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TARUNKUMAR2029725
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The "Chanakya of Bihar" is lonely today. He is trapped in his own ingenuity. Nitish is shunned by both allies and opponents. Now the people of Bihar are his only hope. This election is a referendum on Nitish and his politics; politics driven by opportunism and self-promotion. At 69, Nitish is fighting the toughest battle of his political life.
The alliance with the BJP is a facade, a mask. It's a marriage that both the partners know will end soon. The BJP will dump him if he does not get a respectable number of seats. Nitish knows that Amit Shah's words that "Nitish is the face of the NDA and he will be the Chief Minister after the elections" intended as a renewal of vows, carries no conviction. No wonder Nitish's demeanor of politeness keeps slipping and there are sudden outbursts of anger at public rallies. His atypical personalised attacks on Tejashwi and father Lalu Yadav are testimony to his being rattled to his core, an expression of his lonely inner self.
Nitish is probably the only politician in Indian history who, despite very limited appeal and dismal party organisation, has remained Chief Minister for three terms. He was the unquestioned leader of Bihar even though his party locked less than a 20% vote share.Since he split with Lalu Yadav along with George Fernandes in 1994, he has led the Janata Dal (United), a party which has no footprint across the state.
His rise to the top was the by-product of the fissures between two arch-enemies: the BJP and the RJD whose conflict was embedded in opposing ideologies. The BJP's Hindutva was in direct contrast with the Mandal politics of Lalu Yadav's RJD. Nitish, the original warrior of Mandal politics, hitched his wagon to that of the BJP, but he never endorsed the BJP's prime brand of Hindutva. He was always careful to not approve of communal politics. Despite being in the Vajpayee cabinet at the center and forming the government in Bihar, he successfully managed to project himself as a secular leader.
He was considered astute and intuitive, a "Chanakya of Bihar" because of how to used both the BJP and the RJD. He successfully pitted them against each other, allowing himself the helm of Bihar and for 15 consecutive years. It's no mean achievement. And most surprisingly, both parties were bigger than Nitish's JDU but agreed to play second fiddle. The BJP wanted to keep Lalu Yadav away from power and Lalu wanted to keep the BJP at bay. Nitish served the purpose of both. But now, the BJP has had enough, and may opt to write him off if it gets the most seats in the election. The writing is on the wall: this time, the BJP has decided to step out of Nitish's shadow and carve its own path.