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Friday, Feb 25, 2005

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BIHAR BATTLELINES

TWO ELECTIONS HELD nine months apart. The first, the epitome of clarity and order, and the second, spectacularly chaotic. This, in a nutshell, is the story of Bihar. The third and final phase of polling for the State Assembly ended without yielding significant clues to which way the verdict will go. In the 14th general election held in April 2004, the battlelines in Bihar were clearly drawn — between the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led alliance and the National Democratic Alliance. In contrast, today a host of imponderables has complicated the picture, rendering inadvisable any hasty second guessing of the outcome. However, if there is one party that is universally thought to have lost the plot, it is the Congress. That the party's ambivalence towards its allies — till the end, the Congress could not decide who it wanted for a friend, Lalu Prasad or Ram Vilas Paswan — has been to the detriment of the United Progressive Alliance is evident enough. What remains to be seen is the extent to which this will help the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (U), now suddenly resurgent after a bout of self-doubt. There are three alliances in the fray: the RJD and the Left; the Congress and the Lok Jana Shakti Party; and finally, the BJP-JD (U). In theory, the first bloc is better placed than its rivals, not least because a triangular contest is believed to split the anti-incumbency votes (it is a different matter that the Congress-LJP combine could end up splintering the pro-RJD votes).

Secondly, the bifurcation of Bihar was to the advantage of the RJD. In the 2000 Assembly election in undivided Bihar, the RJD and the NDA finished almost on a par, securing 124 and 122 out of 324 seats. With the division, the RJD strongholds of the North remained in Bihar while the South, where the BJP had a significant presence, went on to become Jharkhand. In other words, the RJD is by far the largest force in truncated Bihar. Thirdly, in 2000, Lalu Prasad single-handedly fought a united and gung-ho Opposition. The NDA fairly sizzled with star presence. Nitish Kumar, George Fernandes, Ram Vilas Paswan, and Shatrughan Sinha criss-crossed the State, ably supported by Prime Minister Vajpayee and Home Minister Advani. The contest seemed so one-sided that pollsters and pundits alike wrote off Mr. Prasad. Yet the RJD emerged from the battle with honours, claiming the most number of seats as well as the largest share of votes polled . Today Mr. Prasad would seem on a much better wicket, with the NDA weakened by the exit of the LJP and the Congress contesting only 83 out of 243 seats.

If the RJD looks vulnerable today, it is in part because it is being judged against its performance in the 2004 Lok Sabha election. Among them, the RJD, the Congress, and the LJP secured 29 of 40 seats and 44.4 per cent of the vote. The comparison may be inappropriate as different considerations operate in the two elections. Has the ground situation in Bihar changed since the 2000 Assembly election? Only a scientifically conducted survey can answer this question with any degree of accuracy (the exit polls have proved unreliable in the past). Nonetheless, it seems quite likely that the RJD has suffered an erosion in its vote share. Across the State, more voices (among them, Muslims and backward caste voices) can be heard speaking up against the Rabri Devi regime than was the case previously. Add to this the complicating presence of the Congress and the LJP, and what once looked like a closed contest becomes a wide open race.

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