When Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav successfully co-scripted the social justice upsurge in Bihar in the early 1990s, its impact could not create new benchmarks in governance. Apart from other reasons, the split of the duo failed to create that ambience. While the two leaders ensured banishment of the feudal remnants from the citadel of state power, their victory was more political than administrative. The exit of Nitish Kumar and the sweeping electoral victory of 1995 in the Bihar assembly made Yadav almost politically invincible. Unfortunately, persons said to have a mind of their own within Lalu’s fold, started getting marginalised.

Politics in Bihar became ‘demand oriented’ rather than ‘delivery oriented’. In any case, delivery of an inclusive agenda through the archaic, hostile and almost non-existing network of state structures, was not an easy proposition. In these circumstances, while Lalu Yadav did consolidate the forces that spoke in the name of social justice, he failed in giving administrative expression to this cataclysm. Now Nitish Kumar, with the mandate of the ‘coalition of extremes’ and with an eye for detail, is using the same state structures in scripting an inclusive delivery system.

In future, any political party that wants to make an electoral breakthrough in the state will have to do some introspection. Without a cohesive agenda and a cadre-building exercise, political parties would run the risk of electoral obsolence.

Will last week’s Chintan Shivir motivate Lalu Yadav to jettison his earlier indifference to all things that have to do with governance, in order to and try and compete with Nitish Kumar on the terms set by the latter? If the answer is in the affirmative, the duo can reconverge to script new vistas of development, and an unprecedented sub-national cohesion, in Bihar.

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