Can UPA bait Nitish to join its anti-Modi stir with new aid formula?

The dynamics of the Congress and the BJP with their allies, curiously enough, has been on very similar political trajectories. In the past year, the Congress lost two key allies in Trinamool and DMK, while the JD(U) broke its 17-year-long association with the BJP. With parties like Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s BSP also sitting on the fence over extending support to the two big national parties, the coalition math of both the BJP and the Congress stand severely muddled. As is the natural instinct in situations like these, both parties have tried to woo the other’s former allies with little success till now. Despite BJP’s feather touch approach to Mamata Banerjee, it has failed to win back its former ally till now. However, the Congress has taken a more hard nosed approach to the ally business using their governmental powers to win over the JD(U). If one remembers well, around the time of the split, the Bihar CM had addressed a rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan trying to rake in support for the newly single JD(U). During his address, he had gone all out against the BJP and its allegedly communal agendas and remained remarkably mellow on criticizing the ruling party and the government. [caption id=“attachment_1032683” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Modi, Nitish, Chidambaram. Which way will JD(U) swing? AFP.[/caption] Though the rally was designed to garner support for demanding ‘special status’ for Bihar, Kumar didn’t launch on an acerbic offensive which would  corner the UPA government and compel them to grant special status to Bihar. Instead, he thanked Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who during his budget speech had made a passing mention of the need to look into Bihar’s special status demand, more than once in the rally. He then backed that up with a demand that Bihar’s former glory be restored, the path to which would be a special economic status. With hardly much time left for the next Assembly polls, and the Modi bulldozer rolling steadily over the country, the Congress has decided to take some quick measures to shore up support.   According to The Times of India, the government has instituted an expert committee headed by chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan, which has formed a scheme from which Bihar stands to benefit greatly. TOI reports:

An expert committee under chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan has identified 10 parameters for a new Composite Development Index, whose adoption by the Centre will change the way thousands of crores are transferred annually as central assistance to states and can potentially set the stage for realignment of political forces in Bihar before the 2014 general elections. 

According to the report, the new Composite Development Index attempts to rate states according to their difference with the national average when it comes to parameters like poverty, consumption, education, health, literacy etc. It is important to note here that Nitish Kumar’s impassioned pleas to the government during his Delhi rally harped on all these parameters, demonstrating how the state lags behind the rest of the country. Kumar had mentioned how Bihar’s backwardness drives people away and out of the state, and how its youth are forced to seek employment outside the state. With 20 Lok Sabha seats, JD(U) can be a fix for the UPA wrecked by the departure of two important allies. With the party now deciding to fight in all the 40 Lok Sabha seats alone, it will evidently be a valuable addition to the UPA. Besides the seat count, JD(U) is probably the only other party and Nitish Kumar the only other political leader, apart from Congress, who relentlessly brings up the 2002 riots and Narendra Modi’s alleged anti-secular philosophies in public discourses. With Modi positioning himself as a ‘Hindu nationalist’ and trying to turn the strongest strain of criticism against him into his poll plank now, Congress needs to shore up as many voices it can which magnify its communal cry against the Gujarat CM. Before parting ways with the BJP, Kumar had said he preferred a BJP leadership which was ‘secular’, implying that he was not willing to buy arguments that exonerate Modi of all responsibility in the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots. The fact that the JD(U) decided to break a long, fruitful association solely because of Modi, accusing him of coming in the way of its own secular politicking, makes JD(U) just the perfect Congress ally in the present political climate. In fact, the Congress could ride on JD(U) anti-Modi wave to give greater resonance to their arguments against Modi and hence BJP’s fitness to run the country successfully and democratically. In fact, soon after Modi lobbed the ‘burqa of secularism’ accusation at the UPA, Nitish Kumar was one of the first prominent voices to lash out at him and ask him to ‘mind your language’. It doesn’t help the BJP, that Modi had threatened Nitish Kumar immediately after the split saying the Bihar CM will pay dearly for ‘betraying’ the BJP. While that brand of macho has the potential to throw Modi’s fans into fits of admiration, it also has the potential to turn fence sitters against him and question is alleged autocratic ways. Soon after the JD(U)-BJP split Bihar BJP leaders like Shahnawaz Hussain and Sushil Kumar Modi had declared that there was enough evidence to show that Kumar had been all praises for his Gujarat CM not long ago, thereby suggesting that Kumar’s personal political ambitions were the reason behind his disapproval of Modi and his departure from BJP. Outlook quotes Sushil Modi:

“We have a number of CDs in which (Nitish) Kumar has publicly and uninhibitedly praised his Gujarat counterpart and even praised him to the effect that his services and leadership will be beneficial to the country… We have collected all these CDs for display before the people of Bihar so that his duplicity could be exposed thoroughly,” BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told reporters, a day after the BJP and the JD(U) parted ways.

However, what they have done in the process is they have given Congress enough meat to raise their volume and point a finger at Nitish’ change of heart as evidence of Narendra Modi’s communal affiliations. With a financial package that’’ obviously be music to the ears of Bihar’s crumbling infrastructure, recently hit by the deaths of 23 children after consuming midday meal, the Centre might silence criticism from the state at once. It might then try to work its way into a political understanding, with some success too.