Nitish can eat his cake and have it too! Nitish Kumar is fortunate. He does not have to give up power for the sake of his principles. Indeed, he can eat his cake and have it too. Protest against the elevation of Modi in the BJP is guaranteed not to cost him the Chief Minister’s post. The Janata Dal United has 118 members and needs a couple of footloose MLAs to reach the half-way mark of 122 in the Bihar Assembly. He will get them. The BJP with 91 members will be a formidable Opposition, should it come to the parting of ways with the JDU. Being the core of the NDA, the party will be left with the Akalis and the Shiv Sena. But the BJP need not be defensive. It is a legitimate aspiration of all parties to try and win elections. If the BJP reckons that it has no one better to lead its campaign than the go-getter Modi, it cannot be faulted for plumping for him. Should Kumar want to go his own separate way, the BJP should have no regrets. Nor should it go out on a limb to retain him. The opportunistic election-eve stratagem of secularism versus communalism to frighten the minorities has become so trite that it no longer fools even the minorities. Remember it is the same Nitish Kumar who had uttered not a word edgeways against Modi during the 2002 Gujarat riots. At that time, he was Railway Minister in the Vajpayee Government. So, his pain and anguish for the minorities had to be naturally subordinated to his need to cling to his ministerial chair in Delhi. There is a famous line in an Mohammed Rafi number which neatly sums up Nitish’s state of mind: ‘Dard Ab Ja Key Utha, Chot Lagey Der Hui…’ ( loosely translated it means that though one was hurt long ago, only years later I feel the pain.) Eleven years later, when he has lost a lot of ground in Bihar —as evidenced by the recent rout of the JDU in the Maharajganj Lok Sabha by-poll — he hopes to hoodwink the substantial minority vote in the State with his anti-Modi gambit. Simple. Politics has been reduced to an artifice where on the election-eve minorities are sought to be fooled by raucous sloganeering about secularism and communalism. These are convenient categories rival politicians create to suit their electoral exigencies. Kumar might be hoping to emerge as a Prime Ministerial candidate of the so-called Third Front. After all, leaving the NDA entails no sacrifice and yet reinforces his claim as a secular warrior from the Hindi heartland who is better qualified to lead a hotchpotch of regional outfits rather than a Naveen Patanaik or a Mamata Banerjee. The Third-frontrunners might claim to be equidistant from both the national parties, but they will still need the support of one of them to muster a simple majority. Third Front would play on the mutual antipathies of the Congress and the BJP to enlist the support of one of them to cobble together a majority. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, wouldn’t they? How can anyone conceive a Third Front without J Jayalalithaa? And how can anyone expect that she would stand down in favour of someone else for Prime Ministership? And is there any common strand of ideology or programme among these day- dreamers? Kumar in Bihar is essentially an OBC leader who has won power in alliance with the upper- and middle-caste base of the BJP. Patnaik in Odisha has won thrice in a row essentially because the Congress is virtually defunct in the State and he still has remnants of his late father Biju Babu’s charisma. But Jayalalalithaa and Banerjee are leaders in their own rights. It might be easier for Kumar to work with, and under, Modi than to conceive working with the mercurial AIADMK and TMC Supremos.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:45:43 +0000
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