Bihar polls: Fluid caste loyalties, alliances keep parties on their toes

"Ye jaati hi hain jo jaati nahin hain,” (this caste thing refuses to go away) has been the frequent refrain of socialist leader Sharad Yadav, who often cited his own victory from Madhepura, a Yadav-dominated constituency, to buttress the point whenever he interacts with journalists in the national capital. For long, caste considerations have had a vice-like grip on politics in the states and even at the national level, both on the minds of politicians and political parties and on the minds of voters.

While the grassroots picture during the Bihar election campaign this time seems to indicate a loosening of this vice-like grip of caste and religion-based politics, there is a caveat. No party has risked abandoning the caste calculus altogether. It is visible in both candidate selection as well as in the alliances that have been formed.

Thus, the BJP has accorded real VIP status on Mukesh Sahani, a young well-known face of the Nishad or Mallah (boatmen) caste, allotting 11 seats to his party, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) from its own quota, with an eye on the community’s votes (6-7% of the population) in regions along the river Ganga in particular; the JD(U) has allocated seven seats to the Hindustan Awam Morcha, led by former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who belongs to the Mushahar (mouse catcher/mouse eater) community, which is spread randomly across the state but is somewhat concentrated in the Magadh region – the four districts of Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad and Jehanabad.

Sahani, who projected himself as the ‘son of Mallah’ used to be a movie set decorator in Bollywood before he set his eyes on politics in 2013. In North Bihar, which has been a RJD-Congress stronghold in the past, the Nishads are assertive and numerically significant. In half a dozen other districts, including in the LJP strongholds of Khagaria and Vaishali, Nishads can determine who wins the seats.

Manjhi, who became the “accidental chief minister” for a few months from May 2014 to February 2015, and who has never since tired of saying “I am ready to become chief minister again” won just one seat for his party in the 2015 Assembly poll, but for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, he serves as a kind of counter to Chirag Paswan’s LJP in Khagaria and Vaishali. Besides, he can also draw some 3-5% of votes in Assembly seats in Magadh.

With the elections promising to be a close race this time, no party wants to lose even a miniscule percentage of the votes in any seat, especially if it is fielding an untried candidate. Upendra Kushwaha, despite being the face of the Koiri community (6-7% of voters), put up a devastating performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which he scored a duck. Nitish Kumar belongs to Luv (Kurmi) and Kushwaha to Kush (Koiri) communities -- the names tracing back their origins to Lord Rama’s sons, Luv and Kush – but the former still commands a majority of the votes of both communities.

While many question the Congress contesting on 70 seats, 45 of which it has not won even once in the last two decades, the logic behind the RJD accepting the demand may be to prevent any division of Muslim votes, particularly when Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM has thrown its hat in the ring and is carrying out an aggressive campaign in alliance with Kushwaha and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The upper castes, especially Brahmins, have been soft towards the Congress and an alliance with that party helps Tejashwi Yadav smoothen the rough edge of the RJD’s aggressive MY (Muslim-Yadav) politics or the OBC-Muslim politics practised by Lalu Prasad, which has evoked limited appeal in the Nitish Kumar era.

A poor result by the smaller partners -- Congress and Left in the opposition grand alliance and VIP and HAM in the NDA -- could have adverse effect on the lead partners, more so as growing indications from the ground suggest that the political battle this time could chiefly be between the BJP and the RJD.

Sahani, who failed to make an impact in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and in the 2015 state polls in alliance with the BJP, himself lost the poll in 2019 to LJP’s Mehboob Ali Qaisar in Khagaria by a whopping margin of 2.5 lakh votes, but at that time, he was in alliance with the RJD. By all accounts, the votes of the smaller castes will matter more in tilting the outcomes as their loyalties seem to be fluid this time and no party can be certain of them.

The RJD has a general hold on the Muslim and Yadav (MY) votes, the BJP on upper caste and EBC votes, the JD(U) on EBCs, upper castes and Mahadalits, and Chirag Paswan on Paswan Dalits plus a fraction of upper castes. But there is no broad winning social coalition in sight, though numerically, the RJD seems to be on a strong wicket. Much in this election will depend on how the alliances play out and whether alliance parties are in a position to get their votes transferred to each other, which is always a difficult thing to be able to do.

With no clear winner in sight, Bihar may witness a close election in each of the 243 Assembly seats this time. One could argue that that means a deepening of democracy down to the Assembly level, which can only be a good thing.