An honest confession – I was sceptical whether the NDA
would even win the Bihar Elections. I felt that they could at best scrape
through. Felt that BJP have a larger longer-term strategy where a defeat could
well mean the end of Nitish Kumar politically and that would suit them.
Further, the RJD under the son Tejaswi Yadav had done well the last time around. Even during the Lok Sabha 2024 elections the RJD Congress combine or MGB, had registered a upturn in vote share, seats compared to 2019 and NDA had a shortfall.
Nitish Kumar and NDA have been in power for 20 years and voter fatigue is a natural outcome. People will want change for the sake of change. Youngsters can be impatient and did get enthused by Tejaswi Yadav.
As one listened to the political speeches of the NDA, including Modi, it was the same old rhetoric of Lalloo/ RJD jungle raj, lawlessness and after 20 years one would have expected the NDA team to be talking of the progress made, changes, development achieved etc. Instead, we did see a freebie for women. Extremely counter intuitive logically.
When it came to seat allocation, BJP allocated a significant number to the young charismatic Chirag Paswan and we had that grand political strategist Prashant Kishore as a dark horse.
All this, did create a certain pessimism about the likely results. The results surpassed the wildest imagination of most since the sweep was a tsunami and simply drowned the MGB beyond recognition. The only thing one could do was a postmortem and go back to the drawing board as they say, which I did.
The NDA it seems worked to a plan since they knew something that we didn’t. There has been work done on the field and there were results as can be seen here. Nobody told us and we didnt research enough to educate ourselves.
A feisty girl in college taught me a saying which is apt – There are 3 kinds of lies, plain lies, damn lies and statistics. Statistics by themselves don’t lie, but the lie is in how one decides to interpret them. Even the most seasoned of journalists will want their 3 Million subscriber audience to believe otherwise as this headline & article showed.
Even after an impressive average nett GDP growth of 11.13 % over the last 3 years and an increase of average GDP by over 3 times since 2012 the headlines here speak volumes – poorest state. Again fact, but not true as I say. This is lazy analysis where a BMW which sold about 1,000 EV cars last year achieved 246 % growth in sales selling 2500 cars this year, did spectacularly. A Tata did badly with a growth of only 14% selling over 66,000 EV cars. This is sheer stupidity in analysis but not when peddling a narrative to excite the Congress.
Scratch the surface and dig, and one finds that in the last decade Bihar's growth rate in manufacturing sector was around 17% against the national average of 5 % and the number of new jobs created jumped from around 6,000 to 35,000 in the last 5 years. You dig up reports on the law and order, women’s safety, girl education etc and every single data point shows impressive figures, but unreported. Girls’ literacy from round 50% in 2012 has jumped to 60%+ by 2017. Of course smart journalists can cherry pick data points to show failure, but in the end, the opinion of the public is what matters.
Nobody, but nobody shared all this data in the print media, TV, posts by expert analysts and journalists, and even as the election campaign started, every other self-proclaimed expert pontificated on TV – its all about the caste arithmetic. Sure, caste matters but I sure would like to see hungry, suffering people to discuss caste when their belly’s are growling and the hunger killing them. Sorry, the educated English-speaking urban elite who’s evenings are spent in lounge bars and fancy restaurants sipping cocktails – for them India hasn’t moved an inch beyond caste in the last 30 years. When their favourite patrons like Rahul Gandhi, Tejaswi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav speak of caste, caste survey, they go orgasmic believing that their wise pronouncements are fact.
We did not see any TV/ Media covering Nitish Kumar, his work, his record, or even his opinions, and it was all about Lalloo and Tejaswi on steroids with Prashant Kishore as the side story with god like predictions. The BJP and Modi focussed on Congress and Jungle Raj, kept the opposition busy and the TV/Media played along like pipe piper's rats. The people knew what Nitish had done and undisturbed, he campaigned, making no noise and the people heard him loud and clear. Nitish was the Hero, MGB the blundering villains, Prashant the item number, Chirag the supporting hero and Modi the hero in a special appearance.
What was still surprising is the magnitude of the victory and that is what bears a little more analysis.
The opposition is as usual making accusations against the Election Commission, “vote chori” has been a constant refrain of Congress in every single election, unless they blame the EVM’s. The opposition also blamed the SIR with little conviction. For a minute let us assume that these accusations have a ring of truth. This then begs the questions.
If SIR was a “malafide” exercise then how come not one person has come forward to complain? In fact thousands should be complaining. Even so the media is unable to showcase any such protest and all the fancy billionaire lawyers with midnight hearing powers are not exactly filing cases. Coming to the “vote chori” if this was true, the people would have complained. More than one would have made a reel, posted messages on X and raised legitimate questions as to how a candidate won. There would be sufficient smoke to suspect a fire. But people have said “yawn” and ignored both these allegations. The only people talking about this are Rahul Gandhi and his minions and even the opposition is ignoring these.
The other factor that some have pointed out is that a largesse to women before the elections were announced triggered a jump in voter turnout and that can surely be a factor.
However there is one factor that nobody wishes to talk about. Just one journalist tentatively ventured into this forbidden territory but quickly abandoned it. The key phrases he used were “increasingly bipolar assembly polls in which floating voters play a decisive role” “MGB was counting on support from 80% Muslims & Yadavs”, “translates to 25% vote share & to win needed an additional 20%”
Sounds familiar? Karnataka and Telengana went to polls in 2023 and Congress took a huge gamble by banking totally on consolidating the Muslim vote. That strategy paid off hugely and Congress romped home in a big way. The strategy was simple – a 25% voteshare was guaranteed with Muslims voting en-bloc for Congress and then the balance needed was very little.
In Karnataka even though the BJP retained its voteshare it lost badly. A combined vote share with JDU also did not help. The power of the Muslim vote was apparent.
This strategy was taken to the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and Congress contested their lowest ever in history of just 328 seats against 419 in 2019, a drop of 22% and with the Muslim consolidation managed to ensure that BJP did not get a majority. The signal to the rest of the country was clear by this time on what exactly was happening and, in my view, a silent counter consolidation in the non-Muslim vote was triggered.
The result was a string of victories and now Bihar which boasted of a large Muslim/ Yadav votebase saw the NDA getting a phenomenal victory. A narrow-focussed strategy such as what Congress followed and then made no bones about their preference can never have a positive impact in a sustained manner. Addressing multiple, disparate, divided groups under the monicker Hindu which the BJP does, is one thing, but to cherry pick one influential and dominant group which is also clearly identifiable is quite another. Major leaders including the CM of Telengana have made comments that can have a logic behind them but politically can only mean suicide.
How long a party that prides itself as the torch bearer of the Indian independence movement will chase such a strategy is anybody’s guess. The Bihar election results which were significantly impacted by counter consolidation is a wakeup call for Congress. As long as the media at large keeps this topic as taboo for debate, Congress I feel will keep digging this rabbit hole deeper and deeper. Next year, Assam, Tamilnadu and West Bengal will again give us a taste of this strategy and the latter two states can throw surprises, if not victory. But it is Uttar Pradesh in 2027 that would be the big bang election, and a watershed moment in Indian politics, especially if Congress continues with this strategy. How disconnected they and their eco-system are from India, that is Bharat, is easily explained in this.
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