Modi loses his touch by Ashutosh

I don't want to say "I told you so!", that would be pompous of me. But in this column a few weeks ago, I had written that Bihar would prove to be a second Waterloo for Mr Prime Minister. People looked at me in disbelief and disdain, the very same way they treated my written words before the Delhi elections - like it was a joke. Today, I stand vindicated.

First Delhi and now Bihar have clearly heralded that if people are promised rosy pictures pre-elections, then after a party's victory, they want the moon delivered to their living rooms. Instead, if people are offered the same old traditional tricks, they are bound to react as they have in these two crucial state elections. If the Delhi elections broke the myth that Mr Modi is super human and invincible, then Bihar has declared that he has massively lost the plot and historical opportunity to set right the wrongs of previous Congress regimes.

Whether Modi supporters like it or not, the blame can't be shifted to Amit Shah and the leaders of Bihar for not doing their homework. Knowing Modi as a Control Freak, these leaders were only pursuing what was dictated to them. Amit Shah, being completely out of touch with the ground reality, thought that by luring Jitan Ram Manjhi to the BJP's fold and creating a smoke screen of an alliance with Pappu Yadav, Tariq Anwar along with Asaduddin Owaisi, he could confuse Bihar voters with caste and religious considerations. But this plan was rejected overwhelmingly by voters. It was the same trick which was used by BJP in Delhi by poaching the Vinod Kumar Binnys and Shazia Ilmis. It did not work in Delhi, and miserably failed in Bihar too. But cheerleader journalists (their number is quite high in Delhi) bought his arguments without realising that India in the last decade has moved on and conventional wisdom won't be able to diagnose the changing mindset of the people.

I had said during the Delhi elections that the people of India are looking for a real alternative and in its absence, they look for the lesser evil. The 2014 elections and four assemblies thereafter threw their weight behind Modi and BJP due to lack of a real alternative. In Delhi, AAP emerged from the ashes despite Modi's phenomenal popularity and now the same has happened in Bihar. Nitish Kumar openly challenged the development model of Modi and the paradigm which his party was trying to build under the express instruction of the RSS (designed to damage civilizational diversity and create a monolithic socio-religious structure).

I rejoiced when Modi let his socio-political demons loose with attempts to terrorise the liberal minds. Modi's silence was felt by every section of society on issues like the murder of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri and the killing of writer MM Kalburgi; I knew this would cost the BJP just like during the UP by-elections last year. The BJP lost badly. Yogi Adityanath was their main warrior then. It is said that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. In his arrogance, Modi took no cues from the UP by-elections and believed that the RSS agenda will get him votes. He was so out of synch with realities.

It was said that Lalu teaming up with Nitish would be the undoing of the Mahagatbandhan and BJP thought this would remind people of "Jungle Raj" (lawlessness) during Lalu's terms as Chief Minister and would put them off, and in the end, the BJP would be winner. But Bihar is no longer the Bihar of 1991. It has changed. If Lalu provided a new awakening among backward sections in the 90s which broke the political monopoly of upper castes, he also committed the mistake of not translating this social empowerment of Dalits and backwards into economic empowerment. And soon Lalu's own community rejected him and chose Nitish instead.

Nitish being the face of the Grand Alliance and Lalu backing him consolidated the gains of the politics of backward castes into an unprecedented social assertion that is reflected in the Bihar results. Lalu knew ahead of the campaign that his time is up and his style of politics won't be acceptable. Within the backward castes, Lalu is the past and Nitish the present. And he backed Nitish to the hilt. Like Delhi, Bihar provided a new alternative, a real alternative, a new paradigm of development and socio-political empowerment. Modi, who was new in his innovation in 2014, was a pale shadow of his earlier self.

The winner is India which has again vouched that the idea of India is supreme and even charismatic leaders are not allowed to tinker with that. more