Nitish Kumar can't win Bihar without BJP and he knows it

by Chinmay Editors note: One of our regular commenters, Chinmay posted a smart, strong comment in response to an article titled, “ Why Nitish Kumar is unlikely to break up with BJP for 2014 ” by Aakar Patel. Chinmay had some good insights on voter behaviour, which we felt warranted its own space on Firstpost. Apart from minor edits on grammar and language and incorporating a correction that the author made a little later, we have left the comment as is. The fact of the matter is that any way you look at it, Nitish Kumar has boxed himself into a corner. Actually most of the political analysts sitting in Delhi with virtually no clue of Bihar sub-altern politics sprout nonsense and give more weightage to him than what is his due. Let me elucidate some basic facts here for the benefit of such foolish political analysts. The vote share of various parties in Bihar 2010 elections was as follows: JDU-22.61 percent BJP-16.46 percent RJD-18.84 percent LJP-6.75 percent CONGRESS-8.38 percent But there are some interesting points here. 1.BJP in Bihar contested only 102 out of the of the 243 seats at stake in Bihar due to its alliance with Nitish Kumar whose party contested the rest of the seats.So this 16.46 percent vote share of the BJP is heavily concentrated, unlike that of Congress which contested all 243 seats but polled just 8.38 percent votes. So these are basically wasted votes and any party which allies with Congress is unlikely to benefit significantly from such an alliance. [caption id=“attachment_673797” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] 2.The vote share of the BJP throughout the 90’s and last decade has been constant at 13-15 percent of total vote while Congress has virtually stagnated at 8-10 percent. Indeed in the past 17 years there hasn’t been a single election where Congress polled close to 15 percent of the total vote. This is the main reason why Lalu once exclaimed that leaving a seat in Bihar to Congress was as good as losing it.It is the only party in Bihar which has no core vote unlike the BJP which is steadfastly supported by upper castes,kayasths and banias,RJD-Muslims and Yadavs,LJP pasmanda Muslims and paswans,JDU-lower backward castes, Kurmis and to some extent Pasmanda Muslims. 4.Upper castes are mainly concentrated in the Kosi,Mithila and Magadh regions with thick concentartion in the districts of Dharbhanga,Patna,Bhagalpur,Gaya,Aurangabad,Madhubani,Samastipur and Nalanda.An unusual feature of upper castes is that they are highly dynamic and opportunistic and do not bat an eyelid on leaving their favored parties and sailing with any party if they sense it’s close to gaining power. This has been the feature of upper castes in almost every state, but Bihar has been sole exception to this as higher castes have largely struck with BJP even when it was in opposition for a considerable period of time.This can be largely attributed to the fact that other parties in Bihar are largely non-upper caste in their orientation and core base. 5.Many analysts think that once Nitish and JDU get rid of the BJP under Modi pretext just like the BJD did in Odisha, he will be able to get the bulk of the upper caste vote.  They feel that this, coupled with his backward class vote and Muslim vote will allow him to sweep the elections.But the stead fast backing of upper castes to BJP demonstrated repeatedly in every tier of election from gram panchayat to Parliamentary polls makes such a possibility impossible. 6.Another interesting feature is that Muslim support for JDU is highly overrated.Actually contrary to public opinion Muslim vote in Bihar has not been voting overwhelmingly for Nitish as is being projected by Delhi media. Consider these statistics: * In seats with above 40 percent Muslim vote, JDU won just 1 out of the 5 seats it contested although it fielded Muslim candidates in all 5 seats.The vote share in these seats was JDU-32.3 percent while that of RJD-LJP was a close second at 28.3 percent. * In seats with 30-40 percent Muslim vote ( a total of 10 seats out of which JDU contested four seats it won just one seat) while BJP swept all the six seats it contested! * Actually it was the heavy OBC-Upper caste consolidation behind JDU-BJP which enabled their historic sweep and not any massive Muslim polarization behind Nitish. Nitish Kumar knows all these statistics. He is not a fool to be carried away by media propaganda. After all he waited for 16 years to become Bihar CM and knows too well any break up with BJP would only benefit the Lalu-Paswan brigade. Hence he would mellow down and like a cat with its tail between its legs go along with BJP.