DNA Exclusive | Jungle raj, legacy of corruption, 1 million jobs: Why 'Nitish for PM in 2024' is easier said than done

Nitish Kumar realigning with the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ brought down curtains on the high-voltage political drama that unfolded in Bihar with the seven-time chief minister ending a nearly three-decade alliance with the BJP. Kumar is now an ally of the RJD and the Congress and Lalu Yadav’s younger son Tejashwi Yadav is his deputy. 

The two have started off their journey to rule for the next three years a state, which is quite familiar to the political skullduggery, opportunism and above them all, Kumar’s one-eighties and changing ‘all-weather allies’ with every weather change.       

Even the Lalu-Kumar camaraderie is not new to Bihar as the due has ruled the state for over 30 years. But the reason over which Kumar dumped the RJD in 2017 is something which stands tall before him even after five years. 

Crime and corruption

A clean-collared politician who boasts of his ‘no corruption’ stand had left the RJD following Lalu and Tejashwi’s name emerging in scams. But five years on, had has tied up with the RJD again, that too when those corruption charges against the Yadavs have intriguingly deepened. 

Lalu Prasad now stands convicted in five fodder scam cases, with four convictions coming since July 2017. He has spent most of these years in jail before getting bail last year. There has been little progress in the cases lodged against Tejashwi Yadav that the RJD says were a result of “political vendetta unleashed through agencies”.  

Experts believe that Kumar’s development card could help dilute the taint of corruption charges against the RJD. But have the people of Bihar forgotten those scams and scandals? To some extent, Yes! And that was evident in the 2020 Assembly polls, when despite the absence of Lalu, the RJD emerged as the single-largest party. 

However, political commentator Amitabh Tiwari opines that while the BJP will use these corruption charges as a weapon to attack the Mahagathbandhan, Nitish faces the challenge of establishing credibility given his citation of the same charges as a reason for quitting the previous alliance with the RJD. 

The next big hurdle way before Kumar-Tejashwi, much ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha and 2025 Bihar Assembly polls, is the law and order situation, an issue which Kumar has been widely appreciated for.  

Bihar may have a glorious past, but it has only also seen some of the worst caste massacres, incidents of kidnapping of doctors and businessmen for ransom, extortion, rape-murder cases and what not. 
The task of reputation building, for himself as well as for the RJD, will not be a cakewalk for Nitish, who had raked up the issue of ‘jungle raj’ in the 2020 elections to target his foe-turned-friends-turned-foe, who are again his ‘friends’ now. 

Failing to win people’s trust on law and order, and development graphs will not only prove detrimental for the grand alliance, but also an opportunity for the BJP, which has been flexing muscles and trying every bit to rule the state on its own. 

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The burden of Tejwashi’s 1 million jobs promise

The leverage that a leader or his party gets when a government changes in the middle of the Legislative Assembly’s term is that he doesn’t have to grapple with the baggage of poll promises made by him in the past. But that’s not the case with Tejashwi, who has set the bar high for himself by accepting the responsibility of fulfilling his old promises.

His narrative-setting promise of 10 lakh government jobs in the run-up to 2020 Assembly polls may have helped the RJD emerge as the single-largest party, but now in power, that promise has come as a burden for Kumar. 

According to political expert Dr Suvrokamal Dutta, fulfilling on the ‘populist’ promise within a month is next to impossible. “Even an economist with Aladin’s Chirag can't do it, even if Centre gives full support. This will only lead to a colossal tug-o-war between the JD(U) and RJD.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Tiwari too opines that fulfillment of job promise has to the first point of action of the new government, failing on which will only cause it damages ahead of 2024 and 2025. 
On Independence Day, Kumar asserted that his new government was not only committed to fulfilling the promise of 10 lakh jobs, made by his deputy Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, but would like to exceed the employment generation target twice over.

Bur experts believe that it is easier said than done. This can be taken as a fact since Bihar already spends around Rs 26,423 crore in salaries for its 344,000 government employees. It spends an additional Rs 26,314 crore in salaries of various contractual employees, such as teachers, that the state has been hiring lately to meet specific needs. Contractual hiring keeps the government free of pension responsibilities and keeps recurring non-planned expenditures under control.

The big battle of 2024

Nitish may have time and again refused to be a prime ministerial candidate, but the way the unfolding of events in the past few months have eventually placed him opposite Narendra Modi. This is also in view of the failed attempts of cobbling a united anti-BJP front by regional satraps like KCR, MK Stalin and Mamata Banerjee. 

However, several leaders in the opposition think it is too early to link the JD(U)-BJP split with the Opposition strategy for 2024. Way before the Lok Sabha elections, the RJD-JD(U)-Congresss+ government will have to deal with the challenges lying ahead of it in the state itself. 

The RJD's Muslim-Yadav base, JD(U)'s support among Kurmis, MBCs and Mahadalits and the pockets of influence of Congress and CPI-ML, make it a formidable alliance, one that could inflict losses on the NDA. But that will be possible only if the new government manages to outshine Modi’s charisma in the state, where the BJP emerged as the second largest party in the 2020 Assembly polls, despite lacking credible faces. 

Also, Tiwari and Dutta opine that running the government will itself prove to be a road full of thorns for the RJD-JD(U) alliance, given the fact that the Yadavs still see Kumar with suspicion owing to his his numerous ‘U-turns’. 

Notably, this is what Lalu Yadav had said back in 2017 when Kumar had moved out of the Mahagathbandhan: “Nitish Kumar is the Paltu Ram of Bihar politics. He has again proved that he can do anything for power. He has neither principles nor ideology but only greed for power.”

Nitish has national ambitions and Tejashwi needs to make a mark in Bihar politics beyond alliances. These goals can be achieved only and only when the two “friends” are able to wash the stains of past. 

But Kumar will also have to understand that this is not 2015, and his party is not powerful as before. 

The JD(U) is a much weaker party than it was in 2017. It had 71 seats then, it has just 45 now. On the other hand, the RJD has become stronger and now stands at 80 seats. Also, the anti-incumbency Kumar is stronger than ever before.