Nitish's socio-economic plank could decimate BJP's Hindutva pitch

The political realignment of Nitish Kumar with Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi Yadav could pit an augmented version of Bihar’s over four-decade-long politics of social justice against a jilted BJP’s aggressive Hindutva pitch.

Since the 1970s, the politics of Bihar, particularly in its narrative and the conduct of its dominant figures, has been determined by the ideals of Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP). The two had helped lay the foundation of a socialistic polity through their aggressive push for samajik nyay ki raajneeti (politics of social justice).

Lalu, Nitish, Ram Vilas Paswan, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Sushil Modi and many others came up in Bihar politics riding on this narrative of samajik nyay. Irrespective of the affiliations these leaders had in later years, with the Congress, the BJP or the erstwhile Janata Party, the stamp of Lohia-JP politics was always evident in their public outreach. Be it Lalu or Nitish, Paswan or even the BJP’s Sushil Modi, each of these leaders relied heavily on the template of social justice politics to build their individual political stature, variously appropriating Lohia and JP whenever needed.

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While the plank of social justice is still far from its expiry date, manifest from Bihar’s often derided caste politics, Mahagathbandhan 2.0 of Nitish’s JD(U), Lalu’s RJD and the Congress, which now also has as constituents the CPI (M-L), CPM and the CPI, is expected to give samajik nyay an amplified reboot that has aarthik nyay (economic justice) as a ‘salient addition’.

Tejashwi’s pitch

This is evident in Tejashwi’s continuing stress on providing employment to Bihar’s youth ever since he returned as Nitish’s deputy. Creating new employment avenues in Bihar and employing at least 10 lakh Biharis with government jobs was among his key promises when Bihar went to polls in November 2020.

The CPI(M-L), the CPM and the CPI, which had joined the RJD-Congress alliance and gone on to collectively win 16 seats in the Assembly, had also advocated strident economic reforms for Bihar with a singular focus on creating employment as a means to alleviate the rampant social and financial backwardness of the state.

With Tejashwi’s emphasis on employment gaining traction during the poll campaign, the JD(U)-BJP coalition was forced to announce that if voted to power, it would give 19 lakh jobs in government to the youth – a promise that, of course, remained unfulfilled in the nearly 20 months that Nitish led the government in alliance with the BJP.

Sources in the RJD told The Federal that economic justice for the people of Bihar was an important and well-thought out promise that Tejashwi had included in his party’s campaign.

“Social justice has been and will always be the foundation of our politics because we are followers of Lohia, JP and Karpoori Thakur but in today’s context it is as important to work for the social upliftment of those communities who continue to be oppressed and backward because of historical exploitation or systemic failures as it is important to work for their economic upliftment. Tejashwi ji is a young leader; he can empathise with the agony of Bihar’s jobless youth and he is very clear – social justice and economic justice are both equally important,” a senior RJD leader told The Federal.

Ire over Agnipath scheme

Bihar has consistently ranked among the states with the worst unemployment rates in the country. Data from the government as well as independent organisations such as the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) show that the state’s unemployment rate has been hovering between 14 and 18 per cent for the past two years, more than double the national average.

Earlier this month, the Centre informed Parliament that at almost 40 per cent, Bihar was also among the states with the lowest Worker Population Ratio in 2020-21. Further, as per CMIE data, a staggering 34.2 per cent of Bihar’s graduate workforce is without a job.

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In June, Bihar had seen the most violent protests across any Indian state against the Centre’s controversial Agnipath scheme that envisages short-term recruitment for the Armed Forces. With Bihar accounting for a substantial chunk of recruitments made across the Armed Forces, the scheme had irked the state’s youth because it promised only a four-year recruitment programme with a guarantee of re-employment only for 25 per cent of the total recruits (Agniveers) while the remaining would be ‘retired’ from service off with no pension or gratuity but only a one-time Seva Nidhi package amounting to about ₹12 lakh.

Though Tejashwi and other Opposition parties had appealed to the protestors to agitate peacefully, they were united in their condemnation of the scheme. Significantly, Nitish, who was then a BJP ally, had expressed solidarity with the protestors and sought a rethink of the Agnipath.

Also read:  Nitish severed ties with NDA to save his secular image, JD(U) from ruin

Sources in the new Bihar Mahagathbandhan told The Federal that festering unrest over growing joblessness coupled with rising prices and Bihar’s continuing economic backwardness had made it clear that the Grand Alliance must aggressively reboot a model of social justice politics that has economic justice as its key pillar.

BJP’s model crippled

The electoral benefits of the Mahagathbandhan embracing such a model are not too difficult to imagine. With Nitish bringing his JD(U) back into the bloc, the BJP’s social engineering formula for winning elections in the state has been dealt a major blow.

Unlike Uttar Pradesh, another state famous for its caste-based politics, the BJP in Bihar relied heavily on Nitish and, to a lesser degree, the late Ram Vilas Paswan, to bring a substantial chunk of the non-Yadav backward class – groupings such as the most backward or extremely classes – and also the Dalit and Mahadalit voters into the NDA’s fold.

Though Nitish belongs to the Kurmi caste that has a less than 2 per cent vote bank in Bihar, as chief minister since 2005 (barring a 10-month period in 2014-2015 when he had made way for Jitan Ram Manjhi) he had craftily cultivated an image distinct from Lalu’s and projected himself as the flag bearer of welfare initiatives for MBCs, EBCs and Dalits.

From largely a Bania party of the 1980s, the BJP had successfully sunk its roots into Bihar’s Upper Caste vote bank of Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihars over the past three decades. Under Modi’s leadership, the party began wooing OBCs nationally by increasing representation of various caste leaders in government and celebrating icons of smaller castes.

However, in Bihar, it continued to rely on the goodwill Nitish’s administrative and political outreach had generated among these classes to get their votes, while its own leaders such as Giriraj Singh, Nityanand Rai and others aggressively pushed the Hindutva agenda.

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With the JD(U) back in the Grand Alliance, the grouping theoretically has a combined vote share of well over 50 per cent if the 2020 Assembly poll voting pattern is taken as a yardstick. In the 2020 polls, the NDA, which then had as its constituents the BJP, the JD(U), Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM and Mukesh Sahni’s VIP, had a combined vote share of 37.26 per cent, of which the contribution of JD(U) was 15.39 per cent. The Grand Alliance of the RJD, the Left parties and the Congress had a combined vote share of 37.23 per cent.

With the new alignment and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP having merged with the JD(U), the Grand Alliance can theoretically boost its combined vote share by nearly 17 per cent (adding the vote shares of the JD(U) and the RLSP). This is significantly higher than the 41.9 per cent votes that the original Mahagathbandhan, comprising just the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress, had polled in the 2015 Bihar Assembly polls to come to power after 10 years of the JD(U) and BJP ruling the state under Nitish.

As such, the BJP, which on its own has a vote share of around 25 per cent in the state, now has to desperately search for not just new allies but also an acceptable face that can realistically counter the combined appeal of Nitish and Tejashwi. The party’s Hindutva pitch, which until now had the buffer of social justice politics that Nitish and even the BJP’s own Sushil Modi projected, has evidently not worked as successfully in creating a saffron hysteria seen elsewhere in the Hindi heartland.

Also read: Bihar puts spoke in the wheel as BJP juggernaut rolls from state to state

The BJP lost an opportunity of endearing itself to the backward castes in Bihar when it remained opposed to the emotive idea of a caste-based census even after Nitish, who at the time was still in the NDA, joined forces with Tejashwi and the Congress in demanding such an enumeration.

Nitish had already announced that the Bihar government will proceed with a caste-census of its own – an idea that is likely to get a boost under Mahagathbandhan 2.0. If Tejashwi also succeeds in getting Nitish to act quickly on the employment front, it would weaponise the new social and economic justice plank that the Grand Alliance wishes to counter the BJP’s Hindutva with.