The proposed merger of six parties of the Janata parivar seems to have run into rough weather. While Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav would like us to believe that the merger has already taken place, senior SP leaders have ruled out any merger before the Assembly elections in Bihar later this year, asking the JDU and RJD to work out an electoral alliance instead. Meanwhile, Jitan Ram Manjhi has declared the formation of his own new party and Lalu Prasad has expelled RJD MP Pappu Yadav from the party for questioning his decision to hand over the reins of the party to one of his sons.
The merger of the six siblings of the erstwhile Janata parivar is a peculiar marriage of convenience where the benefits, if any, would accrue to Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad with the other siblings having to guard their shares of the family fortune on their own. But for Nitish Kumar’s JDU and Lalu Prasad’s RJD, the areas of influence of the other parties are clearly demarcated and rather mutually exclusive. Samajwadi Party calls the shots in UP while Deve Gowda and Chautala run their own fiefdoms in Haryana and Karnataka. Apart from an enhanced profile in Parliament, the merger will yield no real benefit to any of these parties.
While Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad are naturally most desirous of an immediate merger, the complications and challenges will also have to be faced primarily by them. The reality is both parties are faced with internal divisions. Jitan Ram Manjhi has already moved away from Nitish Kumar and it is well known that others who have stayed on with Nitish Kumar in the Assembly are not all happy with his leadership. Lalu Prasad is presiding over a declining and cracking support base – in the 2014 LS elections, his family members lost from Chhapra and Pataliputra, while Pappu Yadav who won from Madhepura defeating Sharad Yadav has had to face expulsion for challenging Lalu Prasad’s family rule within the party.
For the last twenty-five years, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar have been at the helm of power in Bihar. Lalu had begun with a huge fund of social support and goodwill; but when his party’s tenure finally came to an end in February 2005, his government had come to be identified not only with widespread corruption, crime, utter malgovernance and absolute economic stagnation but also with systematic exclusion and marginalisation of dalits and extreme backward sections. The promised reign of social justice had turned into a reign of serial massacres and grave social injustice. Nitish Kumar had replaced Lalu Prasad promising development with justice, but after ten years in power he has little to show except his opportunist track record of feudal subservience, arrogance of power, bureaucratic governance and betrayed promises.
The two previous occasions when the Janata experiment succeeded at the centre, it was marked by hope. 1977 had come with the promise of restoration of democracy after long nineteen months of Emergency. VP Singh had come with the promise of ending corruption and ensuring universal right to work. Even when he left without keeping these basic promises, he had earned considerable goodwill having partially implemented the recommendations of the Mandal Commission and refused to bow to the communal offensive of the BJP. But whether in Bihar and UP, or Karnataka and Haryana, the Janata regimes have been marked by corruption and compromises with feudal-communal forces.
The Samajwadi Party, the leading component of the Janata Parivar and whose leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is the declared president of the planned merger, is currently in power in UP and its tenure has been marked by dozens of communal riots, corruption, crime and corporate land-grabbing amidst deepening agrarian crisis. The UP government is even ready to allow acquisition of as much as 20% of cultivable land in every district. It is this baggage of betrayal and absence of any policy alternative which explains why the merger plan of the Janata parivar has failed to evoke much political interest or enthusiasm even among the supporters or voters of these parties. The revolt of Jitan Ram Manjhi does not of course provide any answer, for Manjhi continues to seek his political fortune through continued hobnobbing with the BJP and its feudal-communal politics.
Ahead of the forthcoming Assembly elections, the political situation in Bihar thus continues to be marked by fluidity and churning. As indicated most recently by the municipal elections in West Bengal, the Modi wave has begun to subside and the BJP is facing widespread disillusionment of the masses. The merger of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad with the sole purpose of holding on to power has failed to generate any wider appeal. The people are of course not waiting for the elections and are out on the streets with their burning demands. The Left and other fighting forces must come forward at this juncture to provide an alternative political agenda and direction to the common people of Bihar.
