The credit for the discovery of ‘Zero’ goes to India. So Indians know its importance. Much depends on the way it is used. If one Zero is put after a figure its value increases by 10 times, if before any figure, it has no meaning.BJP chief Amit Shah is well aware of the importance of Zero.

Yet it is his compulsion to assert that 0+0=0. He knows that neither Nitish Kumar nor Lalu Prasad is Zero. It is with this Zero that the BJP ran the government in Bihar for seven and a half years and ruled in Delhi for six years between 1998 and 2004.

By the BJP logic Nitish was a Zero in 1995, but the moment he joined the BJP in 1996 the importance of this Zero increased by 10 times. For 17 long years the BJP used this Zero to counter another Zero, that is, Lalu Prasad’s RJD.But Amit Shah wanted to keep the morale of his party rank and file high, by making such claim. But the party is not at all complacent and knows the importance of the Zero.Though LJP leader and Union food minister Ram Vilas Paswan has lost his own voice ever since he jumped on the NDA bandwagon for the second time, the RLSP leader and Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Upendra Kushwaha, has repeatedly been cautioning the saffron party not to take the merger lightly. True he has his own compulsion. He is the leader of the second largest backward castes in Bihar,

Koeris, and wants to bargain his own position within the NDA.Kushwaha has a history of party-hopping. He was in political wilderness till early 2010 when Nitish brought him back into his party’s fold and made him a member of the Rajya Sabha. Four months later when the Assembly election took place in Bihar he clandestinely worked against the JD(U)-BJP candidates. But he failed in his efforts. The NDA won 206 seats––JD(U) 115 and BJP 91.

Nitish virtually forced him out of the party and Kushwaha had to give up his Rajya Sabha seat. Then in December 2013 he tilted towards the RJD, but when he did not get much importance he, along with the LJP, joined the BJP.

Though RLSP and LJP won three and six seats respectively in the last Lok Sabha election, the two paries together did not manage to get even 10 per cent votes––Kushwaha’s party almost half of Ram Vilas’ outfit.At present the strength of both these parties in the Bihar Assembly is big Zero. Yet the BJP knows the importance of this Zero and would not let them leave the NDA. If ‘1’ BJP with two ‘0s’ can make 100 per cent strong NDA, so is the two zeroes of JD(U) and RJD after being merged may become 100 per cent fit for the next battle. Let us see which combination of zeroes proves more effective.After all politics is not all about arithmetic; chemistry too plays its part. None, but the BJP knows this best.