EVER since the Lok Sabha elections, the suggestion, mainly from the BJP and its ideologues, has been that politics of caste and caste identity, i.e. the ‘Mandal era’, has given way to one around development/governance/growth. The subtext of this message is that the new politics – symbolized in the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his much-touted Gujarat model and dream of smart cities, 24/7 electricity, infrastructure, digital India – is the first choice of an aspirational India, the expanding middle class in urban and urbanizing towns and villages.

This theory was expounded ad nauseum, especially by important office-bearers and ministers in the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, in the run-up to the Bihar elections. In an interaction, India’s telecom minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, was emphatic that the ‘politics of identity’ was a thing of the past while development and delivery constitute the new attractions for an ‘aspirational’ and young country.

‘Let me explain the context in which the present elections are being contested. Politics in India has progressed in three broad phases – politics of welfare and want, politics of identity, and the contemporary phase of politics of development and aspiration. The problem with the socialists is that they are still living in the era of Mandal and Kamandal which peaked during the 1990s and early part of this millennium,’ Prasad told me. ‘We have now entered the phase of development and aspiration with which the youth and large section of aspiring Indians identify. The BJP has recognized the aspiration of the voters and responded to it politically. The PM’s speeches are a reflection of this recognition. But with Lalu Prasad Yadav sitting astride his shoulders, Nitish Kumar cannot speak this language. That is where we score,’ he added.¹

In fact, the BJP’s foremost election strategist Arun Jaitley too voiced similar sentiments in an interaction before the Lok Sabha elections. Although Jaitley did bring up Modi’s ‘OBC credentials’, thereby underlining the criticality of caste in the elections, his main focus was on underscoring the BJP PM candidate’s ‘governance’ credentials and how they satisfy an emerging/new class of voters in India. ‘The good thing is that the issues that have occupied centre stage and shaped the political debate are all related to governance; the dominant political discourse is governance-centric. The Congress’ leadership has an important role to play in the people’s total disenchantment with the government. Because people are disillusioned with the Congress leadership, this election has inevitably become quasi-presidential in character. It is not an unusual development, it happens in a parliamentary democracy. In Pandit Nehru’s time, elections were presidential in nature. It also happened during Indira Gandhi’s time,’ Jaitley told me in an interview.²

Alternatively, what is now being said, in the aftermath of the Bihar elections and the success of the mahagathbandhan, is that Mandal/caste politics is back in vogue or at least not seen as quiet dead yet. The BJP’s official explanation for the defeat is that the ‘caste arithmetic’ worked in favour of the Alliance.

 

My contention is that these binaries are misleading. While caste remains an important consideration in the most critical aspects of electioneering – candidate selection, choice of campaigners – the projection of a strong leader helps at both the national as well as the provincial level. The failure to do so was one of the big drawbacks in the BJP’s strategy in Bihar. It is also true that the credibility and track record of the leader vis-à-vis governance/development has increasingly become an important criterion for the voters. The BJP created a distinct narrative around its campaign in the pro-growth/governance strategies as also the Hindutva orientation of Narendra Modi. The success of mahagathbandhan in Bihar, in contrast, lay partly in the projection of Nitish Kumar on a secular, social justice platform which also had a strong pro-development plank.

For the BJP, what comes most naturally is politics of Hindutva where Muslims are the easy target of a hate campaign. This is where they are most comfortable and often successful. Even in the Lok Sabha campaign where development was supposedly the most critical selling point of Brand Modi, the BJP got its maximum number of seats from Uttar Pradesh where it ran a decidedly communal campaign in the backdrop of the Muzaffarnagar riots.

 

In Bihar which, like Uttar Pradesh, was micro-managed by Amit Shah with minimal inputs from any of the other senior colleagues, what started of as a push for development with the PM announcing a special package for the state, quickly deteriorated into a high-pitched shouting match about beef eating, Pakistan, terrorism and siphoning off quota benefits to Muslims. On the final day of the campaign, the Election Commission had to issue an order censoring content of the publicity materials by political parties after the BJP released an advertisement accusing Nitish Kumar of promoting consumption of beef.

And yet, it is erroneous to conclude that this wall all there is to their strategy. Besides the distinctly communal tone to their public pronouncements, the BJP also tried to add to its essential support base of upper caste voters. In the list of the BJP’s 160 candidates, as many as 65 were upper caste including about 30 Rajputs, 19 Bhumihars, 14 Brahmins and three Kayasthas, clearly underlining the BJP’s thrust at consolidating its traditional social support base. At the same time, the party fielded about two dozen Yadavs, suggesting that the BJP truly believed in the ‘aspirational’ pull of Narendra Modi’s campaign among the younger Yadav voters in Bihar. Besides the two dozen Yadavs, there were 19 Vaishyas who fall under the OBCs in Bihar, three Kurmis, six Koeris and about 21 Scheduled Caste candidates.

 

Conscious of the need to create ‘viable’ caste coalitions, the BJP depended on Jitan Ram Manjhi besides Ramvilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha whose Lok Janshakti Party and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party respectively were expected to add the Mahadalit, Dalit and Koeri vote to its upper caste base. Significantly, even the LJP’s list had four Bhumihars, four Rajputs and two Brahmins besides five Paswans, two Koeris, one Yadav, one Mallah and two Muslims. From Jitan Ram Manjhi’s kitty of 20 seats, four went to Bhumihars and one to a Rajput while five were given to Dalits, two to Yadavs, two to Koeris, one Kurmi and one Vaishya. Manjhi fielded the largest number of five Muslims among the NDA constituents. Even Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP fielded two Bhumihars and one Rajput besides seven Koeris, two Dalits, one Kurmi, one Yadav and one Vaishya. In all, there were as many as 85 upper caste candidates from the NDA’s side, i.e. close to 35% of the candidates were upper caste, the largest proportion going to Rajputs. There were about 32 Scheduled Castes, 25 Yadavs, 20 EBCs and about 23 Kushwaha/Koeris.

The rival coalitions clearly depended on their respective core caste base while creating rainbow coalitions around other castes. So, just as the NDA depended on the upper castes, about 134 candidates declared by the grand alliance, which is close to 55%, were from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Of the 134 OBC candidates, as many as 64 seats went to Yadavs while there were 22 Kushwahas, 16 Kurmis and about 25 EBCs. There were 40 SC/ST candidates amounting to 16% of the electorate and 33, i.e 14% Muslims. Compared to 35% of the NDA’s tickets going to upper caste candidates, in the mahagathbandhan the proportion allotted to upper caste was less than 16%, i.e. about 39 upper caste candidates were fielded by the grand alliance.

 

Was Nitish Kumar’s credibility on the development front an additional pull for the voter beyond caste lines? Nitish Kumar’s poll strategist Prahant Kishore described the grand alliance as a cake with the perfect icing – Lalu Yadav being the ‘cake’ for Nitish Kumar’s ‘icing’. I will present two different narratives from Makhdumpur in Jehanabad, the bastion of Jitan Ram Manjhi from where he lost decisively to Subedar Das of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Phulwari Sharif near Patna from where Shyam Rajak of the JD(U) won again.

I went to Makhdumpur in the beginning of September when the campaign had just started to warm up and neither the seats nor candidates had been announced. The NDA was, in fact, still holding seat-sharing talks with the junior allies demanding a bigger share from the BJP. The RLSP chief, Upendra Kushwaha, was on record demanding 67 seats out of the total 243 and Jitan Ram Manjhi was claiming that he is a bigger leader among Dalits than Ramvilas Paswan.

But in the Jehanabad-Makhadumpur belt, it seemed as if the BJP was holding him (Manjhi) by the hand. In the villages of Sagarpur, Nirpur, Nangadh, Bhani Bigha, Kayamgunj and Kanchnaib that I surveyed, upper caste voters were unequivocal in their support for ‘anyone that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi chooses to field’ from their constituency. The BJP’s social support base among the Brahmins, Bhumihars, Banias, Thakurs and Kayasthas seemed to be more or less intact.

In the case of Mahadalit and EBC voters, a clear division was visible. Jitan Ram Manjhi had some sympathy in the Manjhi/Musahars tolas that I visited, but this did not seem firm. In at least three villages in a row – Kanchnaib, Bhani Bigha and Kayamgunj – not a single voter among the EBC and Dalit communities such as Kushwahas, Kumhars, Mallahs or Das expressed any wish to support Manjhi. There was overt resentment among some. ‘The only people who support Manjhi around here are the upper castes. None of us will go with him,’ said Jayant Kumar Kumhar in Kanchnaib, as he let loose a string of abuse at the former chief minister.

 

The local voters anger against Manjhi stemmed from two factors – first that he had ‘stabbed Nitish Kumar in the back’ and was preventing him from becoming chief minister again. Manjhi was viewed as someone whom Nitish Kumar tried to promote but had not yet become the tallest leader among Dalits. Dalit and EBC voters still preferred Nitish Kumar while the Yadavs vote was unequivocally for Lalu Prasad Yadav. But an overriding factor, articulated by almost all voters I spoke to in Makhdumpur, was Nitish Kumar’s ‘commitment to development’. Surat Das and Shanti Devi in Sagarpur village, also part of Manjhi’s constituency, cheered for Nitish Kumar. ‘Do you see these fields here? We have grown paddy and it has hardly rained this year. But because Nitish Kumar built us this canal, our crop is still standing. Who do you think our vote will go to?’ asked Surat Das, a Dalit.

Shanti Devi’s reasons for backing Nitish Kumar were related to the tangible difference he is credited to have made in the law and order situation. Jehanabad was a site for caste wars in the 1990s between the Bhumihar and Thakur militia, Ranvir Sena, and the Maoists who mostly had support among the Dalits and EBCs. The Maoists have not completely vanished but their influence is considerably reduced and the Ranvir Sena has been disbanded. Jehanabad shows the promise of nascent growth, with new bridges and metalled roads linking even the most non-descript villages. ‘There was a time when it was impossible to move around after dark. Nitish has changed that. Have you seen the girls cycling around, going to school?’ said Shanti Devi.

 

Even the presence of Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Upendra Kushwaha in the NDA seemed to offer little incentive to the Kushwahas in this region to support his ally, Jitan Ram Manjhi. They did not have kind words for Upendra Kushwaha as well. ‘I am a Kushwaha. But there is no leader compared to Nitish Kumar. Both Upendra Kushwaha and Jitan Ram Manjhi do not make one paisa of a difference to our support for the JD(U),’ said Ambika Prasad in Bhani Bigha. In fact, what I gathered from my interactions with voters in Makhdumpur and elsewhere in Vaishali, Hajipur and Nalanda was that Upendra Kushwaha had failed to emerge as a pan-Bihar leader of Kushwahas. His caste voters still identified with Nitish Kumar and even Lalu Yadav as ‘backward’ leaders while BJP, despite the alliances it forged with Kushwaha and Manjhi besides having Ram Vilas Paswan on its side, continued to be viewed largely as an ‘upper caste’ party.

The mahagathbandhan in Bihar managed to turn the elections into a ‘backward versus forward’ fight, wherein even as Nitish and Lalu retained their strong backward identity the BJP suffered from the absence of a strong backward caste/class leader at the forefront. That the BJP failed to project a backward caste chief ministerial candidate further added to this impression even as the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comments about the need for a ‘rethink of the reservation policy’ in the middle of the election campaign buttressed the mahagathbandhan claim that the BJP was an ‘anti-reservation’ party.

 

Off record interactions with leaders of the BJP and its allies, especially Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) during the campaign revealed the unease within the alliance that the BJP’s ‘development’ narrative was not working in their favour because voters did not see Modi as a preferred alternative even when they wanted progress and development. Voters still viewed Nitish Kumar as the safest bet for delivering on the development/governance fronts.

That the upper caste voters were so aggressive in their support for the BJP did not help the party wean away backward voters from the mahagathbandhan. For example, in Makhdumpur from the villages where Nitish Kumar had strong appeal, the scene at the Makhdumpur market dramatically changed with the shopkeepers and more affluent voters enthusiastically supporting the BJP and Manjhi seen as ‘Modi’s candidate’. ‘There is no question. Manjhi will win because we all support the BJP,’ said Kamlesh Kumar, a shopkeeper at Makhdumpur market. ‘Don’t get taken in by the Kushwahas in the villages you went to. Manjhi is sure to win.’

Manjhi had earlier won this assembly segment by a margin of 5085 votes by getting 38463 votes. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the seat was won by Arun Kumar of Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP who got 50907 votes to 47087 votes polled by the RJD’s Surendra Prasad Yadav. This time around the RJD wrested it back from the BJP by fielding Subedar Das, a Dalit, against Manjhi.

Das, an extremely impoverished candidate who was reportedly reduced to begging to earn a livelihood, became the target of a big media campaign during the elections because of a ‘sting’ operation allegedly showing him accepting a bribe on camera. Lalu Prasad Yadav, however, persisted in his support for Das, who managed to defeat Manjhi from Makhdumpur. Manjhi suffered as a result of his dismal record as a legislator and because the voters believed Nitish Kumar to be the real deliverer of services. Note that this was true even among the residents of the Musahar tola.

 

Phulwari Sharif seat on the outskirts of Patna was held by Shyam Rajak of JD(U). The interactions here pointed to three trends – one, the BJP’s presumption that young voters among the Yadavs will vote for Modi was wrong; second, that there was easy transfer of votes within the Grand Alliance; and third, that voters who preferred Modi’s BJP in the general elections were gravitating towards the grand alliance. Pulia Tola is a Yadav dominated village on the main road where voters were vocal and assertive. Interactions with young Yadav voters clearly indicated that Lalu Yadav was strongly holding on to his community support base. Further, the voters were willing to heed his suggestion to support Nitish Kumar as their CM candidate.

Mannan Kumar Yadav from Pulia Tola, the most vocal among a group of youngsters I interacted with said: ‘Lalu is our leader. If he says we should support Nitish Kumar, there is no question of even one vote from this village going anywhere else.’ In the panchayat of Bhasola Danapur, Ravi Kumar, a Kushwaha who runs a small shop, revealed that he voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections but will go with Nitish Kumar in the assembly elections. In the backdrop of the Dadri lynching incident and the anti-beef consumption rhetoric by the BJP, Kumar said, ‘There are butchers in my neighbourhood. I have watched them (Muslims) slaughtering cows. I even made a video of the activities there and complained to the police. But this is not an election issue. I voted for Modi last time, but the vote will go to Nitish Kumar in the assembly.’

 

Another important aspect of voter behaviour in Bihar, distinct from voters in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh where the BJP managed to create a communal atmosphere during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, was the total indifference to issues such as beef eating, BJP President Amit Shah’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric and even Narendra Modi’s assertion midway through the elections that a mahagathbandhan victory in Bihar would mean Muslims being allotted reservation from the OBC kitty.

One reason for this difference between Bihar and UP is that the political reality of Bihar is distinct from that in Uttar Pradesh where the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation and the temple-mosque conflicts in Ayodhya/Mathura/Kashi have long the dominated discourse. In Bihar, a marked feature in the political discourse is the assertion of radical left politics from the 1960s. Caste has been the essential core of class conflict, as evident in the daily confrontations that took place between upper caste militia Ranvir Sena, a number of whom were BJP/RSS cadre, and the radical left cadre. These conflicts in the past situated caste as the antithesis of communal consolidation.

Also, there are factors inhibiting ‘backward consolidation’ in UP because the intermediary castes such as the Yadavs and the Kurmis, who are also politically empowered, are seen as more oppressive than the upper castes by the Dalits. The rivalry between Dalit leader Mayawati and Yadav leader Mulayam Singh Yadav too prevents a backward consolidation of the kind Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar were able to craft in Bihar. The third, and most important, factor in the BJP’s inability to use communal issues for electoral advantage was the vigilance of Lalu and Nitish and their consistent campaign among voters to resist the BJP’s ‘communal’ campaign.

 

Two months before the elections, Nitish Kumar, in a detailed interaction with some journalists, had talked about the BJP’s ‘communal campaign’ as a cause for major worry during the elections. He cited different steps that he and his allies were taking against such a campaign. Lalu, in an interaction told me that he had been consistently warning people against ‘communal politics’ in all his elections rallies, often as many as 8-10 public meetings in a day. In a two month long campaign, there was sufficient time to warn against the dangers of communalism.

On the question about consolidation of all castes behind Modi/BJP, Lalu Yadav told me, ‘Never make the mistake of transplanting the reality of one election to another. Lok Sabha was a different election where Modi promised the moon to the people and they got taken in. They thought he should be given a chance. But by now people have found him out. They know that behind the façade of development and progress lurks the ugly face of communalism, mob lynching and anti-minority brute force. They cannot fool the people of Bihar a second time… They have tried [to polarize voters on communal lines]. They went on about beef eating even though the real issue was about an innocent man being lynched to death on mere suspicion. And they are masters of creating smoke and mirrors. Now the festive season is coming. There will be Muharram, Dusehara, and Durga Puja. These are times of heightened religiosity. We are aware that the BJP/RSS will use these occasions to create further trouble between Hindus and Muslims. But I have been warning people against precisely such manoeuvres. Log sachet hain. Hum yahan danga nahin hone denge. Par yeh log koshish zaroor karega (People are alert. We won’t let a riot happen here. But they will try). There is a long gap between the second and the third phase. But if they try, you will know that everything else has failed from their side,’ said Lalu.³

 

Bihar was a complex election in which Nitish Kumar’s image was constructed on a secular, social justice platform which also had a strong pro-development plank. It was created as an alternative to the pro-growth/ governance, Hindutva orientation of Narendra Modi. Between these two narratives, the mahagathbandhan better usemade of the caste arithmetic of Yadavs/Kurmis/Muslims to consolidate other ‘lower’ castes against the BJP-led coalition which failed to expand its social base beyond upper caste voters. The elections also showed that voter behaviour in an assembly election is distinct from a Lok Sabha election where they choose a ‘national’ leader and rise above local considerations and issues.

 

Footnotes:

1. Interview – Ravi Shankar Prasad, Telecom Minister, Hindu Business Line, 3 September 2015.

2. Interview – Arun Jaitley, BJP leader, Hindu Business Line, 18 March 2014.

3. Interview – Lalu Prasad Yadav, Hindu Business Line, 15 October 2015.