Edited excerpts:
This is the best BJP performance in Bihar. Do you think this is a one-time political event or is it the new normal where the BJP will help its alliance partners win even the state assembly elections?
I don’t think this is a one-time incident, it is the beginning of the new BJP entries in Bihar. My feeling is that many voters in Bihar have been waiting for the BJP to play a bigger role in Bihar politics. While the main BJP supporters have been voting for NDA, but some of them did not want to vote for Nitish Kumar even in previous elections, they are voting for Nitish Kumar because BJP had not put forward their candidate due to the alliance. I think this is the beginning of the BJP’s dominance in Bihar politics. In the future, I see the BJP going alone or with smaller regional parties. It will not be linked to the JDU. I think this election will spell the end of the BJP-JDU alliance. This is the last election of the alliance in Bihar (according to me).
My feeling is that the BJP may be regretting it now and may think that they could have gone alone in this election and not in alliance with Nitish. It seems that the BJP reluctantly decided to contest it in alliance with Nitish.
Do you think it’s time for the BJP to go beyond its religion card, particularly in states like where caste-based consolidation continues to play an important role?
For the BJP to succeed or emerge as a much more important player in Bihar, I don’t think the religion card is going to help. If BJP plays the religion card, they may be able to expand only in some regions due to the concentration of the Muslim population. The BJP has to greatly change the social profile of its leaders. It’s changing (now), there are BJP leaders from the OBC communities and from, among the Dalits. Gradually, over the next five years, I see BJP trying to expand among communities that have not voted for it. Voters would have the feeling that the Nitish Kumar era is coming to an end in Bihar politics and the JD (U) is in decline.
Nitish Kumar had said that this could be his last choice. Do you think the NDA needs to find a new leader in Bihar and help BJP win the state elections again?
I somewhat disagree that the NDA needs a new leader, it is the BJP that has to find a new leader. BJP would try to think of a leader who could lead the NDA now. This is Nitish’s last pick, also because the leadership would no longer be in the hands of JD (U) now. It may start when Nitish becomes prime minister, but I have serious doubts that Nitish will continue as the prime minister of Bihar for the entire five-year period. I have no doubt that there would be a leadership change in the middle of five years. The leadership of the NDA would remain in the hands of BJP. This NDA would only have a theoretical value, finally in the next elections it would be the BJP alone who would contest the election. According to me, the NDA will not be there to participate in the 2025 elections in Bihar.
Is the electoral and political success of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav a result of his personal appeal or is it more about the traditional consolidation of caste combinations?
The election result is undoubtedly the consolidation of RJD’s traditional voter base comprising Muslims and Yadav, but that consolidation would not have taken place if there had not been an appeal for Tejashwi Yadav. I think it all happened because of Tejashwi’s personal attractiveness, he was able to project an image that was above caste loyalty. Because of the way he campaigned that led to the election, he ran a positive campaign and never engaged in a verbal duel, even when he was personally attacked as ‘jungle raaj ka yuvraj’. He remained calm and continued to campaign on two issues: development and unemployment. It created a positive image for Tejashwi. While his positive image traveled beyond the traditional base of his party’s Yadav caste and the Muslim community, it failed to travel far enough to make him the next top minister of Bihar. The Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) did not reach a majority, but the RJD performed amazingly and has the same percentage of votes as the NDA.
Do you think the opposition to Nitish Kumar led by Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Chirag Paswan helped the Mahagathbandhan improve its performance?
I don’t think there is any connection between Paswan’s attack on Nitish Kumar, which helped RJD or others to mobilize votes against Nitish. I think it hurt JD (U) in the sense that it resulted in the dispersion of the anti-Nitish vote. I don’t think he helped the RJD in any way because his fans never liked Nitish so whether you criticize him or not doesn’t matter. In fact, if it had been transferred to RJD, there would have been more damage. If LJP continued to be part of NDA, the results would have been very different. Now we can only speculate, but it could have been up to 150-160 seats for the NDA due to vote consolidation.
The performance of the smaller parties has helped both alliances improve their score. What does the response given to the smaller parties indicate about the mood of the people?
It is very difficult to guess the mood of the people when evaluating the performance of the smaller parties. Two smaller NDA parties, the Hindustan Awam Morcha (Secular) and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), have performed well because they were part of the NDA whose votes were transferred to them. The victory is due to the BJP, JD (U) base of support in those districts along with their own individual presence in those districts.
Similarly, if we look at the performance of the Left, which performed very well within the Mahagathbandhan, it did well because there was transfer of votes from the RJD and Congress, as well as having a solid base of support in those districts.
I don’t see a separate message from the victories of the smaller parties except for All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) which managed to win five seats indicates that even though Muslims have been voting for RJD and the Congress in a big way, including these elections, Muslims do not seem happy with the way they have been treated or the kind of development that may have taken place in that region. The day they have a serious alternative, they would quickly change their votes as they have done in these five constituencies as soon as they saw the choice of formidable AIMIM candidates, they saw that these people are in a position to win the election they changed their vote. So the only message I get from the performance of smaller parties only regarding AIMIM is disenchantment among Muslims, the desire to seek an alternative beyond the party they have been voting for for many years.
Congress has not been able to meet alliance expectations. Do you think that regional parties in alliance with Congress are suffering from their poor electoral performance?
You have to look state by state. But in general, if you look at it, the feeling we have is that in any state that Congress forms an alliance with a strong regional party, it has hardly helped that regional party illuminate the perspectives of that particular regional party. Congress for the most part has ended up being a drag on regional parties. This was the case in Bihar. There is a lot of talk about the strike rate, fighting 70 seats and winning 19 seats. This gives an indication that it may have been a mistake to give Congress a large number of seats to contest.
At a time when the economy is not doing well, Bihar’s development takes center stage because states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar can help or slow economic recovery. Do you think there is political will to commit to the development of the state?
I cannot doubt the political will. We have to be positive in our approach. Whoever comes to power or forms a government in any state begins with political will. Anyone who walks in wants to bring about some change because they want to be remembered for it. What happens is, whatever you envision, you start to see the bottlenecks and obstacles. And sometimes you have to quickly respond to that to find out whether the development you want to achieve will help solidify your support or not.
I believe that when political parties come to power, they have the will to develop, but many do not do so as expected due to some factors. Sometimes there are bottlenecks like infrastructure or lack of cooperation from the Center, in some cases people on the ground do not cooperate in development projects. Furthermore, political will is also weakened when those in power realize that some development projects will not help them politically and could damage their political prospects, thus their enthusiasm for carrying out those development projects diminishes. Sometimes politics also comes into play and commitment to economic development wanes; it does not stay at the same level immediately after a party comes to power after winning the elections.
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