Dynast Within A Democracy

What lies ahead for Tejashwi Prasad Yadav from here, after the RJD’s defeat by a narrow margin in the tightly-contested Bihar assembly elections? The answer to this question will have to first, necessarily, face another complicated question in the line of inquiry. Can democracy, development and dynastic politics, let’s call it the three Ds, co-exist and flourish at the same time? Theoretically speaking, it is quite a complicated question to answer. The complications of the enterprise further aggravate if we attribute to these three elements the following characteristics: caste-ridden liberal parliamentary democracy, exploitative economic development and party-based dynastic politics as they have been the prominent features of politics in Bihar for long.

A serious look at the contours of the evolution of electoral politics in India throws open such questions and provides no definite answers. 1990s onward, heirs of many political families have tried their hands with mixed results. Like Tejashwi, his contemporaries in Bihar and elsewhere—such as Akhilesh Yadav, Chirag Paswan, Uddhav Thackeray, Stalin, Omar Abdullah, Jaganmohan Reddy and several others—have already gained some political experience and their performance is today there for everyone to judge. But before playing the scramble in case of Bihar, a background check will be of some help.

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To start with, one finds that the three-D combination has in most cases worked well in the post-liberalisation era in India. At the federal levels, success stories combining democracy and dynasty of the likes of the Naveen Patnaik and the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, Chandra Babu Naidu’s first stint as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Rabri Devi (Lalu Prasad)-led Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar are cases in point. With that precaution at hand, one could also include a rather new entrant, Y.SR. Jaganmohan Reddy to the list.

In Bihar, the BJP-led NDA seems to have relied on bringing together the success story of democracy and development wherein Nitish Kumar successfully played his heroic role, time and again. This combination had worked for him in the previous three assembly elections too, even when he briefly switched sides to the RJD-led alliance in the 2015 assembly elections.

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In contrast, the Tejashwi-led Mahagathbandhan (MGB) was reeling under the pressure of a legacy marked by periods of varied fortunes of his father and thus struggling at the moment to bring together democracy, development and dynasty (or at least two from the list). His vulnerability goes to the extent that Tejashwi had to apologise for the “mistakes that might have happened” during the fifteen years of RJD rule in the past. The towering shadow of Lalu Prasad—even when he is physically absent—is staggering in Bihar politics. And hence the apology. Because of this, it is most likely that despite a conducive environment in favour of MGB, the NDA managed to pull out a win this time too.

Well, what now for Tejashwi? It is well-established that he has managed to create ripples by his willingness to accept the challenges, his oratory and hard work during this election. Primarily, after the near-win experience this time, he will be increasingly seen and evaluated as the inheritor of a particular style of leadership. He will also be repeatedly pitted against the crowd-pulling charisma that his father commanded once. At the same time, when such an assessment looks back into his lineage, he will also be seen as an individual who belongs to the new age of ever improvising, management-driven, suave young political leader. His arrival on the scene therefore tends to evoke a curious mix of expectations.

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In shouldering the twin responsibilities of carrying on the mantle handed down to him by his father and adapting himself to the rapidly changing demographics, Tejashwi faces the added challenge of inculcating a suitable alternative agenda in the long run and a sartorial style, of breaking out of the mould. In propping Tejashwi as his successors, Lalu Prasad (and possibly the whole of opposition in Bihar) has possibly put all his cards at stake in the just concluded assembly elections. The calculations behind such a decision by the maverick of Indian politics may be seen as being guided both by a compulsion to survive and by political expediency. Lalu’s choice of handing over the reins to his son at the cost of leaving many senior RJD leaders such as Raghuvansh Prasad annoyed is hardly a secret.

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(The author is assistant professor at TISS, Patna. Views are personal)