On Nov 7th exit polls came out which predicted an edge to the Tejashwi Yadav led Mahagathbandhan (MGB) and a defeat for the Nitish Kumar led NDA. While exit polls can go wrong but they generally get the trend right and thus it is likely that it is the end of the 15 years rule of Nitish.
To be fair, there were signs of this happening for a long time and it was surprising that the BJP went with Nitish as the face in this election. Either they should have gone separately or with BJP being the leader of the alliance. There was palpable anger against the Nitish government for his handling of migrants during COVID and later the flood situation. Below I summarise my key takeaways from this election.
- Last 7 years have been a washout — Last seven years of Nitish Kumar’s chief ministership have been a complete washout. He has been jumping from one alliance to another — from NDA to MGB and back. All the while his only focus was on how to remain in power. As a result, governance has suffered and he has lost a lot of political capital through this period.
- Nothing after capturing low hanging fruits — In the first 8 years of his rule, Nitish captured the low hanging fruits of BSP (bijli, sadak, paani or in english roads, electricity and water). Post that there were no big infrastructure projects or industries. Biharis by mindset want government jobs (private in the worst case) and entrepreneurship doesn’t come naturally to them. Thus, a lack of any major job creation hurt him.
- Prohibition an albatross around Nitish’s neck — Nitish went for liquor prohibition. This was an attempt to fortify his female voter base whom he had cultivated through multiple schemes targetting girls and woman. However, the prohibition law has failed. It had one major states objective to control crimes related to alcohol. However, data suggests crime has only increased. Illegal liquor is flowing in the state and only the state treasury is losing because of this law — a staggering 5000 crore a year. Nitish in his first term had aggressively expanded liquor shops to even panchayat levels and the excise helped him fund his flagship schemes. With the excise gone, only two avenues where left, excise on petrol/diesel and stamp duty on real estate — both of which have increased significantly as compared to other states. So, the state has no money to fund new schemes or job creation.
- Social engineering has outlived its utility — Nitish kept his focus on social engineering and creating subgroups like Mahadalit etc which created a voter base but his relentless focus on social engineering and little else has led to other voter groups ditching him — Humein Kya Mila syndrome.
- 15 years of anti-incumbency — In India, 15 years of anti-incumbency has been a wall very difficult to breach. Administrators much better than Nitish — for example, Sheila Dixit, Shivraj Singh, Raman Singh — have failed to come back to power after 15 years. Only exceptions are communist autocracies like Bengal, Tripura and the rest. Voter fatigue is high and voters below 30 years of age are sizeable in number who haven’t seen how bad things were before the incumbent government. They assume that governance is a basic right — little do they know! So a yearning for change on the basis of lofty promises is quite common.
- Negative Campaign — NDA campaign was focussed on negativity and reminding how bad Laloo’s governance (aptly termed Jungleraaj) was. However, 15 years of government should lead to much better things to speak about. What have you done and what are you going to do in future should be the main focus of your campaign — which unfortunately wasn’t the case.
- BJP Bihar unit is full of useless nincompoops — Having said all above, there was yearning among voters for BJP to take leadership. However, BJP Bihar unit competes with BJP Delhi unit in its incompetence. Led by Nitish’s lackey Sushil Modi and his handpicked state chief Sanjay Jaiswal — BJP didn’t choose the brave thing and asserted itself as the leader of the alliance. As a result, the anger against Nitish may drown BJP as well in this election.
