Nitish Kumar: The perennial survivor, leader of all seasons

At 72, Nitish, who is taking over as the CM now for a record ninth time, is a veteran socialist and a prominent product of the JP Movement of 1974-75. He has come a long way from the political years he spent in the shadow of, first, Lalu Prasad, and then George Fernandes in the Samata Party, which the two had founded in 1994. The Samata Party had got off to a rocky start, with only seven seats in 1995. It was then that Nitish made a political calculation realising that a three-way fight would never allow him to grow.

In 1996, Nitish hitched his wagon to the BJP, with top leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani acknowledging the importance of having a credible name, that rose above caste, plus had a long political lineage, by their side. In 2000, as part of the NDA, Nitish became the chief minister. Though that government lasted seven days, an alternative to Lalu was looming on the horizon.

Since then, Nitish, a Kurmi, an OBC caste with just around 3% presence in the state, has deftly played his cards and chosen partners with a stronger social base. The BJP has always supported him since 2005, barring four years (June 2013 to July 2017) and about one-and-a-half years (August 2022-27 January 2024) that he aligned with the RJD-led grand alliance. The RJD, in spite of a stronger social base, with the cushion of Muslim-Yadav (about 30%) votes, had to accept Nitish as its face in their coalition government.

Nitish is no stranger to switching sides. The first time the eight-term Bihar CM, adept at the game of political survival, took his party to the Opposition camp was in June 2013 when he severed ties with the BJP on the ground that the NDA should have a leader with a “clean and secular image”. At the time, it had become apparent that then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi would be the NDA’s Prime Ministerial face for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and that the NDA would have no space for the Bihar CM’s political ambitions.

In 2017, Nitish then again forged an alliance with the BJP and formed their government. Everything went on smoothly in the NDA till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the BJP won all 17 seats it contested and the JD(U) bagged 16 of the 17 constituencies where it was in the fray.

Believing that his national ambitions would be better served in the Opposition, Nitish rejoined hands with the RJD and was back in the Mahagathbandhan in August 2022 and kept a hold on the CM’s chair.

Through it all, what has also stood Nitish in good stead is his development plank — in a state crying out for the same. He reels out statistics to compare the law and order situation, size of state budgets, numbers of constructed school buildings, high rates of school enrolment, and the numbers of girls bicycling to schools, as his government’s contributions. Lalu’s time pales in comparison, the JD(U) repeatedly points out. The RJD was propelled to 81 seats in the 2015 Assembly polls (more than the JD-U in fact), from 22 in 2010, allied with Nitish.

While the BJP now fancies its chances in Bihar, it too knows the value of having Nitish by its side. Minus Nitish, the BJP had fallen to 53 seats from 91 in 2015. Nitish is also a natural fit for the BJP, having spent his formative years in company of RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya, and read almost all RSS literature.

Though Bihar BJP patriarch Kailashpati Mishra had once observed that by projecting Nitish as the NDA leader, the BJP had committed political harakiri, the party’s struggle to find Nitish’s match — be it in the trusted Sushil Kumar Modi or Nityanand Rai — continues.