Power Play in Patliputra

And then,back to the most irresistible image of all: I freed the people from enslavement. That is why you Nitish are the Chief Minister. Because of me, says Lalu.

At the JDU office,not far from Lalus residence,national spokesperson Shivanand Tiwari,one of the senior-most socialist leaders in the party,formerly in the RJD,looks back. Their roots are the same,Lalu and Nitish he says. Tiwari recalls getting to know Nitish in 1970 while campaigning for Lalu in the first election he won to the Patna University Students Union.

Social justice started with Lalu Yadav, acknowledges Tiwari,but it stopped at the Other Backward Castes OBCs. Nitish has taken the process lower to political empowerment of the Extremely Backward Castes EBCs,reservations in panchayats for women,acknowledging as Mahadalit those languishing at societys bottom,and the cycle scheme. In Bihar,we never thought a girl would ride a bicycle8230;

In this election year,the spotlight will veer to the differences between the two men. But the polls could eventually turn on how successful Nitish Kumar is,and is seen to be,in appropriating parts of Lalu Yadavs legacy,and then carrying the contest to a turf where his predecessor cannot follow.

It will hinge on Nitishs ability or the lack of it to take ownership of social justice and guide it into the larger rubric of Bihari pride,in which sectional appeals to EBCs,Mahadalits,Pasmanda backward Muslims and women can comfortably sit alongside an idea of development that ensures better law and order,roads,schools and health for all.

In Madhepura,where The Indian Express caught up with the Chief Minister on his Vishwas Yatra,Nitish Kumar walked a fine line.

The setting was carefully chosen a Mahadalit-majority village called Jorgama. Mahadalit or Greater Dalit is the new category coined by the Nitish government,ostensibly for better targeting of government schemes. It has triggered a clamour at the bottom of Bihars social ladder,leading to a farcical situation. While initially 18 of Bihars 22 Dalit groups were rechristened as Mahadalit,the number has now swelled to 21,leaving out only the Paswans.

Having played the caste card,however,Nitish Kumar does not overemphasise it,or restrict himself to it. At the public meeting in Jorgama,he showcased his team of bureaucrats,specially flown in from Patna. In a long preface to his speech,he named each one. He spoke to the villagers of his team of scientists working to find a solution to the decreased productivity of the soil in Kosi-affected areas like Madhepura because of the sand that the receding waters have left behind. He declared a new bridge would be built in the vicinity.

But as the Chief Minister works upon his own balance between caste politics and development,he may not have the luxury of doing it at his own pace.

Back in Patna,another caste controversy brews in the run-up to polls.

The citys famed Gandhi Maidan recently played host to the Kisan Mahapanchayat called among others,by two prominent JDU rebels,Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan and Prabhunath Singh. They may lack political or electoral clout of their own,but they aim to crystallise the perceived upper caste discontent over Nitish Kumars backward tilt around the highly emotive issue of land reform.

Ever since a land reform commission,set up by the Nitish government in 2006,urged legal recognition to the Bataidar or tiller,the Bataidari Bill has become political shorthand for the governments alleged plans to take land from the owner and give it to the tiller. Though the government has retreated,and relegated the commissions report to a committee,there is speculation that Nitish Kumar wanted to use it to consolidate backward caste vote before the polls,but miscalculated the timing or the extent of upper caste recoil.

No party is urging the implementation of the report,but they are all stoking the scare. The BJPs decision to install C P Thakur,a Bhumihar,as the new party chief is seen as a response to intimations of upper caste alienation. People have started evicting tillers, admits Thakur. Now we must dispel the myth.

While Nitish Kumar has gone conspicuously tightlipped on the Bataidari issue he refused to comment on it in an interview to The Indian Express his Deputy Chief minister and senior BJP leader Sushil Modi contends: This is a non-issue in Bihar that only some disgruntled elements are attempting to stoke. It is based on disinformation.

The loud anti-Nitish rumbling in Patna,in his own party or in alliance partner BJP,also targets him for running a one-man show. This criticism has two parts: one,Nitish has given a free run to his bureaucrats at the cost of political workers and leaders. And two,Nitish has disrespected and diminished the BJP in Bihar.

The Chief Minister does not acknowledge my letters. Perhaps he has no time. After all,he is Vikas Purush, says a caustic Shatrughan Sinha,BJP MP from Patna. People tell me Bihars bureaucrats are now the richest in the country, he says. In Bihar,says Sinha,the BJP can only claim hamare paas Nitish hai,a parody of Shashi Kapoors devastating one-liner in Deewar.

Even here,Nitishs most vocal defence comes from the BJPs Sushil Modi. He admits to worrying about the balance between the political worker and the bureaucracy in Bihar. But,he asks,Isnt it a fact that all over India,only three posts matter: PM,CM and DM?

On Nitishs alleged relegation of the BJP and his own partymen blaming him Modi for it,he says: The JDU is the senior partner in the coalition in Bihar. The elections were fought in Nitish Kumars name. The fact also is that the BJP was stronger in undivided Bihar. This so-called resentment in cadres could be a factor in ticket distribution,but it wont affect the poll outcome.

The BJP in Bihar,says Modi,offers a coalition model to the BJP elsewhere. There has been no major crisis in the alliance requiring central intervention,as there was in Orissa,or there is regularly in Punjab,or even in the Shiv Sena-BJP in Maharashtra. We can give direction to the BJP nationwide on the mature balance between the cadre,bureaucracy and government, he says.

If the Nitish-BJP,or the Nitish-Modi alliance,appears to hold steady for these polls at least,ambiguity prevails across the fence.

The Congress,seen to be the natural recipient of an upper caste shift from Nitish,appears to be at war with itself. It remains to be seen whether its decision to sack the warring duo of AICC in-charge Jagdish Tytler and PCC chief Anil Sharma will stanch the bleeding.

More crucially,it is yet to spell out its distance from Lalu Yadav,the traditional villain for the upper castes in Bihar.

Ram Vilas Paswan,seen in the past as the man with the bridging vote in case of a hung Assembly,revels in the lack of clarity. I am with the RJD. But I am not distant from the Congress, he says.