Of Nitish, Lalu, and a time to be with the masses, again

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, 74, and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad, 77, have been at the helm of Bihar politics for nearly five decades. Their journey began as comrades in the Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) Movement of the 1970s, fighting against the Emergency and championing socialist ideals. Over the years, they parted ways, joined hands again, and repeatedly reshaped the political landscape of Bihar — often as rivals, sometimes as allies, but always as dominant figures in these decades. Together, they have held power in the State — either directly or through influence — for the better part of 30 years, creating a political culture that continues to define Bihar’s political identity.

Today, advancing age and declining health have pushed both leaders to the margins of active politics, though Mr. Kumar remains the Chief Minister. The Assembly election in Bihar this year is likely to be the last in which Mr. Kumar and Mr. Prasad are the principal actors. Their impending eclipse is not merely about two ageing leaders stepping away from the spotlight; it marks the culmination of a political era they themselves shaped and sustained. What follows will not simply be a change of faces, but a new chapter in Bihar’s political journey. Whether this transition will usher in progress or pose new challenges remains to be seen.

Mr. Kumar and Mr. Prasad have already ceded control of their respective parties, though it is unclear who is firmly in command. Tejashwi Prasad Yadav is Mr. Prasad’s chosen heir to lead the RJD, but his siblings are not ceding the mantle easily. Tejashwi’s elder brother, Tej Pratap Yadav, has launched a new political party called the Jan Shakti Janata Dal. Meanwhile, sisters Misa Bharti, a sitting Member of Parliament from Pataliputra, and Rohini Acharya, who donated a kidney to their father in 2022, have both expressed discomfort with the growing influence of Tejashwi’s political adviser, Sanjay Yadav.

Mr. Kumar is Chief Minister, but it is difficult to believe that he is in charge. His public utterances and conduct have led observers to conclude that Mr. Kumar is battling dementia. Like the United States presidency under Joe Biden, though decisions appear to be taken, few seem to know by whom, in Bihar.

The intermittent conflicts and alliances of these two key characters over the last half-century in Bihar also had a third supporting actor — Ramvilas Paswan — who passed away just before the 2020 Assembly elections. The triumvirate of Lalu, Nitish, and Ramvilas was the face of the various strands of subaltern politics in Bihar, which they also helped map and shape. It all started as an umbrella category of ‘backwards’ — broadly all non-upper caste Hindus, but in more specific contexts the middle castes excluding the Scheduled Castes and the savarnas (upper castes). That broad category began to splinter as aspirations of various segments diverged. In a moment, we shall return to this social dynamic of Bihar politics from a long-term perspective, but before that let’s take a short overview of the current dynamics and basic facts of Bihar politics.

The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United), with allies like Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Hindustani Awam Morcha (Jitan Ram Manjhi), and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (Upendra Kushwaha). The opposition Mahagathbandhan — the Bihar strand of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc — has the RJD and the Indian National Congress as lead partners, with Left parties (Communist Party of India – Marxist–Leninist, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India – Marxist), Vikassheel Insaan Party (Mukesh Sahani), and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Hemant Soren) as allies.

Outside of these two blocs, there are at least two key players who could potentially have a determining influence this year — the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) led by Hyderabad-based Asaduddin Owaisi, and Jan Suraaj, the political start-up of Prashant Kishor, once an adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Caste calculus

Mr. Kumar has been Chief Minister of Bihar since 2005. Of the 15 years in the top job, Mr. Kumar has been a partner of the BJP for nine and with the Congress and the RJD for six, in two installments. He could easily walk out of one alliance and join the other the next day, without batting an eyelid, and completely free of any requirement for explanation. Changing partners has proved to be fun for him, without any risk. Political promiscuity has guaranteed his longevity in power, but there is more to it.

The repeated change of partners by Mr. Kumar may appear as opportunism to the outside observer, but his core constituency of Extremely Backward Class (EBC) voters see in this an essential capacity to secure their interests in the power bargain with both the national parties and the dominant Other Backward Class (OBC) group of Yadavs represented by the RJD.

As per a survey of communities conducted by the State government in 2023, Bihar’s population is 82% Hindu and 17.7% Muslim. Among the Hindus, 15.52% are upper castes comprising Brahmins (3.66%), Bhumihars (2.87%), Rajputs (3.45%), and Kayasths (0.6%). Nearly a fifth are Dalits (Scheduled Castes), and Paswans (Dushadhs), the dominant among them, constitute 5.31% of the total population. The middle castes of Bihar are classified under two categories — Annexure 1 and Annexure 2. In popular parlance, Annexure 1 are called EBCs and comprise 36.01% of the population, while Annexure 2, the Other Backward Castes (OBCs), make up 27.12%.

In most parts of India, caste and religion are factors, though with varied intensities. Bihar is a stark laboratory for this social engineering for political purposes. Nearly all secular issues, such as unemployment, housing or even infrastructure, could be linked to a caste or religious identity much more closely in Bihar than the national standard. This allows analysts to reduce political trends in Bihar to permutations and combinations of caste and religious identities. Reductionist as it may be, this framework proves to be remarkably accurate in most cases.

The storied Jayaprakash Narayan Movement in the early 1970s in Bihar needs to be seen through this caste lens in hindsight. The Congress party in Bihar drew its support from the upper caste and Dalit Hindus and Muslims. The middle castes felt excluded from the Congress power structure. Narayan was a Kayasth, a community that is highly represented in the bureaucracy despite its negligible numerical strength. His arguments against Indira Gandhi found an instant resonance among middle caste youths, and that is how the Nitish–Lalu politics of the ‘pichde jati’ grew into a massive force in State politics.

Within the larger category of backward castes, there were three that were leading the charge in Bihar for several decades beforehand — the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris — together called the Triveni Sangh. Their initial demands in the 1920s were Sanskritising — such as the demand for the right to wear the sacred thread that marks out the twice-born in the Hindu caste hierarchy. Though they made some electoral gains, the real breakthrough for Bihar’s OBC politics came with the breakup of the Muslims and the upper castes in the late 1980s. The upper castes abandoned the Congress for the BJP, and the Muslims abandoned it for the Janata Dal between 1989 and 1992, as the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation of the BJP peaked. The Congress collapsed and has not recovered till date, though it hopes to make a return on the back of changing dynamics in Bihar society.

The backwards, or the ‘pichde’, that included Dalits under the banner of the umbrella Janata Party and later the Janata Dal under Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh in the late 1980s, began splintering soon after it won power in Bihar. Kurmis, led by Nitish Kumar, were the first to walk out, followed by Paswans under Ramvilas Paswan. The rest remained with Lalu Prasad and his caste, the Yadavs, under the RJD banner. As Yadav dominance within the party and the overall state power of Bihar expanded under the RJD, other castes turned restive.

Caste groups that had the capacity to form standalone parties mobilised accordingly. Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) mobilised the Mallah or Nishad communities — boatmen and fisherfolk — classified under the EBC. Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) carved out the Kushwaha community as a separate bloc and shifted alliances between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress over the years. Jitan Ram Manjhi, once so trusted by Mr Kumar that he was chosen to keep the chair warm while Mr Kumar took time out, founded the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) for the Musahar, a Dalit community.

Mr Kumar’s success so far has been in keeping all the residual backward and extremely backward communities behind his Janata Dal (United) platform. As of now, that model still stands, but there is a distinct challenge to it — not from the RJD, but from the two national parties, the BJP and the Congress.

At present, Mr Kumar commands the loyalty of the residual Other Backward Class (OBC) and EBC groups, which is why there is little uproar of anti-incumbency in the State despite his three terms in power, with the short interregnum of Mr Manjhi at the helm. The Congress–RJD alliance has been trying to raise the issue of youth unemployment as the top concern, pointing to mass migration due to lack of jobs in Bihar. The Congress’s “Naukri Do, Palayan Roko Yatra” — Give Jobs, Stop Migration — campaign and the RJD’s promises of job guarantees are central to their campaigns. Allegations of “vote chori” (vote theft) and manipulation of electoral rolls (SIR) are other issues that the Congress–RJD combine tries to raise.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has launched a new scheme — Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana — to promote self-employment among women by providing ₹10,000 each to 75 lakh women. The ₹7,500 crore scheme aims to empower women through self-employment, offering further support up to ₹2 lakh for entrepreneurial ventures across agriculture, tailoring, and handicrafts. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the programme, though it is named after the Chief Minister.

While all parties are pushing the limits of caste or social justice politics by offering more and more along those lines, there also seems to be an attempt to harness the possibilities of other identities. The focus on women and youth as secular categories is apparent in the women-centric and youth-centric promises of parties. Prashant Kishor — a Brahmin — who has no caste base, is also trying to build a politics around secular questions such as better schools, qualified teachers, and improved healthcare infrastructure, especially in rural areas.

One might come across popular dissatisfaction against the BJP and the JD(U) over unemployment, corruption, and governance, but those discussions emerging above entrenched caste loyalties and influencing voting patterns seems not immediate.

Still, that remains the biggest possibility of the Assembly election in Bihar in 2025 — a post-Mandal politics. In 2020, the BJP had 20 percent vote share, five points more than its ally JD(U), which had 15 percent. The RJD garnered 23 percent, and the Congress had nine percent. Once Mr. Kumar and Mr. Prasad are no longer active in politics, the populace currently under their influence could loosen up and be open to new political choices.

The Congress hopes its newfound enthusiasm for social justice politics could make it acceptable among the OBCs and EBCs in Bihar on the one hand, and on the other, caste-agnostic governance considerations could work in its favour. The BJP hopes to ride a mix of Hindu consolidation that undermines caste loyalties, give OBCs and EBCs more representation in its electoral designs, and offer a basket of welfare doles.

The nature and character of a post-Mandal politics remain unclear, but the signs of that will be visible in the outcome of this year’s Assembly polls.