No, Nitish Kumar will not be the Opposition’s face for 2024. Here’s why

After Nitish Kumar replaced the BJP with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD in the Bihar government, India’s cottage industry of political analysis is walking around once again with a spring in its step. Ever since Yogi Adityanath’s historic re-election earlier this year, a sense of predetermination about the Indian political scene was beginning to set in. The BJP had received historic mandates in other smaller states as well, the presidential and vice-presidential elections had resulted in further denting the Opposition’s prospects, and a coup had been pulled off in Maharashtra. With the Opposition imploding further at regular intervals, the overall trend seemed unidirectional with the 2024 general elections increasingly coming across as a done deal for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is in this context that the switch in Bihar has gained significance.

The two key takeaways for a particular class of analysts and journalists have been the following: that Nitish’s switch has brought the Opposition back in the game for 2024, and that the united Opposition has finally found an acceptable prime ministerial face in its ranks. In reality, however, both these takeaways are fanciful figments of imagination from a class of people that is desperately looking to clutch at anything that elongates the denial they currently live in.

Over the last few days, some serious commentary about the Opposition’s prospects rising with the Janata Dal (United) in its ranks, has filled the opinion sections of various publications. At best, this is a gross overestimation of the JD(U)’s electoral capabilities. Although the chief ministership of Bihar has become synonymous with Nitish Kumar in recent years, his party has never won a simple majority in the 243-seat Assembly. When the NDA returned to power in 2010 after serving one term, the JD(U) attained its electoral zenith winning 117 seats in the house. Five years later in 2015, contesting the election in alliance with the RJD, the party’s tally reduced to 70. This was lower than the party’s 2005 tally when it stormed to power for the first time in alliance with the BJP. In 2020, the party’s tally further reduced to 45. Irrespective of the image that Nitish might have cultivated in certain circles, it is impossible to deny that his is a party on the decline. At the grassroots, it is fast losing traction.

If one takes a bird’s eye view of Bihar’s politics in the post-Lalu era, it is increasingly clear that the state’s polity has steadily inched towards a bipolarity between the RJD and the BJP, mostly at the expense of the JD(U). This was not evident in the 2005 or the 2010 assembly elections, and unfortunately, most analysis of Bihar’s politics in the mainstream media is still conducted through these old prisms. The role that Nitish Kumar has played politically, has therefore escaped detailed scrutiny. Essentially, he has leveraged the state’s political bipolarity to perfection, playing his part as a kingmaker and at the same time using both the BJP and RJD’s lack of alternatives to keep the crown for himself.

Naturally, this has taken a toll on his party. He has been unable to keep up with the BJP’s Hindu outreach, or the RJD’s Muslim outreach in an independent and sustainable manner. In terms of governance, he has donned both the images of the turnaround man as well as the enabler of gunda-raj. His party therefore has lost any sense of identity and has gradually eroded, ending up only as a vehicle to perpetuate his chief ministership. Suffice to say that it is incapable of causing an electoral earthquake that alters the mandate in 2024.

Some analysts argue that the significance of electoral ground realities in Bihar is misplaced because what Nitish brings to the table at a pan India level is the ‘Sushaasan Model’, much like Narendra Modi’s Gujarat Model. Such a model, if presented to the electorate, will nullify all political calculations as was the case in 2014. At the onset, there are three flaws in this argument. First, Nitish or the Opposition at large neither possess the machinery nor the cohesion that BJP had at its disposal in 2014. Second, regional parties which have tried their luck in states other than their own, have faced humiliating defeats. Mamata Banerjee’s TMC and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, with the exception of Punjab, are two prominent examples. For a regional party that barely survives electorally in its own state, making electorate inroads elsewhere seems quite a stretch. Third, the ‘sushaasan’ moniker came about in Nitish’s first term. Not only is it outdated, but the fact that his party is propping up another party with a convicted criminal at its helm, and for the second time at that, punctures the narrative considerably. This is in stark contrast to the mammoth anti-incumbency of 2014 that BJP was able to leverage, which is practically non-existent if one goes by electoral trends.

This leads us to the obvious question, the one underlying the second takeaway of mainstream analysts: if Nitish is unable to bring an electoral component to the table, on what basis can he be the Opposition’s prime ministerial face? Mainstream analysts might be gushing excitedly about a man who controls 47 seats in a 243-member state Assembly as the political alternative to Modi, but the political class is less likely to be swayed by such journalistic arguments. After all, many prominent political analysts in India have been concocting imaginary scenarios that would propel Sharad Pawar to the prime ministership for three decades now, but they neither elicit the desired response in the electorate nor within political class. There is good reason to believe that the story with Nitish Kumar is no different.

As of now, the RJD is the only party to have supported the idea of Nitish’s candidature for the top job, but considering the only thing standing between the RJD and Bihar’s chief ministership is Nitish Kumar, this comes as no surprise. Certain sections of the media have reported that the Congress might back Nitish as the Opposition’s face for 2024. However, with the only two surviving Congress state governments facing their electorates before 2024, it is too early to predict the electoral clout that the Congress will command in 2024. If the party were to get re-elected in these states, it would have no reason to back an outsider for the top job. If the party were to be wiped out, its support would hold no value anyway.

But leaving the question of the Congress aside, Nitish being the face of the Opposition can be ruled out if the Opposition remains disunited, and it is here that Nitish’s candidature faces the biggest roadblock. Both Mamata and Kejriwal have made their national ambitions clear. They have successfully defeated the BJP in their fortresses on more than one occasion. They have also attempted to expand outside their traditional fortresses. Despite numerous setbacks, the AAP storming into power in Punjab earlier this year demonstrates serious political acumen. Besides, several other regional satraps like Stalin, Jagan and KCR run simple-majority governments in their states, adding much more electoral value to a potential united Opposition than Nitish ever could. They are unlikely to subscribe to the journalistic logic mandating them to throw their weight behind Nitish.

Surely, Nitish Kumar would have looked far beyond the mainstream simpletons and their optimistic calculations. This leads us to an important piece without which the puzzle remains incomplete: why is it that he decided to topple the BJP’s apple cart at this point and in this manner? After all, the BJP does not lose much and Nitish himself continues as Chief Minister, gaining nothing in the process. Any assurance about a more prominent role in 2024, as established, means squat for the time being. What this means is that the mainstream analysts have missed out far simpler explanations. Perhaps the BJP had enough and demanded the chief ministership for itself. It is also possible that with the crackdown of Central agencies on the PFI in Bihar, Nitish feared losing certain pockets of minority votes. Another possibility is that Nitish was expecting a respectable exit through the presidency or the vice-presidency, but did not get one. These scenarios are much likelier than the one being peddled about Nitish being the Opposition’s face for 2024.

Since 2014, mainstream analysts and journalists have used every movement on the political spectrum to tell their audience that the alternative to Modi has finally arrived. From launching and relaunching Rahul Gandhi on multiple occasions, pitting formidable regional satraps like Siddaramaiah and Akhilesh Yadav as alternatives to Modi, they have even gone to the extent of projecting student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and MNS chief Raj Thackeray as potential antidotes to the current dispensation. Nitish Kumar has been amongst the original favourites for this class. Therefore, their two key takeaways, hair-brained as they might be, are on expected lines.

The writer is an author and political commentator. He has authored the book, ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma: From Boy Wonder to CM’. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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