Nitish Kumar will be completing 8 years of his eventful tenure as the Chief Minister of Bihar this month. Till recently, he was leading a powerful coalition of JD(U) and BJP, under the rubric of NDA, which is now broken. In the process, the grand political ‘coalition of extremes’, assiduously built over the years, has been shattered. However, one has to examine to what extent the erstwhile coalition has also broken at the ground level, bringing back the memories of societal and class conflagrations of yesteryears. The broad social tranquility and peace during the recent years, barring minor engineered unrests, has ensured leapfrogging of social and economic growth in Bihar. Since the break of NDA, there is now a crescendo of opinion from the vocal sections of the upper crust of the ‘coalition of extremes’ about the non-performance of the present Nitish Kumar government, forgetting that till recently they were part of the celebrated coalition.

The coalition apparently broke when Narendra Modi was elevated to be the Chairman of BJP's campaign committee, but the social coalition at the ground level was already under some strain even before. The class and caste neutral economic policies of Nitish Kumar had the broadest possible sub-national support, trigerring a 'Biharee' identity for the first time. Broad sections from the upper echelon of the society, who had abandoned the state earlier, was happily reconnected with it, with the full sense of ownership.  This social 'coalition of extremes', both at the ground level, and the administrative state apparatus, ensured a non-acrimonious growth.  However, the strain in the coalition started surfacing on the question of positive discrimination to women, lower backwards and the Dalits in the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), almost immediately after Nitish was elevated to the helm. Even Mushahars, the most destitute among the Mahadalits, were brought into the centre stage with a number of dedicated social agenda for them, along with the fiat              that they will be hoisting the national flags on  the  Independence  and  Republic  Day  in   the Panchayats. The implications of this inclusive social agenda of Nitish Kumar was initially ignored by the elite as the spectre of Laloo Prasad's larger-than-life perception existed till then. Over and above, they were confident that the rural power structure will not essentially alter because they will promote candidates for the PRI institutions from their handpicked supplicant. Initially they did succeed but later the subaltern law makers tried to assert themselves and be on their own. Thus, even after the jettisoning of the D. Bandopadhaya Report on land reform in the first term, Nitish did succeed  in breaking the rural political power structure, which Laloo could not do during his long rule. But, unlike in Bengal proper, the Biharee elite could not de-link itself either from land or its concurrent tryst with rural power structure. The stock of a elite, howsoever entrenched in urban life, is still determined by his land endowment at his village home. So even a slight alterations  in the power structure finds its resounding  disapproval  by both village and urban elite. Thus, from the very onset of the second term of Nitish and long before the final divorce with BJP, the whispering campaign against Nitish was initiated, gradually becoming a smear campaign. The sudden love for Narendra Modi by a section of 'coalition of extremes' was to destabilize the democratic and social centric agenda of Nitish Kumar. Not only the rural elite, even the radical left organizations suffered, as large number of their cadres opted for the mainstream politics through PRIs.                   

The social agenda has a long history in Bihar. Even before Nitish came to power, the social churning and subterranean ferment was witnessed all over the state. It had started as early as thirties, but had gained considerable momentum since the seventies. While other states took up the development agenda, albeit with varying seriousness, the elites in Bihar failed in the task. Secondly, the social agenda that autonomously surfaced in Bihar had also been ignored by the traditional elite. In the process, elites in Bihar were on a double disadvantage. On the one hand, they failed to chart out an independent incentive structure for economic growth and, on the other, they failed to ensure the political stability in the state by not sharing power with the subaltern. The new political dispensation that took over the reigns of the state in the early nineties was co-scripted initially by a group of young political leaders who were the product of ideology-neutral JP Movement. However, after coming to power, the new ruling social dispensation committed the opposite mistake of excluding the traditional elite from the state-building exercise. Thus, the new regime had two negative characteristics — first, it did not have a development agenda and, second, its social base was narrow and exclusionary. Consequently, acrimony and retribution was order of the day, causing tremendous suffering to Bihar, both economically and socially. In fact, it was on the question of broadening the social base of the ruling coalition that prompted Nitish later to distance himself from the earlier ruling party. The present government of Bihar, while ushering in a development strategy, tried to incorporate all the sections of society. This phenomenon has been christened as 'coalition of extremes'. After the split in the NDA, powerful upper social groups are ranged against the subaltern. The present JD(U) government essentially represents the agglomeration of non- powerful social categories. It is to be seen whether this 'counter-coalition' against the 'coalition of extremes' will survive or capitulate before the powerful upper social group backlash. Of course, the role of the state machinery will also be an important mediating factor in the emerging social dynamics.     

* Member-Secretary, Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna