In Frame: Nitish Kumar
Clearly the one message from Bihar polls is that brands matter. Nitish Kumar may have been written off during the pre-election analysis as someone who was holding on to his seat cashing an expired cheque, but as the campaign got underway it was clear that his goodwill still held. Whatever the schemes announced by the BJP, the people on the ground gave credit to Nitish Kumar and his sushashan. The high voter turnout also saw young girls who had gone to school and college riding the cycles handed out by Nitish Kumar, coming out to vote in his favour. There is also a message here that it’s not just last minute doles and election handouts but a legacy of policymaking that works. Of course, the BJP has emerged as the single biggest party, but even then it would be tough for the BJP to deny him the Chief Minister’s chair. The Maharashtra model where an ally was sidelined in favour of a BJP CM may not work so well with the people of Bihar who have come out and voted for Nitish Kumar.
The Congress is facing a near wipeout in Bihar. With even Chirag Paswan scoring better than the grand old party and the fact that Asaduddin Owaisi is neck to neck with the Congress, the bar has never been lower. The introspection that will follow will be taking in many factors. not the least the kind of campaign that the Congress has conducted. Even during the campaign, Tejashwi Yadav was not comfortable with the over emphasis on the vote-chori issue; this was evident from his own campaign, which focused more on local issues than Rahul’s pet theme. Some valiant Congress leaders are still claiming that this is a relevant issue—which it is; but clearly it was not the most prominent issue on the voters’ minds. The Congress could have begun its campaign with this and then diversified to other local issues such as jobs, education and concerns of the migrant workers. That’s the problem with Rahul Gandhi, he finds an issue and then just sticks to it like a broken record.
Bihar saw a historic turnout during voting, causing some to believe that this was a vote against the current government. Traditionally that is what a high voter turnout is meant to signify but these rules no longer apply in the Modi era. There are many reasons for this, but a dominant one could be the delivery of welfare schemes, especially for women. Wooing the women vote with Ladli Behna paid the BJP rich dividends in Madhya Pradesh and was one of the key factors in turning the election in favour of the BJP. Since the party was in power in the run-up to the elections, it not only announced the scheme but also delivered on it in the months before the polls. The women who went to the ballot box went with three tranches of Ladli Behna scheme in their bank accounts. This is also what happened in Maharashtra as well though it’s another matter that in the months post the election the state finance minister Ajit Pawar could be heard complaining as to where he was going to find the sources for the next tranche of payments. And so in Bihar too, as many as 70 lakh women voters were given Rs 10,000 each under the Mukhyamantri Mahila Yojana a few months before the polls. The Mahagathbandan and the rest of the opposition could only promise similar doles and schemes like the Jeevika Didi one in their manifesto. But the BJP was one up. It not only promised but also delivered. And that is also where the vote went. Apparently, there is a 18% difference in the women vote between the NDA and the MGB.
