On the eve of his second visit to Bihar in less than a fortnight last Sunday — thus giving notice that he plans to campaign vigorously in the state Assembly election due in about two months’ time — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government did something that has not been done in a long time, probably decades. It appointed a BJP hack as the new governor of the state without consulting chief minister Nitish Kumar.
Such consultation was an important recommendation of the Commission on Centre-State Relations of 1983, popularly known as the Sarkaria Commission, so that the functioning of federalism in the country may be bolstered. Violence done to the principle has caused uproar in Parliament and occasioned angry marches on the streets. All the more why such flagrant disregard of a principle on which so much premium is placed in our polity by a man such as Mr Modi — who publicly sets store by the notion of “cooperative federalism” — was surprising, to say the least. And yet, after returning to the ways of the Mughal emperors of sending down governors to rule over a province rather than give the impression of nurturing the federal, democratic, ethos, the PM spoke to his Gaya audience of prospective “jungle raj” in Bihar if the Nitish-Lalu Yadav combine was able to establish its sway over the electorate.
This does cause mirth. After all, people in the state are yet to recover from the PM’s earlier jibe about their CM’s DNA made on his last electioneering trip to Bihar. Those who are used to thinking that individuals adorning high office should, with their words and actions, bring lustre to their position are apt to find something amiss in the preset goings-on, even making allowance for the rough and tumble of election-time politics which, in recent times, has descended to name-calling and all but personalised abuse. Regrettably, Mr Modi does not fail to make his contribution to the unfortunate trend.
Campaigning before an election is a deeply partisan act, and vigour is expected. But so is restraint. Bihar politicians are hardly paragons of virtue, but that can be said of politicians anywhere. It is common to hear bogus promises. Mr Kumar and Mr Yadav do that pretty much every single day, in meeting after election meeting, as do their counterparts in the state BJP. But the Prime Minister could have given the impression of being above the fray in that respect. He promised that Bihar would cease to be “BIMARU”, or a sick state, if the BJP-led NDA was voted to power when the record of his first 15 months in office has failed to enthuse, and the promise of good days, the hackneyed “achche din”, is being recalled with a cynic’s chuckle.
