Modi-Nitish combine spells disaster for Lalu

Those who are castigating Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for changing horses in midstream are forgetting the elemental principle in politics – that here there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests.The two most aggrieved parties in what happened in Patna last week were Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Sonia-Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Party. The two parties, along with Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JDU) had fought the 2015 assembly elections in what was being termed the ‘grand alliance’ and had decided to share power equitably. Naturally, when Nitish left the alliance and moved overnight to the embracing arms of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), both the RJD and the Congress cried foul.“This is cheating,” the two proclaimed. “You are only hankering after power and you have no ideology,” they said.Now, take a step back and ask the oft-asked question: “Look who is talking.” Can the RJD or the Congress rightfully claim to be absolutely without blemish when it comes to sacrificing ideology at the altar of expediency? The RJD was once part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP. But it switched sides and pitched its tent in the Congress camp. So idealism is something that Lalu Yadav can change but not Nitish Kumar.The case of the Congress is even worse. Ever since Independence, or even before that, the Congress had never seen eye-to-eye with the Communists. The two parties had fought bitter ideological battles in West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, etc. Many of these had degenerated into violent clashes too. But witness what is happening in West Bengal today. The two not only had a pre-poll electoral alliance – they would like to call it “understanding”, not alliance – but the Congress had even offered to support Marxist chief Sitaram Yechuri if he decided to contest the upcoming elections for the Rajya Sabha. All this while the two parties are locked in a constant confrontation in Kerala. So ideology be damned, pragmatism be praised. It would have been proper for Nitish Kumar to first resign and leave it to the governor to call the leader of the largest party, in this case the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, to try and form a government. There was no way that the junior Yadav could have managed the majority because except for the Congress he has no one to turn to. The governor must have known this in deciding to swear in Nitish.Kumar could have also recommended dissolution of the assembly and fresh elections which, as many analysts here felt, would have given him added legitimacy because, after all, he had become the chief minister on the back of a pre-poll alliance. A JDU-BJP coalition at this juncture would have swept to power because the Yadav clan’s reputation is at its lowest now thanks to the multitude of corruption charges it is facing. As for the Congress, its stand-alone value is negligible and it can only survive on the coat-tails of the local chieftains. But fresh elections with three more years to go for the present assembly would be the last thing any legislator, including those from the RJD or the Congress, would want. And politics is the game where no quarter is given. Nitish cannot be anything different from other politicians in that they all look for the best opportunities to stay in/retain power. If greed is what you call it, so be it because in the present scenario that sort of greed is far better than the other one - for filthy lucre.It is the same sentiment that Nitish Kumar expressed when he said during his speech in the state assembly that “one family (Lalu’s) was trying to throw a veil on corruption by citing secularism at every turn.” Lalu Yadav is already convicted for corruption. More charges have been pressed on him, his wife, eldest daughter and younger son. The amounts being bandied about are mind-boggling. How anyone could amass such wealth in an impoverished state like Bihar is beyond imagination. Or maybe that’s why the state is so impoverished. The senior Yadav has been hobnobbing with several criminals convicted for the most heinous of crimes. Naturally, few will shed a tear for Lalu for losing power.In point of fact, Lalu Yadav himself is responsible for things coming to such a pass. Nitish Kumar said he had tried several times directly with Yadav and through the offices of the Congress Party to get Lalu to come clean on the corruption charges. Except for reiterating that these charges had been foisted on his family by the BJP, Yadav did not have anything to say. And nobody believed Yadav because of his antecedents. The best thing that Yadav could have done was to get son Tejashwi to resign as deputy chief minister. That could have portrayed him as a victim and Yadav could have taken full advantage of it. Anyway, Tejashwi was only a front for Yadav to get his bidding done within the government, which he could have easily continued to do through his elder son Tej Pratap who was also a minister in the Nitish cabinet.But as the saying in Sanskrit goes: “vinashakale vipareetha buddhi” (bad judgments at bad times). By refusing to budge Yadav must have hoped that Nitish Kumar would blink first. What he probably did not realise was that Nitish was already preparing ground for the ouster of the Yadavs one way or the other. From the start it was an uneasy alliance for Nitish who holds probity in public life above everything else. It was indeed an error of judgement on the part of Nitish to have left the alliance with BJP in 2013 just because that party chose Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate. Despite its convincing victory in the 2015 assembly elections, the ‘grand alliance’ was more a coalition of opposites and everyone knew that Lalu Yadav would be the one calling the shots from outside the cabinet. Nitish let him, to the extent possible, but must have been looking for an escape route all the while.That was provided by none other than Sushil Modi, the state BJP’s most senior leader who, through a series of press conferences, brought the Yadav corruption cases to light. Although federal agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) maintained that they started their investigations after Modi’s revelations, it is anybody’s guess what Modi’s sources were for such incriminating evidence. The grand BJP plan was working like clockwork.What does the future hold for the protagonists of this drama? Nitish Kumar has already predicted there is no one to challenge Narendra Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Modi, for his part, is certain to look kindly towards Nitish and, by extension, Bihar. Which means that the “special package” he had promised for the state – as much Rs1,250bn – could start flowing from Delhi to Patna soon. If Nitish can manage to obtain that kind of funds from Delhi, he will be in a happy position to implement all his election promises. That in turn could help him return to power in 2020. But all that may be wishful thinking and much water has to flow down the Ganga/Yamuna before we reach that point. What is imminent is Lalu Prasad Yadav’s fate. Never say never is very apt when it comes to politicians. You can never write a politician off, especially one like Lalu Yadav. But with Modi as prime minister and Nitish as chief minister, the golden days of the RJD chief has virtually come to an end. As for the Congress, it has proved that losing power is habit-forming.