Back in the picture

Having made his point, he threw his head back and said, almost wistfully, 8216;8216;I have no complaints. The Election Commission did a good job, all our grievances were addressed. This election has been a genuine test of popularity 8212; if Laloo wins he is more popular, if we win we are more popular. There will be no scope for doubt.8217;8217;

A little later the same evening, Sushil Modi 8212; BJP leader and Nitish8217;s ally in Bihar 8212; silenced another interrogator keen to know the difference between the February and November elections. 8216;8216;The mood for change,8217;8217; replied Sushil, 8216;8216;was strong, very strong.8217;8217;

The two politicians were to prove prophetic. Between them they had spelt out the three reasons that made the difference in Bihar this time. They even named the final tally: 8216;8216;140 plus8217;8217;.

So it turned out to be, thanks to the arithmetic of caste coalition building, the rigorous physical framework laid out by the EC 8212; and the chemistry of change in a society yearning to move on.

In Laloo8217;s defeat Bihar has made the journey to post-Mandalism. Caste is still important, OBC empowerment is still a dominant theme 8212; Nitish, after all, is a Kurmi 8212; but no longer can 8216;8216;Backward assertion8217;8217; be seen as synonymous with Yadav raj and substitute for proactive government.

Laloo, the Mandal movement8217;s poster boy, had started to think of himself as the whole poster. He8217;s been shaken out of his time warp 8212; much like his mustachioed man Friday who told NDTV 24215;7 at 9 am on Tuesday, 8216;8216;Hum dus baje ka baad jeetenge, jab gaon ka vote gina jayega We8217;ll win after 10 am, when the rural votes are counted.8217;8217;

In a sense, this election welcomes Bihar back to India. In the years after the decline of the Congress, state after state went through a chaotic interlude before settling into a sort of bipolarity. From Tamil Nadu to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh to Kerala, Indian states are increasingly two-party 8212; or two-alliance 8212; battlegrounds.

Bipolarity 8212; as opposed to menacing monopoly or messy multipolarity 8212; lends itself to relative stability, keeps governments under watch and curbs the space for blackmailing 8216;8216;third forces8217;8217; who jump from one ship to the other.

The two states that spent the 1990s resolutely resisting the natural evolution towards a bipolar system were Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With this election, Bihar has ended its boycott. Two coalitions centred on individual core groups 8212; Yadavs for the RJD; non-Yadav OBCs and the upper caste for the BJP 8212; have demonstrated a certain sustaining power.

If they continue to define the Bihar polity 8212; such as it is 8212; the state could be far more pacific than the imminent 8216;8216;caste wars8217;8217; direly predicted by Congress cronies on DD News right through Tuesday.

Are there larger, national implications of the Bihar election? For a start, the NDA is back in business, having conquered a state where it was a write-off a year ago. That the alliance remained intact despite 18 months out of power 8212; even if Congress functionaries were happily planting stories all of this past winter about how 8216;8216;Nitish could join the UPA8217;8217; 8212; indicates its resilience.

If obituaries of the NDA were obviously overstated, the UPA needs to concoct a new elixir for itself. True, the government at the Centre is in no danger. Yet, Ram Vilas Paswan will now be Laloo8217;s 8212; and the CPIM8217;s 8212; fall guy and probably be turfed out of the ruling alliance. Junior allies will get more prickly. A bolstered NDA 8212; particularly the very vocal JDU contingent in the Lok Sabha 8212; is going to be rampant.

The biggest problem will be that of the Left. No longer can it afford the luxury of being the UPA8217;s in-house opposition. 8216;8216;Fascist forces8217;8217; have captured the ultimate citadel of 8216;8216;secularism8217;8217;. It is the NDA that will now lead the attack on the government, and play the real opposition. Prakash Karat8217;s phoney war is over.

At the back of its mind, however, the Left will not be thinking of Bihar 2005 as much as West Bengal 2006. As a senior IAS officer in Patna stressed, the EC8217;s arrangements this time were designed to negate 8216;8216;scientific rigging8217;8217;.

For the first time, Central paramilitary forces didn8217;t just patrol a district generally but actually manned booths. Two and a half million 8216;8216;bogus voters8217;8217; were removed from the rolls. The EC requisitioned army and air force helicopters for aerial surveillance.

8216;8216;It was almost exciting for the voter,8217;8217; said the civil servant, 8216;8216;to vote under the security of a Punjab commando. He felt that much more confident that his vote would count 8230; This triggered the mood for change, so much so that by the third and fourth phases, even the bureaucracy felt it.8217;8217;

The only people who didn8217;t sense the 8216;8216;mood for change8217;8217; were, of course, Delhi8217;s election tourists, the 8216;8216;national8217;8217;correspondents who happily reported a 8216;8216;kaante ki takkar8217;8217;. On the contrary, among those who did sense change were election observers from West Bengal. As one of them confessed to a Bihar cadre colleague, 8216;8216;If the EC insists on similar measures in West Bengal in May 2006, heaven knows 8230;8217;8217;

From the land of Gautam Buddha to the land of Chief Minister Buddha, how far can the EC8217;s dogged struggle for a foolproof election make it a catalyst for change? We8217;ll know next summer. For the moment, grant Nitish his nirvana.