How egoistic Nitish cheated Bihar by making Manjhi CM

Nitish Kumar is now former chief minister of Bihar.

But in his own estimation he has elevated his stature to that of a puppeteer. In Jitan Ram Manjhi he will install his man as the new chief minister of Bihar and run the state government via remote control.

He has suddenly catapulted himself to the position of late Bal Thackeray and Sonia Gandhi. Thackeray installed Manohar Joshi and Narayan Rane as Chief Ministers of Maharashtra and held the remote control. Sonia Gandhi nominated Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and remained the principal power centre.

But Nitish Kumar has put himself on a pedestal higher than them. Thackeray or Sonia were still officially led their respective parties. He is just an MLC of JD(U). he does not hold any position of significance in the party’s organisational structure but he is supreme leader of the party.

NitishParty president Sharad Yadav with all his political acumen and famed maneuvering ability only has decorative value.

Three key questions emerge from what transpired yesterday.

First, is this Nitish’s political masterstroke or is he committing the same mistake that he committed last year, dumping BJP to lure the Muslim vote? This time by sacrificing his own chair to lure Mahadalits? (His nominee, Jitan Ram Manjhi is a Mahadalit)

Second, has Nitish, also called Sushashan Babu (by supporters and rivals alike) dumped his governance and stability plank to play naked caste vote politics?

Third, is he on a simple ego trip? By resigning, this means he does not have to shake hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and constantly seek his help to build Bihar, which he would have been obliged to do as Chief Minister.

His rivals and a section of party men believe that he perhaps couldn’t stomach the thought of having to constant close interactions with PM Modi.

Given the kind of personal antipathy that Nitish has developed against Modi, he certainly would do everything to avoid these claims.

Both Thackeray and Sonia paid the price of being puppeteers. Thackeray changed two chief ministers but at the end of that government’s term in 1999, the Shiv Sena was thrown out of power and remained in exile for 15 years. That the BJP-Shiv Sena could come to power now can only be attributed to the Modi wave.

The Congress has been reduced to a humiliating defeat of 44 seats, whereby it can’t even officially claim opposition party and seek the post of Leader of Opposition for Rahul Gandhi and Sonia.

Nitish should also compare the credentials of Manohar Joshi and Narayan Rane vis-à-vis his nominee Jitan Ram Manjhi.

Take a look at Jitan Ram Manjhi’s credentials.

In Nitish Kumar’s outgoing Cabinet he was Minister for SC & ST, Backward Caste and Extremely Backward caste welfare. He contested the Lok Sabha elections from the Gaya (SC) constituency and lost badly to the BJP’s Hari Manjhi, coming in fourth.

He got 131,828 votes while the winning BJP candidate got 326,230 votes.

A senior BJP leader claimed that Manjhi had been desperate to get the BJP ticket from Gaya but that party leaders had not been convinced. For Manjhi the BJP’s denial to take him in their fold simply came as blessing in disguise. Three days after losing elections, he becomes chief minister.

True that Manjhi is one of seniormost MLAs in the state. Though he is not a recognisable face and the wider world may not have heard his name outside of Bihar, Manjhi has been a minister since 1980.

Governments have come and gone, parties have come and gone and chief ministers have come and gone but barring a few brief periods, Manjhi has been a constant feature in the state government. He was first minister in three Congress governments. Then when Lalu Prasad Yadav rose, he joined the RJD, only to ditch him for Nitish when the latter was on the ascendance.

His record as a minister has been, to put it kindly, below par. He has been accused of indulging in corrupt practice including a scam in the Education Department during RJD rule.

What prompted Nitish to choose him to provide governance and fulfil popular aspirations of development is beyond even senior Janata Dal (U) leaders.

Whatever be the actual reason, be it principled position or vote bank politics, Nitish has surely betrayed his voters who had given JD(U)-BJP alliance a historic three-fourth mandate to govern and make Bihar a developed state.

The voters severely punished him in parliamentary elections, reducing his tally to two from 20.

Will the same voters punish him again for playing this Mahadlit card? Will Muslims who didn’t trust him in parliamentary elections, start trusting him because he resigned as chief minister and even vacated the chief ministerial bungalow just because Narendra Modi became Prime Minister of India? It’s anyones guess at this point.

Nitish is Modi’s most bitter critic but he should have taken a cue from him. Like Modi, Nitish’s USP was governance. Modi didn’t leave the Chief Minister’s post, not even when he became Prime Minister designate, only so that he could continue hammering in his USP.

The result of this, was that people came to believe in his track record. Nitish by contrast dumped his USP to join a different league. Puppet and Puppeteer, which is in any case, a diminishing game.