India won but Bihar lost yesterday.
Nitish Kumar may have scored a
self-goal against Narendra Modi but he is actually the biggest loser with RJD emerging
as the largest party - and with him the people of Bihar.
JDU was always the largest
political party in the Bihar assembly post Lalu-Rabri regime - but now the
baton has changed hands - and it is now with Lalu Prasad Yadav - yesterday
onwards.
And in spite of all the high
hopes, the future looks scary - what if Lalu's presence in the governance
causes the same old malaise to return again?
Nitish and Lalu trace their
origins to the same tree but Nitish took a different political streak to emerge
as Lalu Prasad Yadav's sworn enemy in Bihar politics - the sworn enemy that has
been Nitish's 'friend of convenience' for quite some time now - the
'friend-turned-foe-turned-friend' who was initially adamant on 'not accepting
Nitish's projection as the chief-ministerial candidate of JDU-RJD-Congress
alliance'.
Now, that
'friend-turned-foe-turned-friend' is Nitish Kumar's big brother in Bihar's
politics - and he gave enough indications of it during the presser held last
afternoon after the results. Not so long ago, everyone was busy writing political
obituary of Lalu - and bang! - he is back in the game now - with a bang.
Well, Lalu, being convicted in
the fodder scam, is legally barred from electoral politics and political office
and his party RJD has no mass leaders except him - and that is the most
plausible reason to make him go smoothly with Nitish - otherwise Nitish can
easily split his party, a valid possibility - but that doesn't take care of political
necessities of the day to day politics - that doesn't take care of the bad
elements that have long been associated with RJD's politics in Bihar – a system
that Nitish Kumar famously used to term 'Jungleraj'.
Even if Bihar was not on some
highway of development, especially during Nitish's second term, he really did
bring fundamental and positive changes in Bihar's governance and for that
reason, he remains the undisputed CM choice of Bihar, but the numerical key of
the government is with 'big brother' Lalu now.
With RJD lording over JDU, the
threat of going back to the dark days of Lalu-Rabri regime are quite real. Nitish
has this tough task of managing a difficult and unprincipled alliance with
Lalu's party and we hope he succeeds or else, we will soon have another round
of assembly polls in Bihar.
Or would some sense prevail on
Lalu’s style of politics now??
Or can there be political
developments that will lead us to see another round of JDU-BJP bonhomie?
That is in future, but for now,
Lalu Prasad Yadav has emerged as the only winner in these Bihar assembly
polls.