The Agony of Nitish Kumar

Last weekend, I made an arbitrary and highly subjective comparison of the two Yatras undertaken by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar. I concluded by saying that it does appear as if the Gujarat strongman has retained his charismatic gold over the masses while the Nitish magic seems to be distinctly fading and waning. Even as I write this, I read newspaper stories about two of his scheduled rallies and public meetings as part of the Adhikar Yatra have been cancelled by Nitish Kumar. There was fear of more protests and violence. Of course, I also added that we hacks and so called pundits are so used to arm chair analysis and air conditioned forecasts that we have completely lost the ability to say what will happen during and after an election. So the Modi fortress might be looking impregnable at the moment. But who knows? The voters of Gujarat might just give a walloping to Modi and even his dreams of becoming the Prime Minister of India. But as I said last week, I am willing to stick my neck out and say Modi will win Gujarat for the third consecutive time.

So what does Nitish Kumar do if the Modi persona looms even larger? He will have to take call on his alliance with the BJP in Bihar. All pointers-both from JD(U) and the BJP- seem to indicate that a parting of ways is on the cards. Nitish must be thinking what Naveen Patnaik and Chandrababu Naidu thought when they parted ways with the BJP- they wanted to buttress their secular credentials and hang on to minority votes. At the end of the day, what Nitish Kumar does and how his decision affects his future will boil, down to vote shares.

Even a fool knows that you don't need to win 50 per cent or more of the popular vote to win elections in India. A vote share of less than 30 per cent can give you a comfortable majority as demonstrated by Akhilesh and Mulayam Yadav recently in UP. A vote share of less than 40 per cent can deliver a landslide victory to you as demonstrated by Naveen Patnaik during the assembly elections of Orissa in 2009. So what options does Nitish Kumar have? Currently, his party JD(U) has 22.6 per cent of the votes. If his strategy to imitate and follow Patnaik and Naidu has any chance of succeeding, Nitish has to ensure two things happen in the future.

First, future electoral battles in Bihar have to be three or four horse races like in Orissa, UP and Maharashtra. In a four horse race like in UP, a less than 30 per cent vote share will ensure a majority. In a three horse race like in Orissa, a less than 40 per cent vote share will deliver a landslide. If the JD(U) and the BJP split, the electoral contests in Bihar could become at least a three horse race initially with JD(U) and the RJD-LJP combine as strong contenders and BJP as a serious bird force. Do remember, the assembly elections that were swept by the BJP-JD(U) combine, the rival RJD combine had a vote share of about 26 per cent. BJP had about 16 per cent giving Nitish a combined 39 per cent- well above the 26 per cent of his rival Lalu. But if he splits with the BJP, he has to ensue that his party gets at least about 30 per cent of the vote share while his rival combine gets less than that. Can he achieve that?

Two cases of leaders who dumped the BJP are recent history. In Andhra, Naidu ditched the BJP (it has a negligible3 per cent vote share) in 2004 and lost the state to YSR Reddy. In 2009, his party saw its vote share crash from about 38 per cent to about 28 per cent. And YSR still won a big victory even though the Congress lost vote share. There is serious danger of Naidu and TDP becoming irrelevant in the future of Andhra-cum-Telengana politics. In Orissa, after Patnaik ditched the BJP, his party's vote share went up by a massive 10 points to about 38 per cent while that of the BJP remained at about16 per cent.

Can Nitish hope to take the JD(U) from its current vote share of 23 per cent to more than 30 per cent? The response to his Adhikar Yatra indicates that it is virtually impossible. And that explains the agony of this somewhat rattled messiah!