As the
Mahagathbandhan (the Great Alliance) rounds into the last lap of the Bihar Marathon, Nitish Kumar has given an interview to
The Economic Times that tellingly delineates the emerging architecture of Opposition politics at the national level and, therefore deserves wider consideration than it has perhaps received.
First, he says, "anti-Congressism is dead". That is a remarkable observation coming from one who cut his political teeth in the JP movement of the mid-70s that led to the Emergency. Notwithstanding the ignominious collapse of the Janata Party within three years of its being formed, through much of the last 40 years, the Congress has remained the focus of Opposition politics. Now it is becoming the focal point of Opposition politics. For while the Congress has faded out of power in most states, it still remains the only opposition party with a widespread if thinning national presence. It is in acknowledgement of the continuing relevance of the Congress to confronting the BJP juggernaut that the
Mahagathbandhan has provided space for the Congress to contest as many as 40 seats in the on-going Bihar elections, about half of which the Congress seems to be on the verge of winning.
That leads to Nitish Kumar's second eye-catching observation: "Rahul Gandhi is the top leader in the Congress". He adds, "I do not see any immaturity in him...I do not find him lacking clarity on issues." For Nitish to have moved away from the empty rhetoric of so-called "dynastic politics" to recognizing Rahul as his principal Congress partner in the
Mahagathbandhan amounts to not only a clear-eyed view of the Congress reality, but also its acceptability as an essential component of any national alliance to oust the BJP. "Congress," Nitish underlines, "is still a political force. Today, even in its worst situation, it got 11 crore votes".
And the prospect of ousting the BJP is becoming clearer every day as the nation's politics moves towards the next great setback for the allegedly invincible Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo after their Delhi disaster. 2014 is emerging as an aberration, not a trend. Says Nitish of the Lok Sabha election, the outcome was the consequence of general disillusionment with UPA II and division in the ranks of the non-BJP parties. The anti-UPA sentiment is already becoming history while the non-BJP Opposition has begun to learn the advantages of closing ranks. Thus, 2014 is turning out to be "a one-time affair. They mistook it for all time".
Finding the tide running against them, the RSS-BJP is back to its traditional mode of divisive communalization. "They kept trying to carry out their agenda of polarization. They called our government a pro-Muslim government, not a secular government". This has been the time-tested technique of the Sangh Parivar - claim to be secular on the surface while digging to widen the divide below. It is a political technology that has had sporadic but never sustained success; yet, that being the basic ideology of the Hindutva forces, sooner than later they find refuge in such seeking to survive through divide and rule.
Nitish observes, "
Sarkar bana lena saral hai, desh chalana mushkil (It is easy to form the government, difficult to govern the country)". 500 days of slogan-mongering by the Modi government have shown that alliteration, acronyms and
jumlas are not enough; there has to be delivery. But where there has been assiduous image-building, there has been little effective governance. Old schemes have been renamed and trotted out as new, but there is a complete want of imagination in giving substance to the Modi brand. Despite a very favourable external economic environment, symbolized by the sharp drop in oil prices by nearly $100 a barrel from the peak they attained when the UPA was in office, the rupee today wallows at its worst ever exchange rate vis-a-vis the dollar, reflecting the precipitate rise in imports without any corresponding increase in exports. The spiralling price of pulses shows a complete absence of understanding of basic mass consumer requirements. Compared to the rhetoric of the Prime Minister's foreign gyrations, the results on the ground are thin to the point of disillusionment. Hugging Obama while calling him "Barak" as if he were a
jigri yaar, and shedding copious tears in Mark Zuckerberg's presence make for good photo-ops but do no constitute foreign policy successes.
That is why there is a pattern to their promoting "communal polarization," as Nitish says, "by resorting to small ones" when they cannot "carry out a big incident". That is why Dadri and Modi's deafening silence, followed (and that too only once) by a hollow muted response "latching on to the President's statement", in the face of repeated outrageous statements by his own MPs and MLAs, ministers at the centre and the states, assorted party colleagues and RSS cadres has resulted in Dadri having a "national and international impact". If there were not a strategic meaning to all this, the impact of Dadri could have been contained instead of spinning out into a number of related incidents, such as the murder of two young Dalits being followed by central minister V.K. Singh's offensive comparison of the brutal killings to a stone being cast at a stray dog.
Nitish points out that it is wrong to consider incidents like Dadri "merely as a law and order problem". He says, "No matter what your ideological background is, the moment you swear to uphold the constitution, your role should be guided by it." Yet, Modi failed to see (or deliberately blinded himself to it) that far from being a matter for a Superintendent of Police to deal with, this required the PM to understand that "our country is so diverse that you have to be sensitive to it" and as PM recognize the "atmosphere of distrust being created in our society". That is what "
raj dharma" is all about.
It is on reservations, an issue stirred in the cauldron of Bihar's current election by none less than Mohan Bhagwat, that Nitish shows himself at his perceptive best. He points out that "reservation is not meant to address the issue of economic backwardness." For that "there are several schemes that can be run. No one will have a problem with that. The poor belong to all castes." Where reservation comes into its own "is to give a feeling of equal importance. For centuries you have been on the margins and reservation is to tell you that you are no longer on the fringes but in mainstream society". What Lalu achieved during his long innings, says Nitish, was in giving "disadvantaged groups the feeling that they could run a government. Those who were not allowed to speak could make themselves heard."
It is such clarity over social and economic issues, and the key importance of secularism in our scheme of things, that make Nitish the formidable contender he is not only in the limited context of the Bihar elections but in the larger context of the future evolution of our national polity. He is proving himself a leader of not just state relevance but of national importance.
(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.