Pavan K. Varma | Nitish takes ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ to new low

This comment was directed at the then “Aya Ram, Gaya Ram” politics of Haryana. But it is directly applicable to what is happening now in Bihar, where opportunist politics have touched a new low. Bihar is an ideological wasteland where nothing matters except political power at any cost. There are no principles, no loyalties, no ethics and no morality. Alas, chief minister Nitish Kumar is at the epicentre of this sorry state of affairs.

The truth is that Nitish Kumar has been fatally bitten by his love for the chair. I write this with sadness, even anguish. I was India’s ambassador in Bhutan, when I resigned from the Indian Foreign Service in 2012 to join him. He had then, as the chief minister of Bihar, a different aura about him. He was called “Sushasan Babu”, and widely respected for the radical changes he had brought in Bihar after the lawless rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Crime was relentlessly suppressed, good governance was in evidence, and he was a symbol of hope, not only for Biharis, but a potential candidate for the highest position in national politics.

I was personally impressed by his personal integrity, his courage of conviction, his fealty to principles and his administrative acumen. He was well educated, and an intellectual. In fact, in our very first meeting, when he came to Bhutan on an official visit and I received him, in the hour-long journey from Paro where the airport is, to the capital Thimphu, he discussed with me four of my books, which was so unlike other politicians. On his part, he accorded me great respect. On the day I joined him in January 2013, he made me adviser to the CM, with Cabinet rank, and later sent me to the Rajya Sabha.

I have, therefore, reasons to be grateful to him, and have refrained for long from publicly saying anything against him, even after I and Prashant Kishor were expelled from the JD(U) in 2019 for our opposition to the CAA hyphenated with the NRC. But since 2017, his political image has declined so precipitously, and his flip-flops between the RJD and the BJP so frequent, that I am compelled to say that he is now not even a shadow of the Nitish Kumar I had joined and greatly respected.

Today, his party is in tatters. From being the single largest party in Bihar in 2010 with 115 seats to the BJP’s 91, and garnering 20 seats in the 2009 parliamentary election against only 12 to the BJP, it has now been reduced in the 2020 Assembly elections to 43 seats, the smallest by a long margin in comparison with the other two parties, the BJP and the RJD. Unfortunately, his popularity is also at its lowest, with people derisively calling him “Kursi Kumar” or “Paltu Ram”. He has become a rootless transactional accessory to either the BJP or the RJD, neither of which have respect for him, but only see him as a transient utility. In fact, although the BJP has succeeded in breaking the already unstable Opposition gathbandhan, it may not have done itself a favour by making him chief minister again in the new alliance formed last month, when he switched from the RJD to the BJP yet again.

I have often wondered what made Nitish commit this relentless political suicide. His personal standing was still very high when he was trounced in the 2014 national election by the Narendra Modi wave, winning only two of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. It was a huge setback, but people respected him for standing up to his principles. He took moral responsibility for the poor showing of the party, and resigned, making Jitan Ram Manjhi the chief minister. He rebounded back in the 2015 Assembly elections, with a stunning victory in alliance with the RJD, and became chief minister again.

It is quite possible that tensions between him and the RJD had surfaced during their rule in Bihar, but if only at that time he had the courage to say that he would resign and go to the people rather than compromise with corruption or communalism, he would still be today Bihar’s tallest statesman. But, instead, after having bitterly criticised Narendra Modi, and publicly sworn never to go back to the BJP, and proclaiming that his aim was to rid the country of the RSS, he did a sudden volte face and rejoined the BJP, deeply eroding his political credibility. The subsequent rupture with the BJP, and the alliance with the RJD, and then, again, a break with the RJD to join hands with the BJP, even at a time when he was priding himself as being one of the principal architects of the Opposition’s INDIA alliance and hosting its first meeting in June 2023 in Patna, only further reinforced public perception of his ideological bankruptcy and love for the CM’s chair.

While this kind of sordid politics goes on in Patna, the people of Bihar continue to suffer. In the over 30 years of Nitish-Lalu rule, Bihar is exactly where it was 30 years ago, the poorest state in India, with a per capita income close to one-fourth of the national average, ranking the lowest in almost in every indicator of human development, and facing unemployment of a kind that there is hardly any ordinary home where men have not left the state to find employment elsewhere, often in the most pitiable circumstances.

Bihar, once the cradle of civilisation, and the seat of the first great empire in our history, and known for its “moulik soch”, or power of original thought, with names such as Chanakya, Buddha, Mahavir, Jayaprakash Narayan and Dr Rajendra Prasad, is today, because of its unscrupulous politicians, seen as the laughing stock of the country.

It is an extremely sad decline, and although I still wish him well, Nitish Kumar’s legacy has played an important part in this.