Nitish, daunting task ahead

After a spectacular election victory, the Grand Alliance government to be formed in Bihar under Nitish Kumar has major tasks and serious challenges ahead of it. With a two-thirds majority in the Assembly, Nitish will not have any legislative constraints in governance. All the parties of the alliance – the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress – will be partners in government, and a formula, based on the number of MLAs of parties, seems to have been evolved for representation in government. The cohesion, mutual understanding and the sense of common purpose that they showed during the election campaign will be needed to a greater extent in government. They have to stick together, not just for a few weeks of campaign as they did, but for five years of government. The task ahead might be more difficult than during the campaign.

Nitish is an experienced administrator and took the state on a path of development like no other chief minister ever had done. The country’s most backward state led all others in GDP growth consistently for many years under his stewardship. The most socially and economically oppressed classes and women benefitted from his policies. Infrastructure, especially roads and bridges, got a major boost, electricity reached the remotest places and its consumption multiplied, and education and health facilities improved. There is need for much more action in all these and other areas. But there has been no industrial investment and no employment opportunities. Agriculture needs mechanisation and modernisation, and land relations have to be reformed. Lalu Prasad did much to empower the backward classes during the 1990s. Nitish is known to have extended the empowerment to more depressed classes without the social tensions and law and order problems that the Lalu government was identified with.

Nitish and Lalu have been rivals for most part of their political careers. But there are both complementary and contradictory elements in their persona and politics. Maximising and building on the commonalities and working on a common agenda for the state would be in the interests of the state and of both leaders. The RJD has more numbers than the JD(U) in the assembly, but Lalu would do well not to use his superiority in numbers to constrain or pressure Nitish Kumar. A smooth working of the Bihar model is important for opposition parties in other states. Lalu has perhaps realised this, because he has said that he would leave the governance of Bihar to Nitish and would himself concentrate on mobilising anti-Modi forces in other states.