A caste formula that clicks

Except in a few States, including West Bengal, Verdict 2004 has come as a sharp indictment of the powers that be.

IN the final analysis, the real losers in the Bihar Lok Sabha elections are the opinion and exit pollsters. The majority of them predicted a spectacular victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comprising the Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, even when alliance leaders such as the Janata Dal(U)'s Nitish Kumar expressed doubts about repeating last election's performance.

The predictions took a severe beating as the NDA suffered major losses to end up winning only 12 of the 37 seats the results for which have been declared. (The polling process in the three remaining constituencies - Chapra, Siwan and Bettiah - is yet to be completed.) The much-written-off Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led combine consisting of the Congress, the Lok Janshakthi Party (LJP), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) almost matched the 1999 sweep of the NDA by winning 26 seats. If the remaining three seats also fall into the RJD kitty this time, the combine led by the party will have 29, only one short of what the NDA won in 1999.

The contention of the pollsters, which was backed by some political and media pundits, was that `development' was finally becoming an election issue in the caste-ridden politics of Bihar. They also maintained that it would only help the NDA, whose campaign was essentially spurred by "two shining stars of development, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nitish Kumar". More so because the RJD's 14-year-long rule had not witnessed any real development.

However, Nitish Kumar himself was wary of such projections, and he made it clear midway through the campaign. Speaking to mediapersons on April 27, a day after the second round of polling in Bihar, he highlighted the `casteist dimensions' of the contest. He pointed out that the campaign by some NDA leaders such as George Fernandes and L.K. Advani advancing the cause of dismissing the "Yadavised" State government after the Lok Sabha polls was counter-productive. Nitish Kumar said that such a campaign was uniting the Yadav community in favour of Laloo Prasad and the RJD, in sharp contrast to the situation that prevailed in the community in 1999. Then, the Yadavs were divided between Laloo Prasad and Janata Dal(U) leader Sharad Yadav, and it even had led to the former's defeat at Madhepura in 1999. This time round the result there was different, with Laloo Prasad defeating Sharad Yadav by 70,000 votes.

The Madhepura result reveals only the tip of the iceberg of caste polarisation in Bihar. The majority of the State's population has now affirmed that the "social dignity" that the RJD government provided it is more important to it than development in terms of "bijli, sadak aur paani" (power, roads and water).

In many senses, the social polarisation also signified the success of the RJD combine's campaign strategy. The combine, particularly its leader the RJD, was clear right from the early stages of electioneering that its primary objective was to bring about a new social alliance comprising the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community of Yadavs, and Muslims and Dalits. The campaign was designed in such a manner that the combine turned its back almost completely to the upper-caste Hindu votes from communities such as Brahmins, Bhumihars and Thakurs.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi's decision to stay away from the campaign in the State was also, in all probability, in keeping with this design. It is well known that the Congress president's appeal in most northern States is mainly among the upper castes, particularly Brahmins.

The results show that the objective of unifying the lower castes and classes has been achieved to a great extent. The RJD combine not only rallied the Yadavs under the leadership of Laloo Prasad, but held on to its strong support base among Muslims and added a substantial section of Dalits to its ranks by aligning with Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP. Paswan belongs to the Dussadh community, which is known to vote en masse according to his political leanings.

The social polarisation is reflected in the difference of eight percentage points in vote share between the two major contenders. While the RJD-led combine polled 45.04 per cent of the votes polled, the NDA got 37.08 per cent. In 1999, when Paswan was with the NDA, the alliance got approximately 45 per cent of the votes polled and the RJD combine around 40 per cent. Clearly, the single most important factor that seemed to have caused the dramatic change in terms of electoral gains is the departure of the LJP from the NDA and its entry into the RJD combine.

The Dussadh community is numerically dominant in six to eight constituencies, including Hajipur and Rosera, from where Ram Vilas Paswan and his brother Ramachandra Paswan got elected this time too by margins of 2.37 lakh and 1.38 lakh votes respectively. But more significant are the 5,000 to 50,000 votes the community has in almost all the constituencies of the State.

Such a widespread presence is reflected in the results of several seats, including Barh, where Nitish Kumar lost by 37,000 votes. Unofficial estimates are that the seat has approximately 50,000 Dussadh voters. Nitish Kumar, however, managed to get elected from Nalanda. The Dussadh community has a significant presence - informal estimates put the figure at 8 per cent of the total voters - in Muzzafarpur too, the constituency from which NDA national convener and Janata Dal (U) leader George Fernandes scraped through with a margin of 9,000 votes.

As this social polarisation took centre stage, all other campaign points - the "Vajpayee factor", Sonia Gandhi's "foreign origin", Nitish Kumar's contribution to the State, the NDA's new initiatives to win over Muslim voters - were pushed to the background. Even some of Vajapyee's own personal efforts came to nought. Vajpayee promised to appoint two crore Urdu teachers if the NDA returned to power, with the specific intention of boosting the chances of BJP candidate and Union Minister Syed Shamsad Hussain in Kishanganj. Hussain lost by over 1.60 lakh votes to the RJD's Taslimuddin. Similar was the fate of Anwarul Haque, a former RJD MP, who joined the BJP just prior to the elections and fought from Sheohar. He lost by approximately 80,000 votes.

Laloo Prasad's comeback against predictions of a resounding defeat got the NDA leaders into a tizzy. The refrain among them is that it might be impossible to dislodge the RJD from office or minimise Laloo Prasad's control over the State's polity despite their consistent campaign about the party's "14-year misrule". Laloo Prasad, on his part, has started using his "larger role "at the Centre to consolidate further his support base among the depressed sections of the society. One of the first things he did after the results were announced was to demand restoration of agricultural subsidies and to take steps to reduce the prices of kerosene and diesel. Clearly, the elections have galvanised the politics of OBC-Dalit assertion in Bihar.