{"id":4589,"date":"2024-01-31T08:34:58","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T02:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/?p=4589"},"modified":"2024-01-31T08:34:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T02:49:58","slug":"nitish-kumars-last-political-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/nitish-kumars-last-political-gambit.html","title":{"rendered":"Nitish Kumar’s last political gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest move of Nitish Kumar to align with NDA, leaves him without any credibility in the eyes of the people of Bihar and nation. Will his latest political Gambit help? the jury is out on this.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Vivekanand Jha Ranch<\/strong>i: Penning a glowing tribute on the birth anniversary of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister of India, Nitish Kumar had heaped an avalanche of praise on the former Prime Minister, attributing to him the credit for having done an all fulfilling apprenticeship under his stewardship: he was referring to having served as a Union Agriculture Minister under Vajpayee’s premiership. Significantly, Nitish went gaga in articulating the schemes which he had launched in Bihar, for decades, which he said, he had learnt during the tenure of his ministry under Vajpayee. Regrettably, while Nitish was all praise for Ataljee’s benevolent leadership along with his administrative acumen, the characteristic traits which he purportedly claimed to have devoutly emulated, he, rather uncannily, seldom, even remotely failed to allude to his mentor’s robust ideological sense of belief which he had steadfastly upheld in politics for almost five decades. Apt it is here to mention the fact that how Vajpayee had eloquently underscored the fact in his parliamentary speech during his first thirteen days tenure of his government: ‘ If the power comes to me through foul and illegitimate means, I would be even averse to touch it through the tong’. Alas, Nitish Kumar would have followed his mentor’s ideological sense of belief with the degree of irreconcilable resolve! Nitish’ Kumar, on the contrary, had made himself a laughing stock; in fact, a butt of joke with the stigma of being ‘ Palturam’ remaining inseparably attached to him for ever; even, with the passage of decades, the very stigma of ‘ Palturam’ being the talk of folklore, much like the stereotypical examples of Mirjafar and Jaichand being invoked when political betrayals are being discussed, Nitish Kumar will be the name to be invoked as and when political somersault for being in power, will be discussed in the political discourse–whether formal or informal.<\/p>\n

Today i.e 28th January’s political development in Bihar defined the nadir of political discourse as well as the political conduct of Nitish Kumar on the one hand, and BJP and RJD on the other. Evidently, Nitish Kumar’s fifth time changing alliances, for the sake of retaining his chief ministerial position, which was purportedly in jeopardy, as Lalal Singh’s unsavoury and unceremonious ouster from the position of JDU chief, unequivocally vindicated, the role of BJP, which, not too in the distant past, mouthed all sorts of invectives, suddenly began singing paeans for Nitish when the latter walked yet again into its fold, and RJD, for whom Nitish was a holy cow, unless the latter had shown the inclination for elevating Tejaswi as the chief minister of Bihar, suddenly turned into the garbage –Rohini Acharya, Laloo’s daughter diatribe on Nitish, ‘ The garbage returns to the dustbin’–is the extent of vindication of frustration in Laloo camp which desperately awaited to see the elevation of Tejaswi as the chief minister of Bihar. In other words, politics today is the game of personal expediency, where people hardly matters; the gameplan in the political chessboard is absolutely concentrated on retaining power by all means.<\/p>\n

In fact, the political game of one upmanship going on in Bihar, as Prashant Kishor rightly says, has been rotating around two personalities, Nitish Kumar and Laloo Yadav. Whereas Nitish’ dream to reach the nation’s highest political position, was the trigger behind his pioneering initiative to form I. N. D. I. A block to take on Modi regime. However, the Congress Party, taking full advantage of his bloated ambition, patted him at his back, without doing anything in tangible terms: despite Nitish Kumar’s desperation to be appointed as the Convener of I. N. D. I. A. block, Nitish was kept on tenterhooks. On the other hand, a closed door meeting with Laloo, where Nitish Kumar had impressed upon Laloo that, whereas he was interested to play a role in national politics, he would do everything to make Tejaswi Yadav as the next chief minister of Bihar. However, the opposition, including Congress, poured cold water on his plan, Nitish stagnated; neither was there for him in the national politics, nor he could dictate the terms as an unquestioned leader of his government, with the unconscionable pressure being brought upon Laloo to vacate the post of chief minister in favour of his son. Worse still, Prashant Kishor’s prediction that JDU will not be able to win even five seats in the upcoming general election, aggravated the panic of JDU leaders. Moreover, the large scale jobs awarded to the teachers in the state recently, where Tejaswi was trying to appropriate the credit, also heightened the tensions between JDU and RJD. Also, Laloo’s interference in day to day affairs of the government, widened the rift between Nitish Kumar and Laloo Yadav. To top it all, the ongoing collusion between Lalal Singh, the then president of JDU and Tejaswi, where the former was given the offer of deputy chief minister if he could bring twenty JDU legislators to defect to RJD, to enable Tejaswi to become the chief minister of the state. Small wonder then Nitish Kumar was left the choice between the Devil and the blue sea: if he did not sever the link with RJD, his position was in jeopardy; his party was on the threshold of fragmentation. Hence, he acted swiftly; removing Lalan Singh, by way of the first step, he went on to consolidate his own position within the party before negotiating with the BJP for the next alignment to remain in power.<\/p>\n

Significantly, notwithstanding BJP’s lashing out at Nitish Kumar’s antics and senility when the latter went on hammer and tongs in outraging the modesty of married women in Bihar Assembly, and fulminations against Jitenram Manjhi, the fact too was crystal clear to them: They could seldom win 39 seats out of 40, unless they had Nitish Kumar by their side; for Nitish Kumar too, despite all sorts of stigma of Palturam’ attached to him, he too needed BJP for prolonging his own stranglehold over power. It was nothing but a quid pro quo between Nitish Kumar and BJP. RJD, on the other hand, is left with profusion of regret now, in the wake of Nitish Kumar walking out of its alliance with RJD is this: Tejaswi Yadav’s elevation as the chief minister of the state, stands deferred till 2025. Unequivocally, in this latest political somersault, whereas both Nitish Kumar and BJP were the beneficiaries, RJD has been the obvious loser. BJP, in the wake of Consecration of Ram Lala temple in Ayodhya, appears to be far more stronger today. Nitish Kumar too stands to gain from Narendra Modi’s huge popularity across Bihar. But the moot point is this: Nitish Kumar might have brought reprieve till the General Election of 2024, will he continue to be the chief minister beyond the general election is a million dollar’s question. And, even if he succeeds to retain his position till 2025 assembly election, it will be the cul-de- sac for him beyond 2025.<\/p>\n

Unequivocally, by his latest move to join the NDA bandwagon, Nitish Kumar has once again sent the frightening signal to one and all: politics is only the means to remain in power. Today, Nitish Kumar, although might have succeeded in retaining the power, he has lost all his credibility. Worse still, he will never be taken as a serious politician. In fact, the aphorism of ‘ limpet’ would so befittingly get attached to him. He had completely blown into smithereens the last vestiges of political scruples and morality in public life. Unequivocally then, today even the corruption of Laloo Yadav had taken the back seat when Nitish Kumar’s vacuous political ideology as well as his changing the political alliances depending upon his own personal expediency, indicts him in the severest of terms. Moreover, as Nitish Kumar had invoked Vajpayee as his mentor, while paying glowing tributes to him on his birth anniversary, he should have noted, which, unfortunately he did not, when speaking to a journalist, during the Kargil War, when the journalist questioned him as to why he was not ordering his army to cross the border, Ataljee, in his own inimitable style of interminable pauses between sentences, had famously said, ‘ I am not only concerned about today, but I am highly concerned about the history as to how it will judge my decision’. Alas, Nitish Kumar too would have thought about history, he would have gone for sacrificing his chair, rather than earning the derogatory tag of ‘ Palturam’. Thus while sitting in the company of new cabinet ministers from his newly rediscovered friends, with two deputies from BJP, he should feel that how the political journey of Nitish Kumar which began with bang, finally ended in such an overwhelming agony. If he saw his own reflection in the mirror, he would get the answer of his conscience: how he transformed himself into cynical Palturam’ from that of a promising face of a politician who had vowed to emancipate Bihar from that of a jungle raj.<\/p>\n

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Vivekanand Jha, author of Delhi Beckons: RaGa for NaMo, 56 Inches and The Making of Narendra Modi, Unmaking of Jawaharlal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest move of Nitish Kumar to align with NDA, leaves him without any credibility in the eyes of the people of Bihar and nation. Will his latest political Gambit help? the jury is out on this. Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: Penning a glowing tribute on the birth anniversary of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories-of-madhesh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/nitish-modi-650_650x400_71516985848.jpg?fit=650%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paS11m-1c1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}