Faced with the landslide victory of the Janata Dal (United) and the BJP in Bihar, spokespersons of the Congress and the Left have put the blame for their defeat upon a division of the 'secular' vote. This absurd explanation serves only to highlight how deeply both parties have been fixated upon a single relatively minor issue and utterly neglected the major one of governance in Bihar. The main reason for the JD(U)'s victoryleaps out at us from the voting pattern like the nose on Cyrano de Bergerac's face. It is the nine per cent decline in the votes polled by independents and 'others'. Their share fell from over 29 per cent in February to 20.5 per cent this month. All of this went to the JD(U)-BJP and accounted for almost nine-tenths of its gain of 10.3 per cent. There has been a similar, though less marked shift from the LJP to the JD(U)-BJP, of 1.3 per cent.
This transference of the vote from local heroes and strongmen to a recognised regional party and its long-standing national ally is a seismic event in Bihar politics. It shows that Bihar's electorate is at last beginning to realise that the vote is a tool of empowerment and not a token of fealty and subservience. One in ten voters in the state decided that he or she would not 'waste' his or her vote any longer by giving it to someone who either could not or would not deliver anything to the people. Instead they would back a party that had a reasonable chance of acquiring the power to do so. That this change has occurred in the short span of nine months makes it virtually a revolution.
A revolution against what? Nitish Kumar put it succinctly when he said it was against prolonged misgovernment. But it is a great deal more than that. The 'wasted vote' occurs only in the simple majority voting system that we have adopted. Learning to avoid it is, therefore, one sure sign of political maturity in the electorate. In the majority of Indian states, the electorate had passed this test by the early '70s. In a few, the process was delayed till the '80s. By the '90s, the vote remained dispersed and localised in only two states. Predictably, these were Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Equally predictably, these were the two states in which caste considerations continued to rule supreme, where politics was most comprehensively criminalised and where predatory clientelism, in which the purpose of acquiring power is to rob the state and share the proceeds with one's political supporters, remained the order of the day.
But clientelism is essentially parasitic. Where it flourishes the economy and the state itself must eventually die. Bihar has been dying for the last two decades and more and the process speeded up in the '90s. While Gujarat recorded a per capita growth rate of over seven per cent and Maharashtra of over five per cent, Bihar's per capita GDP declined by more than two per cent every year. It is not surprising therefore that in every indicator of income, health and education Bihar lags far behind every other state in India.
This vote is a revolt against perpetual misery and progressive state failure. Nitish Kumar was the obvious choice of a desperate electorate because he had, against all odds, remained a clean politician in a nest of vipers. But the challenge he now faces is formidable. Over 38 years, since the defeat of the Congress in 1967, the disintegration of the Bihar units of the national political parties into caste-based caucuses has turned Bihar into a failed state. Some idea of what this has done to governance may be had from the fate of the special Rs 1,000-crore Bihar package that the Planning Commission had put together four years ago during the tenure of K.C. Pant. This was to have been spent upon four projects—revival of the state tubewell network, desilting and repair of the Gandak irrigation system; and repair of the moribund highways and bridges in the state. Only the first of these got off the ground. Despite months of effort, the central government could not find a single contractor to take up any projects in the remaining three sectors. Aspirants visited Bihar, heard the horror stories of nightly visits by dacoit gangs who had to be paid off, and threw in the towel. Most of Bihar's portion of the Golden Quadrilateral highway project has met the same fate.
In much of Bihar, the night belongs to the dacoits. Biharis no longer dare to travel on a rural highway or road after sunset. But the trains are no safer. For the dacoits wait at every station for the returning emigrants to disembark, knowing that the poor do not have travellers cheques and credit cards and therefore have to carry cash.
But the day, on the other hand, is not much safer for it increasingly belongs to the Maoists. Between them, the dacoits and the Maoists will not allow industry, trade and even modern agriculture to take root in their state once again. In desperation, more and more Biharis—28 per cent of the adult male population by one survey—have left the state to live and work in other parts of the country. But Biharis seem to have realised that this is only a stopgap. That may explain why they have stopped voting with their feet and started to use the ballot.
Nitish Kumar will get nowhere until he is able to restore the rule of law and make Bihar a safe place to invest in. All he has to do it with is a demoralised and cynical bureaucracy, and a corrupt, caste-ridden, tired police force. Thus, without the unstinting help of the Centre he will get nowhere. The Centre needs to treat the rejuvenation of Bihar as a national and not a state problem. Nitish Kumar is democracy's last chance in Bihar. Beyond him lie only the Maoists.