Less than 24 hours after Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister (CM) of the Indian state of Bihar, resigned from his post, citing inability to work with his deputy chief minister, Tejashwi Yadav, the suave politician was back as the state’s CM. There is a slight difference though: This time, Nitish is in an alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party took no time in extending its unconditional support to Nitish in what many analysts see as an uncanny combination of political machination and masterstroke.
In his new innings, Nitish, an adherent of the Jayprakash Narayan movement, has walked back into the BJP fold after parting ways with it years ago. The rapidly changing political equation in the electorally-significant state of Bihar has checkmated the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo, Lalu Yadav, Kumar’s erstwhile comrade-in-arms, as well as the Congress party, which was a junior partner in the previous government in Bihar. With all the trappings of the great Indian back-room power play, it marks the return of the pre-2013 arrangement and the BJP’s scramble to power in a state it was eagerly eyeing.
In jettisoning the mahagathbandhan, or the grand coalition, on the pretext of the deputy chief minister’s corruption taint, Nitish sought to preserve power. If the chief minister truly wanted to revive his alliance with the BJP, the best thing to do would have been to give the voters a chance. Politics, however, is not always about decorousness. Nitish’s move has perforated the prospects of a grand opposition unity for the 2019 general elections in India and put Modi in a much more formidable position.
