If, as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s own managers themselves fear, Prime Minister Narendra Modi loses another Assembly election (after Delhi’s earlier this year), then whose governance will Bihar follow — that of former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, whose reign shifted the paradigm of power from the upper castes to the backward castes but also allowed chaos to make for a failed state; or that of incumbent Nitish Kumar, the man who can “out-Modi” Modi (as Biharis put it) in terms of good governance, but who has needed a hefty political partner in order to pursue development?
Optimists would like to believe that Lalu will allow Nitish to run the government the way the chief minister wants; they would like to believe that Lalu, who is barred due to the 2013 conviction in the fodder scam from contesting election or holding office till 2024, will be more interested in ensuring that one of his sons, Tejashwi and Tej Pratap, or his daughter Misa get a hand up in experience, both in governance and in high politics. The kids might be a bit young to be deputy chief minister, but then Lalu is the only man in India to make his wife Rabri chief minister even if she were only a cipher.
Optimists may further argue that Lalu knows that if he trips up Nitish — like interfering in law and order, the very thing that will help Nitish electorally return (if he does), the thing that gave Biharis hope that their state was salvagable, governable even — then he risks a government collapse that might perhaps ensure a National Democratic Alliance win in a mid-term election, that in turn would actually be a boon to Modi the closer it happens to the 2019 parliamentary polls. If Lalu is forward-looking, then helping Nitish govern well and then possibly move to the national stage at some point in the post-2019 future may help his ambitions for his children.
And lastly, Nitish is no cipher. A man who from his days in student politics — like Lalu, his was forged in the crucible of the 1970s — was sought after more as a backroom strategiser and less as a rhetorician in the Lalu-mould, Nitish may move slowly and quietly, but he moves deliberately. If he brought about a miraculous change in Bihar’s law and order, it was because of his determination and planning; his break with Modi and his patch-up with Lalu are both evidence of Nitish’s realpolitik.
However. Reading veteran journalist Sankarshan Thakur’s The Brothers Bihari gives you the jitters about a future Nitish-Lalu government. Though Sankarshan’s recent election coverage as roving editor for a newspaper, includes a piece on the bonhomie that Nitish and Lalu have surprisingly developed, one can easily attribute the closeness to the requirement of the Assembly election — the fight of their political lives (the bonhomie was probably helped by what was from all accounts, a positive first phase for the Mahagathbandhan) — which can easily change once power is attained, and with the passage of time.
The reason is in his Dostoyevskian-titled book (with an attractive front cover by publishers HarperCollins). The Brothers Bihari is actually a revised and updated combination of his two previous books, The Making of Laloo Yadav: The Unmaking of Bihar (2000) and Single Man: The Life & Times of Nitish Kumar of Bihar (2014). It sharply etches an image each of two leaders, who are as different as chalk and cheese.
Moreover, in the second half of The Brothers Bihari Nitish is defined as much as by what Lalu isn’t, as by what Nitish himself is. Lalu as chief minister had utter disdain for governance, deriding it as babu-work; when the fodder scam occupied his mind and he installed his wife to sign his decisions on file, then governance went for a complete toss and kidnapping/extortion/murder became the currency of the day.
Though Nitish was never completely free of political muscle he loathed showmanship and as Sankarshan describes in a trip to Saharsa on the Nepalese border, dragged his top bureaucracy to blighted corners of the state in order for the administration to know how bad things were for the citizenry. In a nutshell, as social scientist Saibal Gupta tells Sankarshan: “The singular thing Nitish has done is to bring a commitment to institutions and governance that had lapsed form the collective memory of Bihar.”
And for decades, the two hated each other with a passion. They broke informally in 1993, with Nitish upset at how the government served the interests of only one caste group, the Yadavs; Lalu regarded Nitish as a bush-league upstart who dared break party unity. The Brothers Bihari not only records how intense and deep-rooted that dislike was, if it is subdued for now you come away realising that the ceasefire is on the surface and cannot last forever.
The Brothers Bihari is not just well-reported (Sankarshan has access to everyone), but well-written. “‘Satta prapt karoonga, by hook or by crook, lekin satta leke achha kaam karoonga’ (Nitish says). Thereafter, he got up and left to wander nearly thirty years in the direction of fulfilling his rash vow.” That’s a truly great line.
The book follows an engaging narrative arc, it is contemplative, it is celebratory, it is easy to read. Perhaps the first half is weaker as documentation on Lalu is elusive, and also because the author in 2000 had done a bit of over-writing; but the second half on Nitish is pitch-perfect.
Ruled or Misruled: Story and Destiny of Bihar by Santosh Singh Bloomsbury, Rs 499
The other book on review, Ruled or Misruled: Story and Destiny of Bihar by Santosh Singh is a disappointment. Santosh is the well-regarded state correspondent for an English daily; he too has great access. His book reads like a quickie; it is a regurgitation of recent history without a narrative arc; it is like adda gossip without the adda analysis; and its poor editing only makes the book difficult reading. Tellingly, his book needs a conclusion (the Mahagathbandhan is ahead by a nose). Even the cover is uninspired. Avoidable, unfortunately.
Aditya Sinha is the co-author of the recent bestseller Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years
