Elections 2014: Lalu surge may stem Modi wave in Bihar

The sudden rise in Lalu Prasad Yadav’s political fortunes is an important side story of this Lok Sabha election. Lalu was given up for good by most political forces as he languished in jail after being convicted in the fodder scam. He had struggled for months to persuade the Congress for an alliance in Bihar. For sometime, Rahul Gandhi didn’t seem too keen to partner Lalu. Today Lalu’s body language has transformed as huge crowds throng his meetings in North Bihar where the last 13 constituencies go to polls this week. His resurgence in Bihar is now admitted even by the BJP. In future it is the Congress which will chase Lalu, not the other way round. Lalu is now like a man possessed as he does campaigning through midnight in Northern Bihar which is considered his stronghold. “I was campaigning till early morning and got back to Patna after 4 AM”, he excitedly tells a small group of journalists gathered at his residence. He is working hard to ensure that RJD gets the maximum number of seats in North Bihar where many constituencies have Yadav and Muslim concentration. He then asserts that there is no Modi wave in Bihar. Lalu is in his elements as he says, “All this talk about development by Modi is bogus. As far as I am concerned the real issue is the fight against communal forces which Modi represents. People understand what is going on. They are not fools.” However, Lalu has learnt his lessons by not paying enough attention to development in the past. So he quickly adds , “We are all focused on development of the very poor. The BJP has no monopoly over this”. For now Lalu is basking in the new found crowd response to him. “When I came out of jail, I had no idea that I would get this kind of response from the people”, he says. [caption id=“attachment_1508211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Lalu Prasad Yadav with his son Tejaswini Yadav in this file photo. AFP[/caption] The Bhartiya Janata Party is publicly conceding that Lalu Prasad may be doing much better in Bihar than anticipated before. Almost everyone here now agrees that that Bihar is witnessing an unexpected Lalu surge in sentiment. Could it be a combination of sympathy and nostalgia among the poor Muslims and backward castes of Bihar? One can’t tell yet, but there is a new energy in Lalu’s connect with the people. But the BJP likes to believe that Lalu’s RJD is gaining largely at the expense of Nitish Kumar’s JD(U). The former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, Sushil Modi, told this writer that Lalu had indeed consolidated his traditional vote bank as Muslims are behind him in this election. So in many constituencies it will be effectively a two way contest between the BJP and RJD. Sushil Modi says that Lalu has consolidated the Muslim and Yadav vote which in many constituencies will add up to a little over 30 percent. “But Lalu needs another 10 percent  to 15 percent from the Extremely Backward Classes(EBCs) and Dalits. These voters were cultivated by Nitish Kumar and always supported the JD(U)-BJP alliance. A lot of these voters are attracted to Narendra Modi because of his backward origin”, says Sushil Modi. Lalu’s camp counters Sushil Modi by asserting that the millions of poor EBCs don’t identify with Narendra Modi as they don’t know much about this man from Gujarat. “If the BJP thinks it will get EBC votes why don’t they have EBC candidates contesting elections”, asks Misa Bharti , Lalu’s daughter who has also contested this time. The EBCs are constituted by some 108 most backward castes, like weavers, barbers, dhobis etc who together form about 33  percent of the electorate. Since they are very scattered , each being 2 percent to 3  percent of the population, it is difficult to predict which way the EBCs will go. Saibal Dasgupta, a well known Patna based political researcher says the EBC votes may get divided among all the major parties. From the present voting trends, marked by Lalu’s resurgence, it appears the EBCs are getting divided across all the three main parties- BJP, RJD and JD(U). In fact Lalu will be a big gainer if the EBC block of 33 percent votes splits three ways. This would not have happened if the BJP and JD(U) had fought together. So the BJP, which had earlier been talking about getting 27 out of 40 seats in Bihar, has scaled down its own expectation to about 20 seats. Independent estimates for Lalu has gone up from 9 seats to possibly about 15 seats. Something has certainly changed in Bihar in the past two to three weeks. So the Bihar election will produce some surprises for sure. For BJP, Bihar elections would seem more uncertain than the one in Uttar Pradesh where Modi is far more confident of grabbing the largest number of seats.