How Bihar was won and how we are neglecting the bigger picture
So finally it has happened. We all knew (including Lalu with his jokes, which suddenly everyone started finding stale) what's in store except that this time we did not want the exit-polls to go wrong by miles because that would have hurt our sense of justice. This along with our self-congratulatory chest-thumping but pre-mature belief that India has arrived both materially and intellectually (remember the recent trend of hoopla- 'India Shining', ‘national drive of self congratulation after Obama's support for UNSC’ etc) shaped our expectations that 'development' should win.
Well it just did, but mind you, it’s not alone. The fact of life remains that no political party can win an election solely on development planks and Nitish being a product of Emergency knows it well. Remember, our poster boy of development-Mr. Naidu learnt it the hard way against Late Mr. Reddy in Andhra a couple of years back. When Naidu was cruising on the development highway, Reddy was quietly walking the famed Padyatras(on foot) across entire AP. Now, that’s what I call last-mile social-engineering at its best. Mr. Naidu is yet to make a comeback.
So what exactly happened in Bihar?
A couple of things actually.
Ø The part that we all 'think' we know: Development
Media outlets have been barraging us with a lot of 'opinions' (and not facts) about how there has been a turn-around in Bihar on a no. of parameters. Sure, the law and order situation has improved. At the last count, 39k criminals were convicted in just 3 years with the crime-rates plunging by 50%1. But these are all stats and its almost same like saying - "30% of NASA comprise of Indians" or "Spending of USD 300mn/day on President Obama's visit". What matters is the perception created by irresponsible peddling of such 'facts', that the voter carries.
Of course, the infra has improved, with better connectivity of roads which is a far-cry from just 5 years back. This is based on first-hand feedback from my Bihari friends for such visible improvements are for everyone to see.
But there is another side of the story. There has been huge discrepancies in the reported GDP growth rates (see figure) reported by Central Statistical Organization’s (CSO’s) and Bihar’s Economic Survey 2008-092. This discrepancy is true for a lot of other parameters of growth. We may be tempted to dismiss the former as the Congress version of the story against the latter being the state version. But that is not true, CSO being an independent and a well respected organization.
The fact is that 5 years is too short a time to clean a quagmire of such proportions when you consider that the social landscape in the cow-belt is too fragmented in terms of-
Ø Casts as social strata, and,
Ø Classes as economic strata
This spectrum of resulting vested interests makes sure that any affirmative political action is very difficult to implement without any electoral costs associated with it. Case in point is Haryana govt. utter refusal to act against the Khaps.
Apparently tightening the administration and improving public delivery mechanisms is next on Nitish's agenda with Babu's working on the same even before the election results3. All this tells us a few things about the superb media-management that has been successfully achieved by making us believe that Bihar has somehow crossed that threshold and the problems have bottomed out. I truly hope so but at the same time, I would like more evidence beyond the mere 'opinions'.
So for the time being it can be safely assumed that it’s more of a perception and not the hard facts that drove the agenda of elections.
Ø The part that a few know: Calculated Political Gamble
Standing up to BJP and keeping Modi out of Bihar was a political master move. In spite of sharing the stage with Modi earlier, Nitish ensured the following by refusing to tow the line this time.
- Garnered a huge support among the Muslims and dented the traditional MY (Muslim-Yadav) combine of Lalu. This helped in dividing the Muslim vote across the state helping the cause of "Sher ka Bacha"6 (that’s what the Bihari Muslim community calls Nitish, now).
- Letting the big brother BJP know, who's the boss in Bihar. This has been reinforced by the fact that BJP lost a lot of its traditional strongholds.
- Refusing to let the Hindu vote itself getting polarized along religious line. There is a sizable hindu-chunk that hates the chauvinist ring-wing politics of BJP, which the latter has yet to understand.
This also tells us, why Modi can never become a national player in spite of all the good governance he has achieved in Gujarat. Political birth of his personality (read: Gujarat riots-2002) will remain the chains cuffing his ambitions forever.
Ø The part that most don't know: Social Engineering
The context
This has given rise to a much more complicated social hierarchy in the north with numerous sub and sub-sub casts which are basically intra-homogeneous, extra-heterogeneous. So you have a large chunk of people in between like Other Backward Classes (OBCs) etc which are further divided on the lines of sub-casts like Kurmis, Yadavs, Bhumihars etc. On a cursory search one finds a total of 131 casts in OBC category in Bihar alone4, which may be further divided based on religion, region etc.
The story
It’s easy to dismiss the affect of social-engineering as a factor that’s swings a small proportion of vote, say 2/3 %. But that is not true once you consider the recent socio-political experiments across north India. There are a number of elections, whose results of absolute majority can’t be explained otherwise (no development, no religious under-currents), like-
1. Surprise Maya win in UP-2007,
2. Congress win in Rajasthan in 2008 on the backing of Jats,
3. Traditional Bihar wins by Laloo.
2. Congress win in Rajasthan in 2008 on the backing of Jats,
3. Traditional Bihar wins by Laloo.
What Nitish has achieved in Bihar is way more complicated. He started with a lot of handicaps -
Ø Not a committed vote bank like that for Maya in UP,
Ø Lalu competes with him for the uncommitted OBC votes,
Ø Junior partner of the right-wing BJP making him almost an untouchable for the Muslims.
Reading this, you would expect all odds against him with little hopes of a majority let alone a clean sweep.
But sweep he did. Over the last 5 years, Nitish has worked assiduously to make inroads in the MY combine working for Lalu. He cleverly divided the OBC vote further by officially creating a stratum called Maha-Dalit5, beneficiary of a number of government schemes. This was done by cherry-picking specific casts from among OBC and SC strata.
This is the Mass Buyout of votes acceptable within the confines of the democratic framework.
The Mechanics
Now, it is clear that social-engineering works very well, given a situation defined by broad contours like a few requisites in the social landscape. That is why, for the reasons stated above, it doesn’t work in say West or South India.
At the same time, social engineering doesn’t deliver results consistently because of the “disillusionment” factor. This is what happened to Lalu in Bihar packing him to political irrelevance, the most dreaded by the politicians.
This means that clever social engineering helps a political entity to create a niche in the short term which needs to be reinforced by other factors like- clean image, development etc and that is exactly where Nitish scores.
Thus it can be logically concluded that social engineering is a very effective political tool which delivers in the short term, albeit with its own price and side-effects in the long term unless more powerful means are used to mitigate the latter.
The Repercussions
This modern version of the brown sahib’s policy of “divide and rule” means that we are looking at a lot of social/political unrest in the medium to long term in these belts across India.
This is also the reason, why it’s difficult to agree when people say that Bihar is on its way out of the hole. The paradox being that we might be digging the same hole deeper. Imagine a large number of more social identity groups (read: casts) clamoring to be labeled more backward than the other for the booty that comes with the label, something on the lines of what we are seeing in Rajasthan. This is not impossible considering that we are talking about some of the most populous states in India with a history of absence (or continuous demise) of social institutions (remember Khap issue).
The obvious good part of this whole story is that, everything said and done, these elections firmly brought back the "agenda of development" if not development itself, in forefront of elections. Everybody believes and media has done its bit, that law and order provides the framework for rest of the civil institutions to work in to create a well-tuned economic engine humming. Thus, it is a pre-requisite for any green shoots of growth to grow on.
This is a fever that if rest of the country catches up, which could happen in spite of the obvious aberrations like an imminent Didi's victory in West Bengal which incidentally is Bihar's neighbor, can transform our democracy towards being the true cradle of development.
