M A I N   N E W S

The Last Word
Nitish Kumar
Chanakya from Pataliputra
Sanjay Singh

He is the man who would run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He is the leader from Bihar who seeks to play both Chanakya and Chandragupta. Only a political mind would have sensed the opportunity in snubbing an ally. In the last Assembly election, recall baffled BJP leaders, Nitish Kumar had begged them with folded hands to ensure that Narendra Modi does not campaign for the alliance in Bihar. Four-and-a-half years later, and with the next election looming round the corner, he is dictating that Modi should keep away from his turf.

A crestfallen BJP has no choice but to kowtow to the Bihar CM. Nitish Kumar no longer needs the alliance as badly as the BJP. And if the BJP chooses to go its way, it would make dents in the votes of the Congress but would make little difference to the JD(U) strongman. Indeed, Nitish Kumar would then be left with the option of exploring an alliance with the Congress.

But then the shrewd politician that he is, Nitish certainly knows that his prime ministerial ambition can be met only within the National Democratic Alliance. That would explain his drift towards the NDA as far back as in 1995-96, when Lalu Yadav was the secular mascot and the BJP was still busy with its agenda for a temple at Ayodhya.

If and when the NDA returns to sniff at power, Nitish Kumar would be a strong contender among the prime-ministerial hopefuls. His track record of being a member of the Lok Sabha for five terms, his stints in the Union Cabinet and his tenure as the Chief Minister is formidable. Above all, his acceptability among other NDA constituents and his secular credentials would be stronger than Narendra Modi. Therefore, it did Nitish no harm when he chose to cut Modi to size and asked him to behave earlier this month.

To understand Nitish Kumar, one has only to look at the adjectives used for him by his friends and foes. They are revealing indeed: Cautious and thorough. Careful and image-conscious. Bureaucratic and media-savvy. Cold and calculating. Methodical and choosy. Ambitious and ruthless. Cerebral and sophisticated. Arrogant and rude. Temperamental and vindictive.

Old friends remember him as the protégé of Karpoori Thakur, the veteran socialist and former Chief Minister of the state, and recall that he was fussy and fastidious even then. Had he not been elected to the Lok Sabha in 1989, it would possibly have been Nitish and not Lalu Yadav, who would have succeeded Thakur as the Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly. But with Nitish no longer an MLA, the field was clear for Lalu Yadav to make his way to the Chief Minister’s chair.

When Nitish finally became the Chief Minister in 2005, the ‘Republic of Bihar’ was viewed as the most lawless state of India, where kidnapping for ransom was deemed the fastest-growing industry, where the number of criminals getting elected to the Assembly was growing and where caste and class conflict had earned the state the dubious description of ‘ the killing fields’.

But four-and-a-half years down the line, the man appears to have done the impossible. With an impressive annual growth rate of 11 per cent, it is now deemed to be among the fastest growing states. Roads have become better. Bridges and culverts have cut short travel-time. Crime figures have come down and sale of cars has overtaken the number of abductions.

Says an SP, “ We no longer receive calls from politicians interfering with policing.” An IAS officer claims that earlier files would disappear in the CM’s secretariat when Lalu Yadav was in the chair; but with Nitish at the helm, things have changed dramatically. “We now receive a call within a week and are summoned by the CM for discussions,” he added. The bureaucrats are also relieved that they are no longer subjected to public humiliations. Unlike Lalu Yadav, they say, Nitish Kumar would give a dressing down in private.

Indeed, he is said to be too bureaucratic. “You would have made a better Chief Secretary,” a frustrated minister is once said to have told the CM. Access to the Chief Minister is strictly by appointment and the Chief Minister refuses to interfere in the functioning of his ministers and bureaucrats, they complain. Nitish Kumar, on the other hand, is convinced that all that the politicians want from him is transfer of officials, which, to his mind, is a waste of time.

Delegation of financial and administrative powers to field officers, revival of weekly Cabinet meetings, restoring the practice of not disturbing officials for at least three years, recruitment of 10,000 ex-Army personnel into the police force on annual contracts and activating the courts, which have convicted over 50,000 criminals in four years, including four MLAs of the Chief Minister’s own party, are some of the high points of Kumar’s tenure.

While even his critics grudgingly admit that law and order is in a much better shape in the state now, they also accuse his government of creating far more hype than was warranted. “Colossal sums of money are spent in televising live the CM’s triumphant march through the state,” says a critic, who claims that Nitish Kumar has created a new class of corrupt contractors and brokers. They are the ones who are driving up the prices of real estate in the towns and buying the cars, he alleges.

The Chief Minister, they say, has won the battle over ‘perception’. Thousands of primary school teachers were recruited with much fanfare, merely on the basis of certificates produced, but a large percentage of these teachers are actually illiterate, they allege. The state government also admits receiving complaints about 20 per cent of them.

A vegetarian and a teetotaler, Nitish leads an austere lifestyle and so far has remained untouched by public scandals. A widower, his family members have not been accused, unlike in the past, of developing into extra-constitutional centres of power. His critics call him a creeper who would use others to climb and then discard them. He is known to be sensitive to criticism and often reacts violently to them.

But while his own MLAs, ministers and allies seem to dislike his ‘style of functioning’, what is working in his favour is that few people in the state seem to favour a return of Lalu-Rabri raj.