SMART & SECULAR
While his competitors are battling negative public perceptions because of
their antics in the run-up to the presidential election, Nitish Kumar has
proved to be the shrewdest of the regional satraps jockeying for a starring
role in the next government
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar must have rejoiced,
silently of course, when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat locked horns with him over the
prospect of his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi being projected as the BJP’s
prime ministerial face in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He could not have hoped
for a better certificate for his secular credentials than a sermon from the
Sangh’s sarsangchalak on “vote bank’’ politics.
The row over Modi has come as a boon for Nitish in his
bid to emerge from the shadow of the BJP to play a larger role in national
politics after the next general election. He was Mr Development already, after
government figures put Bihar as India’s fastest growing state for the second
year running in 2011-12. Now he hopes to capture the secular plank as well for
wider acceptability across the political spectrum.
Although the Bihar CM has stated that he is not in the
race for the PM’s post (“I cannot even dream of that high office,’’ he told the
Economic Times in a recent interview), many believe that he could emerge as a
consensus choice to lead a non-BJP, non-Congress coalition of smaller parties
if neither of the two national parties wins enough seats to stake their claim.
It would be a replay of the short-lived United Front experiment of 1996.
Nitish has certainly proved to be the shrewdest of the
regional satraps jockeying for a starring role in the next government. While
his competitors are battling surging negative public perceptions because of
their shenanigans in the run-up to the presidential election, Nitish has
managed to remain unscathed. In fact, the war of words over Modi has singed the
BJP’s image as a coalition leader while earning Nitish brownie points with the
secularists.
LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE COMPETITION...
Trinamool chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee reinforced her enfant
terrible image by overplaying her hand to stop finance minister Pranab
Mukherjee’s nomination as the UPA’s candidate for president. Worse, she also
exposed her naivete in backroom dealings after she was outwitted by both
Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Congress. A wilier
politician would have cut her losses and saved face. Mulayam Singh had risen
like a phoenix from the ashes after his stunning comeback in the recent UP
assembly elections. But all the old doubts about his unreliability and cunning
ways have resurfaced after he unceremoniously dumped Mamata to cut a deal with
the Congress on the president’s election. As leader of the ruling party in
India’s most populous state with the largest number of MPs in the Lok Sabha,
Mulayam remains a force to contend with. But he will have to do two things if
he is aiming for the PM’s post. One is to convince potential allies that he can
honour a bargain once it’s struck. The other is to shore up governance in his
home state so that fears of lawlessness and underdevelopment don’t cast a
shadow on his future plans. Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik had positioned himself
well as a possible leader of a third or fourth front after he successfully
mobilised regional parties to oppose union home minister P Chidambaram’s plan
for a national counter terrorism centre. But just as he was flying (literally,
because he had gone to London to meet potential business investors), he was
grounded by a rebellion at home...