Bihar: Protest reflects reconciliation where political interests are more important than rivalry

New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS) Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav’s support by his allies as the chief ministerial face of the grand alliance is more a result of electoral equations and political compulsion than anything else.

The main constituents of the alliance – RJD, Congress and Left parties – have been political rivals in the state, with one even planning to erode the other’s voter base.

In fact, the Left components were also not under one umbrella earlier, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were part of the Left Front, which also included some smaller components. The Indian People’s Front (IPF) and the Marxist Coordination Committee (MCC) represented the political arms of what are now called Maoists or ultra-leftists.

However, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation led by Dipankar Bhattacharya is separate from the banned organization of the same name and participates in elections, unlike the Maoist rebels.

Bhattacharya’s party, though part of the grand alliance in Bihar, is not part of the Left Front elsewhere. The RJD, a key component in the grand alliance, was founded by Tejashwi’s father Lalu Prasad Yadav, who first entered the Lok Sabha in 1977 as part of the Janata alliance.

He was among the leaders who joined Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement and flourished during the anti-Emergency protests. He also spent time in jail during the movement. In Bihar, he ousted the Congress in 1990 and established himself as a non-elite leader of the masses, emphasizing populist redistribution and identity politics.

During this period, he took recourse to the then Central Government’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission’s recommendation for Other Backward Class (OBC) reservation. He advocated social justice for backward classes and minorities and rose to prominence through a militant, caste-centric mobilization, challenging the dominance of the Congress in Bihar.

Through his mobilization, he also began to destroy the base of the communists, who had considerable support among the backward classes and Dalits. Lalu managed to get the support of Yadavs, OBCs and Muslims, who constitute about 14, 27 and 17 percent of Bihar’s voters.

In 1990, undivided Bihar had 324 assembly seats, of which the RJD won 122 seats. Among the Left parties, CPI won 23, CPI(M) won 6 seats, while new entrants IPF won 7 seats, and MCC won only 2 seats.

Meanwhile, Congress managed to gain 71 seats after losing 125 seats compared to its earlier performance. Due to the ups and downs of time and politics, the Left and Congress started declining in Bihar.

The grand alliance has given hope to the constituents of a resurgence, with the RJD emerging as the largest party with 75 seats, while the Left captured 16 seats. This came from practical electoral realities and changing political arithmetic, which prompted Lalu to set aside historical rivalries and enter into a strategic alliance with the Congress when it served mutual interests.

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a pan-India force, its electoral gains, especially in Bihar, and pragmatic political alliances forced them to reorganize.

Earlier, the RJD had mainly helped the Congress at the Center through coalition-building, parliamentary support, electoral mobilization, strengthening the legitimacy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and vote arithmetic.

Since 2004, after Lalu formally joined the Congress-led UPA, extended support and accepted ministerial berths, the RJD supremo served as Union Railway Minister. This equation gave the alliance the required numbers in Parliament and a visible regional partner in Bihar.

Through the alliance, the RJD managed to attract policy attention for Bihar along with some concessions, transfer of central schemes, among other objectives.

Beyond votes, Lalu’s participation signaled a broad secular-opposition front, helped the Congress frame the national contest as a Centre-versus-BJP bipolarity and helped draw other regional parties into cooperation, thereby strengthening the anti-BJP narrative at the national level.

Since then, from the India Bloc at the Center to the Grand Alliance in Bihar, where opposition to the BJP and the need for a broad so-called secular front outweighed old rivalries, the reconciliation in the run-up to the recent elections exemplifies this political convergence.

–IANS

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