The two most populous states in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, are often considered close cousins in politics and governance. However, the nature of politics and governance in the two states has been quite different in the past two decades.
The UP has witnessed several periods of one-party rule, and even now, the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoys an absolute majority in the state assembly. Before the BJP rule, the state saw majority governments ruled by the Samajwadi Party (2012) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (2007). Bihar has been ruled by coalition partners throughout this period.
What unites the two states, caste-driven politics, also separates them. Politics is more multipolar in Bihar than in Uttar Pradesh, as partisan caste loyalties are more fragmented. Bihar has a larger number of influential parties, each with its loyal caste and community vote bank. And unlike the case of its neighboring state, the central support base of the dominant parties in Bihar remains small. The upper castes, loyal followers of the BJP, are numerically smaller in Bihar compared to Uttar Pradesh. The Dalit icon of Bihar, Ram Vilas Paswan, has much less support among the Dalits in Bihar than Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. Even at the height of his popularity, Lalu Prasad Yadav was able to garner much less support among the non-Yadav OBCs (other backward classes) in Bihar than Mulayam Singh Yadav in the neighboring state.
Due to these differences in the number and nature of parties, Bihar’s politics is much more fragmented than Uttar Pradesh’s, making it necessary for political parties to form coalitions to gain power.
Of the many parties in the fray, three have been the most dominant, with similar voting quotas in electoral cycles: the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Janata Dal United or JD (U) and the BJP. Other parties have smaller voting quotas.
Both JD (U) and RJD are regional parties focused on Bihar, competing primarily for votes from specific subcastes of the OBC in Bihar. The two smaller regional parties, Paswan’s Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awam Moarch (HAM) are trying to attract the Dalit vote. Both national parties, the BJP and Congress are competing for votes from the upper castes. The upper castes have formed the central support base of the BJP in recent years, and two backward upper castes, Kurmis and Koeris, have been the main supporters of JD (U). It is these caste groups that have formed the basis of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar, which comprises the JD (U), the BJP and other smaller parties. The consolidation of votes among these caste groups has only increased over time.
The opposition alliance led by the RJD and Congress has relied heavily on its support bases on Yadav and Muslim voters. While the alliance has managed to consolidate Muslim votes, RJD has lost some of its support among the Yadavs even as the Congressional party has seen an erosion of its traditional upper-caste base of support in the state.
Until 1985, Congress was in fact the dominant party in the state. Since then, it has been drastically downsized and is now a junior partner of the RJD. But while Congress has enjoyed long periods in power on its own, the RJD, even at the height of its popularity in the 1990s, was unable to win a majority of its own.
On the other side of the political fence, neither the JD (U) nor the BJP have been able to obtain a majority on their own in Bihar, not even when competing on their own. The two parties have been able to form governments only in alliance with each other, or in the case of JD (U), with parties like RJD. Other smaller parties like LJP, HAM, Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), Mukesh Sahani’s Vikasheel Inaaf Party (VIP) have much smaller bases of support and cannot be expected to form a government of their own.
Coalitions are therefore compulsions in Bihar politics. The mobilization of caste-based support groups and the inability of either party to make meaningful inroads into the other party’s support bases has necessitated coalitions in the state in the post-Mandal era.
Whatever the verdict is in the upcoming elections later this month, Bihar will have a coalition government.
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