Message from Bihar: Modi neither unstoppable nor unbeatable

On Tuesday, when Nitish Kumar resigned as the NDA's chief minister, there was a mad scramble among television journalists and experts in their studios to show him in poor light. Significantly, most of them missed that Nitish has sent a loud and clear message to all who are inimical to the BJP that Modi is neither unstoppable nor unbeatable.

And Kumar has done this twice in the last seven years when the BJP got a taste of its own medicine. First, it was in 2015 when Kumar, during the peak popularity of Narendra Modi, gave the BJP a crushing and decisive defeat in the Assembly polls when his alliance won 177 seats in the 243-member House. The BJP leaders, riding high on their divisive agenda and threatening a particular section to send to Pakistan, had eggs on their faces when the Bihar voters outrightly rejected the saffron agenda in November 2015.

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Shown the door

Nearly seven years later, the BJP has been shown the door again in Bihar. When the state Assembly will be reconvened, the BJP will be the only party sitting in the Opposition with no one ready to join hands with them. All the seven other political parties – the JD(U), RJD, Congress, CPI, CPM, CPI-ML and HAM - have pledged their loyalty towards Nitish and formed a Grand Alliance to keep the saffron brigade at bay.

Call it a coincidence, it was August 9, the August Kranti Diwas (when the nation was celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Quit India movement, a call given on August 9, 1942) when Kumar decided to dump the BJP and quit the NDA on Tuesday.

A few days back, it looked an arduous task to rein in a muscular BJP that had left no stone unturned in arm-twisting its allies and the Opposition throughout the country. The call for an "Opposition-mukt Bharat" and, in particular, BJP chief J P Nadda's much-hyped assertion that "regional parties will fade away by 2025" gave a dangerous signal of democracy being throttled by the ruling dispensation.

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Already the BJP has toppled or used every trick in the book to come to power in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and, to some extent, Bihar too (in July 2017).

More than anything, the ruling party at the Centre has reportedly used its investigating agencies like the CBI, Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate to corner its opponents across the states. While reams of newsprint have gone into highlighting CBI and ED raids at Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi's house on numerous occasions, no one actually knows what was recovered during those raids.

Kumar, who enjoys a relatively clean image and is perceived as the one who enforced the rule of law in Bihar, has never come under the CBI or ED radar. Among the current crop of leaders, he enjoys an image of an honest leader compared to his counterparts in different States. On previous occasions (when he was not part of the NDA), he dared to call Modi's bluff when he questioned the Prime Minister's tall claims of providing Bihar with a Rs 1.25 lakh crore package in 2015.

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Index of opposition unity

At a time when there is an acute dearth of Opposition leaders who could match Modi's oratorial or administrative skills and pose a challenge to the PM during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Kumar could easily become the index of Opposition unity in the days to come.

"We have constantly said that Nitish Ji is the Prime Minister material as he is the most experienced Chief Minister," averred Tejashwi, his new deputy. The JD(U), too, feels that "Nitish could become the new fulcrum when it comes to bringing all opposition parties, inimical to the BJP, under one roof."

The only drawback with the JD(U) strongman is that he represents a party confined largely to a state that sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha. But it's an undeniable fact that given the educational qualifications (Kumar is an electrical engineer from NIT, Patna) and vast administrative experience (he has been Union minister for railways, agriculture, roads and surface transport), besides being the chief minister of Bihar since 2005, he is cut above the rest to pose a challenge to Modi in 2024.

Those who may treat this as a far-fetched assumption should recall how and why Kumar said, on the last day of the campaign during November 2020 Assembly elections: "This is my last Assembly poll."

All his words are measured, and risks are calculated.