Opinion Bihar shows old Opposition getting eased out, new Opposition not in sight
With elections to West Bengal and Tamil Nadu scheduled in the next six months, the Bihar outcome may be a signal of a wider and more complete domination by the party
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with newly sworn-in Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the swearing-in ceremony, at Gandhi Maidan in Patna. (@Jduonline via PTI Photo) 
As a new NDA government is sworn in in Patna, it is necessary to ask: What does the outcome in Bihar tell us about the state and what does it mean for politics beyond it? For Bihar, this moment marks a final rupture from the moment of 1990 — from the political project of social justice to fragmented caste identities and portents of majoritarian assertions. Beyond Bihar, it means a major advance in the BJP’s dominance. It also means a more steely grip of Narendra Modi over his party and the country.
Bihar was one of the states that put the brakes on the march of the INDIA bloc in 2024 and it has now further dampened the prospects of an anti-BJP coalition. In its structure, the outcome in Bihar is similar to that of Maharashtra a year ago — represented by a clean sweep, some increase in vote share, a massive addition to seats, a dramatic resurgence of regional partners and, above all, making those partners somewhat redundant. The JD(U) may have gained considerably — like the LJP of Chirag Paswan — but there need be no doubt about who is in the driver’s seat and who will now steer the NDA in Bihar.
Ever since the BJP won the 2014 elections, Bihar had posed a hurdle in its way. The party has been polling just around 20 per cent votes there —more in 2015. Its social engineering and the pathway of communal polarisation both were consistently met with only lukewarm success for the past 10 years. This is no longer the case. So, while the only competition in this election was (and post-election, will be) between the JD(U) and BJP, the future will see the unfolding irrelevance of the JD(U). It will also be a phase of deep control of the social sphere by the BJP. Therefore, it is redundant to speculate on how long it will take for the BJP to rule Bihar on its own; it will anyway drive Bihar on its own terms from here.
When it came to power in 2014, the BJP had to depend on the north and the west. Over the past 10 years, it has tried hard in Tamil Nadu to breach the regional politics of that state; made deep inroads in Karnataka and Telangana in the South; won Odisha in the east besides consolidating its strength in Assam. With elections to West Bengal and Tamil Nadu scheduled in the next six months, the Bihar outcome may be a signal of a wider and more complete domination by the party. At least for the eastern zone, Bihar has opened the floodgates. It is for this reason that the Bihar outcome needs to be seen beyond the state-specifics of the Nitish factor and the exhaustion of the social justice politics originally spearheaded by Lalu Prasad.
Like in Bihar, in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu too, Congress is not a major player and as such, the burden of facing the BJP will fall entirely on the regional player. In Bihar, the RJD failed in spite of the incumbency factor pitted against the JD(U)-BJP. In both states that will go to polls, the regional power-holder will have to face anti-incumbency besides facing the power of an adverse government at the Centre. Bihar, like Odisha earlier, has shown that even when the contest is between a state-level force and the BJP, the latter has the ability to win.
More immediately, the Bihar result would have implications for the internal dynamics of the NDA. Of course, since 2024, the BJP has not been encumbered by its alliance partners. It has smoothly steamrolled them under its hegemonic aggression. Nor have the NDA partners shown any spine in their dealings with the BJP — the JD(U) remained quiet most of the time due to its Bihar compulsions while the TDP has practically adopted the language of Hindutva. Now, post-Bihar, the NDA partners will be on notice.
The past decade has shown that the dominance of the BJP and Modi was characterised by two essentials — complete control of the governmental machinery and a push towards a de facto Hindu Rashtra. Since June 2024, the loss of majority did not alter the hallmarks of the BJP project of the past 10 years. If during the past 18 months, the BJP did not concede space on these two matters, it is more likely now to become impatient with the NDA partners. Whether the BJP will aim at getting rid of them through defections or through fresh elections, or simply by ignoring them, are matters of detail. State parties, even when they cosy up with the BJP, are likely to have only very narrow space to manoeuvre.
Finally, the results in Bihar will further make the outcome in the 2024 Lok Sabha election appear unreal. The two legs on which the INDIA bloc sought to walk — Congress and state parties — have both failed to gain strength.
First, Congress failed to keep the momentum following the Lok Sabha elections. It failed on all three fronts — of organisational consolidation, governance record where it is a ruling party and the politics of protests. Its failure has been matched by its partners through their inertia and perennial inability to comprehend the nature of political challenge the BJP represents.
Bihar elections have shown that the old Opposition is getting eased out but a new Opposition is not in sight. This will allow more elbow room for the BJP to conduct its intra-party politics and sort out its equations with the RSS. But the big picture beyond Bihar is that the outcome allows Modi to exercise greater control over party, bureaucracy and society and strengthen the narratives shaping imagination, culture and sensibilities beyond politics.
The writer, based at Pune, taught political science
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