Mumbai: Every battle has its collateral damage. It’s mostly non- combatants. Often it is heroes too who end up on the losing side. In the days when battles were fought with swords and guns the good and bad, heroes and kinsmen, and the guilty and innocent, all died on the field. Defeat was death or ignominy. But we fight for power and pelf differently now.
Mercifully, we have evolved enough to sort out our internecine competitions with something we call the ballot. Our leaders don’t compete with our lives, but compete f0r our minds. And so victor and vanquished both leave the field to compete for our favor another day and time.
Electoral defeat does not have to mean political death. And we have seen far too many instances of the rise to the pinnacles and the precipitous falls, and resurrection soon after to say goodbye to anyone. I will be the last one to say goodbye to Nitish Kumar.
Am I amazed by Nitish Kumar’s defeat? Disappointed perhaps but not surprised. I have seen life for far too long to read signs that are not warranted by certain outcomes. As someone who began working life as an Account Executive with the big advertising agency JWT and handling the Hindustan Levers top toilet soap brand, Lux, I was always amazed by how much low quality soap you could sell by promising to make women beautiful.
The big ad of my time used to feature the young "dream girl" Hema Malini saying "Lux is the secret of my beauty."
We all know that a soap that merely removes the dirt and grime cannot be beautiful. Yet millions fall for it each day.
The record of the Nitish Kumar government was quite good. In fact so good that people whose business is to make comparisons rate it the best in India. Better than Narendra Modi’s Gujarat model whose brand of soap seemed to prevail in the political marketplace. No other state in India achieved a sustained GDP growth of over 12% for an entire decade.
This is even more creditable considering that Bihar, all through its entire existence as an Indian state, got the least from the nation to uplift its people. It did not attract much industry and the baggage of the past was far too heavy a burden. Even now Bihar has to make do with far less electricity, even if that had increased threefold during the last decade.
Because of this, instead of an inflow of capital, Bihar still sees a flight of capital from it. It still has a credit/deposit ration of 4/10. Bihar never got its due from India, even though Nitish Kumar was the first of its many CM’s to flag it.
The Nitish Kumar government restored order in a state where criminals were running amuck. Criminality was a common habit and even the administration was more often than not a partner in crime. After he became chief minister, 50,000 criminals were locked up. Now this does not mean that criminal activities have completely stopped.
Bihar is a large state and there would be areas where criminal activities are prevalent and there would be areas where they have come down — the levels would vary, but importantly a message was sent out and the message was that things would not be tolerated the way they were.
The Nitish Kumar government built roads where long strips of vacant land passed off as roads. By this he brought Biharis closer to each other. When roads are roads, commerce and movement of people is hugely facilitated. The economic results of this are seen in the GDP growth posted. He vastly expanded the school system and 400,000 new teachers were recruited to teach, not just collect salaries.
The sharp reduction of the school dropout rate is testimony to this. Girls were encouraged to seek education and the bicycles scheme was a huge boost to get girls into schools. An educated and empowered woman population is imperative for development.
Like elsewhere fathers will be fathers, and it is mothers who keep the home and hearth together, discipline and teach the children, and tend to the family. We see now that the numbers of women voters have begun exceeding men in most states. And Bihar has been no exception now.
Chandragupta Maurya may not have defeated Alexander or Taxila may not be in Bihar, but Bihar always showed India the way forward. It is the land of the Buddha, Ashoka, Vaishali and Nalanda. It is the land of Jayaprakash Narayan who tried to make values the centerpiece of politics. Nitish Kumar embodied that heritage and was the truest disciple of JP. What happened last week is a political setback. We have a government that with 31% of the popular vote with it has 331 seats in Parliament.
This is not a situation that can prevail forever, or even very long. The voice of the 69% who voted against NDA is seeking expression. This not the time for a good man like Nitish Kumar to fold his tent and leave the battle.
Tomorrow is another day.
