Is there a problem with Nitish Kumar’s ‘DNA’?

If this was to happen, why four precious years (June 16, 2013 to July 26, 2017) were wasted? This is the common refrain doing the rounds in various circles in Bihar. And one person whose stock tumbled in no time is none other than the image-conscious Nitish Kumar.

Be it his admirers or his opponents, everyone is today asking as to who should be blamed for the political instability and administrative uncertainty in this period of 49 months in which four governments came and went.

If he wants to shift the blame to bade bhai Lalu Prasad Yadav, he is mistaken as everyone knows that the RJD chief is a convicted politician and like many others has weakness for dynastic politics.

When Nitish Kumar left Lalu Prasad in 1994 to form Samata Party, a sizeable number of the then Janata Dal supporters went over with him.

When he contested the 1995 Assembly election in alliance with the CPI(ML)––which contested an election for the first time after coming overground––there was not even a murmur.

A year later when he took a complete right turn and jumped on the BJP bandwagon, there was some protest. A few leaders, for example Syed Shahabuddin, left his party. Yet many others argued that it was Nitish’s political compulsion as otherwise he would have been politically finished.

The BJP got a backward caste leader in post-Mandal Bihar. He got more importance than he deserved. But on June 12, 2010, he cancelled the dinner of the BJP top brass in Patna (who were there for party’s national executive) and a week later returned Rs 5 crore donated by the Gujarat government for Kosi flood relief work in 2008.

The Saffron party leaders were extremely upset. Yet, they were forced to accept the humiliation as the Assembly election was only four months away. But when three and a half years later, Nitish suddenly sacked all the BJP ministers for no rhyme or reason, many of his ardent well-wishers started hating him. There was no charge of corruption or misgovernance against any of the BJP ministers; and yet all of them were sent packing.

In return, they used the choicest abuses against him some of which have never been used even against Lalu. He was dubbed as an opportunist and a traitor. The DNA remarks by PM Narendra Modi against him created a storm. When bomb blasts took place in Bodh Gaya and during Narendra Modi’s Hunkar rally in Patna on October 27, 2013, he was even accused by his former friends of being soft towards terrorists. Nitish was finding very difficult to cope with the situation.

A day after the May 2014 electoral rout, he took moral responsibility and quit as CM and made Jitan Ram Manjhi, his hand-picked man, the Chief Minister. Then started nine months of total chaos and anarchy.

Nitish wanted to run the government by proxy which Manjhi did not like. Then followed a public spat between Manjhi and Nitish’s supporters. Manjhi was literally kicked out and Nitish once again became the CM in the last week of the election in February 2015.

During this period of nine months, Manjhi openly accused Nitish Kumar of patronising corrupt contractors who, according to him, were looting the state. He highlighted some of the serious scams within the state government. Seeing that his image has received a serious beating, Nitish went on to sit on the lap of Lalu Prasad. He knew that Lalu was still a mass leader but, as a convicted politician, could not be the CM himself.

The RJD chief was desperate for political revival and he got an opportunity. So, RJD and JD(U) suddenly cobbled an alliance with the Congress and swept the election winning 178 out of 243 seats. Had the three parties contested separately they would not have won even 78 seats.

So, in a way, Lalu helped Nitish avoid a defeat and the latter facilitated the comeback of RJD chief to the centre-stage of politics. Today Nitish cannot blame anyone else. He is free to say anything he wants about the Grand Alliance government. Yet, the truth is that this 20-month period was much better than the 29 months between June 16, 2013 and November 20, 2015, when Nitish was busy making all sorts of political experiments.

In this context, analysts agree with the Hindi proverb: “Gur khate hain, gulgule se parhez karte hain”, that is CM Nitish had no hesitation in championing the JD(U)-RJD merger plan, even when Lalu was a convicted politician, no inhibition in calling on Om Prakash Chautala (another convicted politician) in Tihar Jail on March 28, 2015, but has a problem with his Deputy CM only when an FIR names him as an accused.

The swiftness with which the ‘homecoming’ exercise was undertaken––from Grand Alliance to NDA––only reaffirms the growing perception that Nitish has, of late, started playing politics at his own whims and fancies.