The third term of the leader of Janata Dal (United), or JD (U), has been only a shadow of his first two terms. Bihar has also suffered an economic slowdown across the country. The state still lags behind in most development indices. Despite many advances, the infrastructure remains poor. The fanciest parts of its capital, Patna, were flooded last year. Very recently, with its tremendous emigration, Bihar endured the brunt of the hardships of the blockade imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Almost 31% of people in the 15-29 age group were unemployed in Bihar in 2018-19, compared to 17% nationally, government data shows. The most recent labor surveys conducted by the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) also show that while India has been in bad shape, Bihar has been much worse. Neither the government has filled the vacant positions nor has private investment entered Bihar, said Shaibal Gupta of the Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. This has kept the trend of migration alive, especially to seek low-value jobs, he said. It is not surprising that job creation is the main electoral promise during the election campaign.
The state economy has grown faster than the national average in the last two years, but per capita income relative to that of the country has remained stagnant in the last decade. With 9% of India’s population, Bihar has about a 3% share of India’s economic output, the same level as a decade ago. In terms of industrial production, the share is lower.
Mahatma Gandhi’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) could have helped tackle unemployment, poverty and even the recent migration crisis. However, Bihar has largely failed to make good use of it compared to the rest of India. [https://www.livemint.com/news/india/why-bihar-and-up-could-struggle-to-scale-up-mgnregs-work-11591082004945.html]. Only 20,445 families obtained work for at least 100 days under the scheme in 2019-20, a meager 0.5% of all households that looked for work. The national average was 7%.
“In Nitish Kumar’s first term, development was visible, but that agenda weakened thereafter,” said Patna-based academic DM Diwakar. “The non-farm sector, construction, electricity and roads, has performed well, but despite a double-digit growth rate, Bihar still has the poorest people,” Diwakar said.
Development indicators are unpromising. In 2011, the Annual Report on the State of Education found that 50% of rural Class V children could read Level II texts in Bihar, slightly more than the national figure. However, in 2018, while the average for all of India improved to 50%, Bihar’s dropped to 41%. The state has one of the worst ratios of students, teachers and doctors in India.
However, on the electoral front, all of this may not matter. The main opposition, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), suffers from a bad reputation for its long rule that Kumar ended in 2005. Its alliance with Congress lacks strong leadership and has not expanded beyond its Muslim voter base. and Yadavs, Abhay Kumar said. Dubey of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).
Kumar fought in the last elections in 2015 as part of the RJD alliance, sweeping nearly three-quarters of the 243 seats. However, he left the coalition in 2017 and joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The NDA then won all but one seat in the 2019 parliamentary elections, raising hopes for a repeat performance in state polls. However, that alliance itself now presents Kumar’s second biggest obstacle after anti-incumbency.
The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), a staunch ally of the NDA until recently, has decided to run candidates against Kumar’s party, although it will not compete against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This will not affect NDA’s chances directly, but many believe it could have consequences for JD (U) ‘s role in the alliance in Bihar. Opinion is divided on whether this is at the behest of BJP, a ploy to sideline JD (U) gradually, especially as BJP’s role in the Bihar NDA has increased in recent years.
For years, the national party had played a secondary role, but this could change if the LJP rebellion has the tacit support of the BJP, as some analysts such as Dubey suggest. In JD (U) -LJP contests, LJP victories could reduce JD (U) seat quota and propel BJP to the top. BJP and JD (U) initially decided to contest an equal number of seats, but as conspiracy theories grew, BJP ceded some seats to a smaller ally to pacify Kumar.
There is also an opposite view. “Contrary to popular perception, Nitish Kumar still has veto power in the NDA and he is not such a simple person,” said Sajjan Kumar, a political analyst. BJP and JD (U) could still end up getting a similar number of seats, he said.
Nitish Kumar has been popular for years. BJP knows that he is the best choice for the prime minister’s chair. This was reflected in popular opinion in the state even more than three years after his third term. In 2019, while those who responded to a CSDS poll favored RJD as the ruling party, they wanted Kumar as prime minister. This time too, it seems to have the TINA factor, “there is no alternative” factor in its favor.
However, the final vote will most likely come down to caste, which has played the most defining role in Bihar elections since the 1990s. In 2015, when the JD (U) fought alongside the RJD, their Alliance was able to consolidate a large part of the votes of other backward classes (OBC).
Over the past two decades, the BJP has consolidated the upper caste vote base, while the JD (U) has consolidated its control among non-Yadav OBCs (https://www.livemint.com/elections / assembly-elections / what-separates-bihar-s-policy-from-up-s-11601969555963.html). The RJD-Congress alliance has maintained its control over the Yadavs and the Muslims. This time, by allying itself with the left, the coalition also expects the support of the communist voter base, said Congressional leader Shakeel Ahmed.
The support of each party in the key caste groups is unlikely to change much this year, although the coalition partners have changed somewhat. Nitish Kumar is the default choice for all communities that believe they are not dominant enough, Sajjan Kumar said. They may criticize him, but they will still end up voting for him, he said. The prime minister also has the support of women due to the prohibition policy he implemented to counter domestic violence, Diwakar said.
A pre-poll poll by Lokniti-CSDS has projected a vote share of 38% for the NDA and 32% for the RJD-Congress-Left alliance.
Voter turnout is a concern, given the threat of a pandemic. Young people can vote in large numbers against the government, but the overall turnout could be lower than Bihar’s historically low voting levels, Diwakar said.
In every election season in the past decade, Bihar’s political parties have created new alliance configurations. This time, the focus is on the NDA camp after LJP’s departure. The reason is not because it can damage the alliance, but because it has the potential to decide Kumar’s long-term future. When it comes to elections, caste arithmetic is likely to have the final say again.
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