Is Nitish Kumar taking too much for granted?

When Nitish became the Chief Minister of the NDA government on November 24, 2005, he promised to usher in a new era in the state. In his initial days, he did succeed.

However, about 12 years later when, on July 28, 2017, the BJP once again joined old friend Nitish to replace the Grand Alliance, the story is totally different.

Two multi-crore scams and two hooch tragedies within 20 days leading to eight deaths have rocked the state.

The estimated ₹1,300 crore Fund Transfer Scam of Bhagalpur––also known as Srijan Scam as the government fund meant for the welfare of women were illegally transferred to this Bhagalpur-based NGO––and Toilet Scam have shaken the very confidence of the people in the government.

What is more, those whose names figured in these recent scams are government officials and politicians of the ruling NDA.

More than the two spurious liquor tragedies, it is one selfie which seriously tarnished the image of Nitish. The photo which went viral on the social media showed him honouring Rakesh Singh, a block president of his party, Janata Dal (United), for not demanding dowry at the time of the marriage of his son. Rakesh himself posted the selfie.

Later, it came to be known that Rakesh is the main accused of the December 2012 hooch tragedy in Ara, the district headquarter town of Bhojpur district. Twenty-nine people perished in that incident.

On November 1, a visibly embarrassed Nitish got Rakesh and the district president of his party Ashok Sharma expelled from JD(U); it was the latter who took Rakesh to the CM.

It needs to be recalled that after the April 6, 2016 prohibition, Nitish, on October 2 this year, launched a campaign against child marriage and in favour of dowry-less marriage. This one selfie exposed the state government’s commitment on all these fronts.

It is not that the Nitish Kumar government is free of scams. Uterus Scam, School Enrollment Scam, Bihar School Examination Board Scam of 2016 and Bihar Staff Selection Commission question paper leak racket are some of the major cases of financial irregularities. But it is now that people have started questioning Nitish.

Barring nine months of chief ministership by his protégé, Jitan Ram Manjhi, he ruled for long, uninterrupted with full backing of the media, bureaucracy, legal luminaries and even large section of the civil society.

There was no Mandal-Mandir type tension gripping the state and the Manmohan Singh government was quite generous as well as cooperative. This was so notwithstanding the fact that his arch rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan were part of the UPA 1.

The construction-driven growth rate may not have been possible without the massive investment by the National Highway Authority of India, Railways and Rural Development ministry, especially related to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.

Perhaps, the more-than-due credit which Nitish got from the media spurred him to become over-ambitious. On June 16, 2013, he sacked all BJP ministers, snapped ties with the saffron party and for about a year ran a sort of a minority government.

After the rout of his Janata Dal (United) in the May 2014 Lok Sabha election, he resigned and installed Jitan Ram Manjhi as the CM. When Manjhi started asserting himself, he became uneasy leading to a nine-month long spell of political and administrative uncertainty.

Finally on February 20, 2015, he threw Manjhi out and once again became the CM. As some of the MLAs crossed over to Manjhi’s camp, the number of JD(U) legislators came down to 97 in the House of 243. Nitish joined hands with old rival Lalu Prasad Yadav, a convicted politician.

His ambition did not stop here. He went on a mission to merge half a dozen parties of Janata Parivar. He wished to be declared its prime ministerial candidate. But the attempt was spiked by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.

But that was not before Nitish went all the way to meet another convicted CM––this time of Haryana. On March 28, 2015, the image conscious Chief Minister of Bihar threw all norms to the wind and met Om Prakash Chautala in Tihar Jail.

This was the lowest point in his political career, perhaps more than his July 28, 2017 decision to re-join hands with BJP after ditching the RJD and the Congress the previous evening.

However, with elections far away and battlelines yet to be drawn, it is difficult to guess anything now. Nitish can take comfort that, with Lalu convicted and his son a political greenhorn, there is no chief ministerial candidate to challenge him. Yet, in politics, nothing can be ruled out.