BJP’s Bihar strategy

Political alignments are sensitive to the realities of the moment. They need to be for their very survival. Collation politics, as a BJP leader recently said, is a ‘game of compromises, compulsions and limitations’. Indeed, and it is to the credit of the BJP that it has shown that it has the ability to learn from defeat. Its allies in Bihar were demanding and the party showed political maturity in accommodating them. The seat-sharing deal for the 2019 polls showed major gains for an aggressive LJP, whose president Ram Vilas Paswan is set for a Rajya Sabha seat soon. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and the BJP are on an equal footing, sharing the same number of positions.

The spirit of accommodation that is in the air will also serve the Congress well as it seeks allies for the planned Mahagathbandhan. PM Narendra Modi’s attack on the grouping, as an ‘incoherent alliance of rich dynasties’, only underlines the threat that the BJP feels from a united opposition. The irony of the PM criticising his rivals for forging a collation while doing something similar in Bihar was missed by few. 

While it is getting increasingly clear that the BJP will not be able to enjoy the absolute majority it did. it has conceded five seats in Bihar to keep the coalition alive. The Congress, too, has come to terms with the fact that it needs to be part of a collation. Both parties are moving from their majoritarian and somewhat autocratic mindset, one that often afflicts a party when it enjoys an overwhelming majority. A natural corollary of this would be a less majoritarian mindset that would heal the divisiveness that has currently gripped the country. Indeed, no less than the Prime Minister cautioned against this when he spoke of countering the ‘dark forces of radicalisation, and to engender trust among all communities across the nation’. It may not be too much to hope for that the process of finding political allies from different parties will also rein in the more radical elements in the ruling party and thereby usher in a broader coalition, like the one in Bihar, in other parts of the country.