Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne!

Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, does it again, switching loyalties and dumping its ally, with whom he had contested the Assembly elections. He has been the CM five times and had quit responding to his conscience call after his party fared poorly in the 2014 elections. He won the 2015 elections and was elected the national president of JD(U) and the Chief Minister of Bihar. Notably, Prashant Kishore steered the campaign, who Nitish felt could be a threat to his leadership and snapped his relations with the poll strategist.

Nitish resigned again in 2017 after allying with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. Tejaswi Yadav was named in a CBI’s FIR on corruption charges, prompting Nitish to resign. Nitish did an electrifying mid-air trapeze to switch over to NDA and allied with the BJP in the last elections in 2020. Nitish broke away from NDA and the BJP to return to the MGB (Maha Gat Bandhan), the grand opposition alliance, claiming that it was increasingly difficult to work with the BJP and that he could offer an opposition PM face in 2024.

The reason for his exiting his alliance with the NDA and the BJP can be whatever, but his ‘liquor prohibition policy may not have endeared him with the poor. His party was in the minority with 45 seats, as against the BJP’s 77. The opposition MGB, led by RJD has 79 and the CPI-ML 12 seats, with other left parties 4. The third group was Congress with 19 and AIMIM 1.

In the new realignment of the MGB, Nitish will still be a minority member with the crafty Lalu Yadav clan calling the shots, and it will be challenging for Nitish to pull on till 2025 without eating a humble pie now and then. Nitish may have done hara-kiri by announcing that he could be a PM face for 2024 to take on Modi and the BJP. But Gandhis will never let go of their opportunity to take a shot at the PM chair if they politically remain relevant until 2024. Then there is also Mamata Banerjee, her clique, trying to break up any threat to Didi’s unexplainable ambitions, often favouring the BJP! And then there is KCR of Telangana, who already behaves like a PM.

CM of Bihar is a different cup of tea than the PM of the Indian Union. Nitish is whimsical, often suffers his conscience calls, and does the unthinkable U-turns, which are politically unstable. Politically, what Nitish did, could be deemed normal in the murky world of disparaging concern for pre-poll alliances and commitments made to the voters. What BJP did in Maharashtra, RJD did in Bihar. The changes will help another rising star in the caste-steeped state, Chirag Paswan of the LJP, who supports the BJP, despite his ignominious losses in the elections. The battle lines are drawn as the few Union ministers from Nitish’s party refuse to quit the NDA government.

Nitish, a stickler to probity with intolerance to corruption, would have to work with one of the most corrupt families in India, whose founder still has many years of prison terms hanging over his head and is home on health-related parole.

All is fine in the name of democracy, including the chacha-bathija Sarkar.

Sampath Kumar

Intrépide Voix

P.S.: Mungerilal was a popular TV character who dreamt of the impossible. ‘Sapnon Ke Naam Nahin, sapnon ke daam nahi, sapno ke ghodon par kissi ki lagaam nahi, Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne.’ Dreams have no name, and dreams do not cost, no reins for the horses in his dreams, the dreams of Mungerilal,’ was the theme song of the serial.