and sustenance concerning the common people took prominence against Hindutva politics which aggressively pursued religious issues.
Creating buzz in the name of the Hindu deity Ram, the BJP was confident that the Narendra Modi juggernaut would sail through smoothly in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. But that it might be stuck in Bihar – where with Nitish BJP had bagged 39 seats out of 40 in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections – was not lost on them.
At the core of the BJP’s “insecurity” was Lalu Prasad Yadav and RJD’s proven track record as a champion of social justice.
The novelty of Tejashwi was he had added economic justice – emphasising on jobs, sports, tourism, IT and investment – to expanding on his father’s battle for social justice and attracting youths to his party. Much ahead of Nitish’s entry into the alliance, the RJD under the stewardship of Tejashwi was demanding caste surveys, raising the quota for the backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, while at once launching a frontal attack on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issues of radical Hindutva, the subverting constitution, subjugating democratic institutions and misusing investigating agencies.
Also read: With Job ‘Mahakumbha’, Nitish Kumar Foregrounds Importance of Promises Kept
Ostensibly, Nitish carrying the socialist legacy was favourable to the social justice plank. But he was able to carry out the caste survey, raise the reservation limit up to 65% and give employment on a huge scale to the youths only after he joined the alliance. In fact, the demand for the Caste Census at the national level became the basis for the JDU-RJD alliance with Nitish and Tejashwi forwarding this demand to the Union government. Modi’s government opposed the caste survey in Bihar in the Supreme Court, subsequently.
The Bihar caste survey and reservation limit raise provided the first potent template for the INDIA bloc to counter the BJP’s Hindutva drive. In fact, Rahul Gandhi, despite the veiled objections from his party’s old guards, adopted the Bihar ‘model’ and promised the Caste Census in his campaigns in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
Of course, the BJP won these three states in the recent assembly polls and tried to create the perception that Hindutva politics had defeated “caste politics”. But the fact remains that the Congress upped or retained its vote-percentage as it lost marginally in terms of votes, if not in terms of seats, to the BJP.
Bharat Ratna
But despite putting up a brave face, the Hindutva party was, apparently, in the grip of fear about the social justice plank, at least, in Bihar which had Lalu Prasad Yadav holding on to his strength with the backward classes and minorities.
Lalu had decisively defeated the BJP in all elections – assembly and Lok Sabha – from 1991 to 2004 when the Hindutva party under L.K Advani and A.B Vajpayee had made reasonable inroads in other states of the Hindi heartland, including Uttar Pradesh. And despite his party losing power to Nitish with the BJP in 2005, Lalu’s RJD stayed strong with its support of the backward classes including the Yadavs who are the single largest backward caste and the minorities at the grassroots level in Bihar.
The BJP had symbolic as well as substantive reasons to fear the prospect of Lalu united with Nitish. Even if Nitish was reduced to 15% vote-share in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, his presence in the alliance could have been the “plus” factor to the alliance in Bihar.
It was calculating all these factors that the Bharat Ratna appears to have been conferred upon Karpoori Thakur – the father of the social justice movement – posthumously, a day after Narendra Modi consecrated the Ram temple at Ayodhya.
Notably, Nitish had thanked the PM for the same in his address at the event to celebrate Karpoori Thakur’s 100th anniversary at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on January 24. He also attacked the “promotion of sons and daughters” – without naming the RJD. He said that like Karpoori Thakur he too had not promoted his family members in politics.
Nitish has now replaced Lalu’s son with Samrat Choudhary, son of the famous Koiri leader of his time and former minister Shakuni Choudhary, as his deputy.
As Tejashwi Yadav has said, “Khela ab shuru hua hai“. The game has begun now.
Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author, media educator, and independent researcher in folklore.
