The significance of the grand alliance’s dramatic victory goes far beyond Bihar. It and has once again propelled chief minister Nitish Kumar to the centre stage of national politics. This is not an unfamiliar terrain for the JD(U) leader, and there was a time when he was being spoken about as a possible prime minister candidate. But the circumstances could not have been more different from today. Those were the days when Nitish was in the NDA camp and the irresistible rise of the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was not a foregone conclusion.
But when Modi eventually became the BJP’s PM candidate, Nitish took a gamble by breaking his tried-and-tested alliance with the BJP. The gamble did not pay off in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with the Modi wave delivering 31 out of 40 Bihar seats to the NDA. Nitish’s subsequent Manjhi experiment also backfired when the Mahadalit leader rebelled against his former leader.
Pushed to the wall, Nitish reached out to his old enemy, Lalu Yadav, and together with the Congress, they formed a formidable anti-BJP grand alliance.
The 2015 Bihar polls were Nitish’s agni-pariksha, and he has passed it successfully (though it can be argued that Lalu has scored an even more spectacular victory).
Where does Nitish go from here? In the near future, he will try to deliver his promises of inclusive governance, social justice and development, but his handsome victory has made him the first among equals in the broad anti-BJP front that is slowly taking shape in Indian politics. Already, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee are firmly in the Nitish camp. The coming months will see a further consolidation of this ‘secular’ alliance, and Nitish is set to play a prominent role in this process. It may be too early to talk about the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but make no mistake: Nitish Kumar is back in national limelight.
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