Opinion Vandita Mishra writes: As Congress sets out on a yatra in poll-bound Bihar

The slogan that talks about migration and jobs may be born of helplessness. The last several elections in Bihar have confirmed that Congress’s erstwhile social coalition of upper castes, Dalits and Muslims in a state of deeply entrenched caste identities and inequalities has splintered, and its constituent groups that migrated to other parties show no signs of returning. Now the party’s bid to address the young, across castes, may be a flailing for relevance rather than a purposeful transcendence of caste lines.

The Congress yatra is an attempt, also, to shrug off the widespread perception that it plays second fiddle to the RJD in its alliance (alongwith parties of the Left) with that party. Congress will be the people’s “A-team”, not the RJD’s “B-team”, says Krishna Allavaru, newly appointed AICC in-charge, Bihar.

But, most of all, the fact that the Grand Old Party, steeped in irresolutions in a state that has been home to frissons and political movements that have traced a long national arc, is now rousing itself to undertake a 24-day yatra is a reminder: As another election comes calling, spaces have opened up in the Bihar arena that are waiting to be seized and filled. The prime reason for this is that despite its respectable performance in the 2024 LS polls in alliance with the BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which has enjoyed power in the state since 2005, is seen to be in free fall.

Ahead of the upcoming election, the question in Bihar, therefore, is: Who and which party will take the space that the Nitish-JD(U) currently occupies, but may not for much longer?

If this question could be one of the reasons fuelling the Congress yatra, within the JD(U) it may be leading to the rise of Nitish Kumar’s son, who has so far not been visible in politics. Given that over the years, one of the JD(U)’s abiding criticisms of the RJD has been that it is a party owned by the Lalu Prasad family, the possible political debut of his son would be the latest “palti (somersault)” by Nitish, derided for his many U-turns as “Paltu Ram”. For many in the JD(U), however, headed by a leader with a storied past but who now seems a political presence that is fading, a son-rise may seem to be a way to avert a split, or the prospect of being swallowed whole by its bigger partner BJP.

On the face of it, the BJP continues to respect its pact with Nitish — he remains chief minister despite the BJP being the much larger party in the ruling coalition. But the Maharashtra model is a clear and present danger in Bihar — should the BJP, the clear gainer in the last assembly election, improve its tally significantly, and inch closer to the halfway mark, it could recast the terms of the alliance in its favour in Bihar as well.

In this election year, therefore, the fundamental challenge for Nitish’s ally BJP, as for his rival RJD will be this: How to wean Nitish’s support base, made of sections of non-Yadav OBCs, Extremely Backward Castes, Dalits and Muslims, and women across castes who still acknowledge the CM who made them feel seen, be it with his bicycle scheme for schoolgirls, 50 per cent reservation in panchayats and local bodies, or the more controversial prohibition policy. Their challenge will also be to, like Nitish, straddle a coalition of extremes.

The Nitish persona has been powerful, and in power continuously, because he has been the only one of Bihar’s lead political actors in the state’s recent history who was able to play a bridge in a landscape of brutal inequalities – combining and calibrating, alternating and leavening the idiom of caste-based social justice (samajik nyay) with the language of development (vikas). He did so in ways that blunted edges, created political and policy room, and made it possible for him to be appealing and acceptable to both ends of the caste divide.

As claimants to the Nitish vote, however, both the BJP and RJD are constrained in different ways.

While the BJP gets votes across castes in a Lok Sabha election, in the state election it has long been hampered by a lack of tall leaders, and much more importantly, by the fact that even though it has made inroads among lower castes, the mantle of “social justice” doesn’t fit the party. At state level, it is still seen as the natural vehicle of the upper castes who lost their dominance with the backward caste mobilisations and rise of the RJD in the 1990s.

The RJD’s problem is that even though it is trying, under Tejashwi’s leadership, to recast itself as a wider, more inclusive force — as an “A to Z”, not just “M-Y (Muslim-Yadav)” party — it is still marked out as its narrowest version, as an organisation of, by and for Yadavs. And it still has some way to go to claim the narrative of development credibly.

While Lalu Prasad’s historic achievement was to give representation and voice to the marginalised in ways that seem irreversible, his terrible failure was his inability to widen his canvas and his political imagination, beyond the politics of identity to institutions of governance.

As much as Lalu is and will remain the RJD’s presiding deity, he is also its great albatross, tragically.

Till next week,

Vandita