Nitish Kumar at Digha Ghat on Sunday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Jan. 2: Personal tragedies that have been striking Nitish Kumar at regular intervals have failed to unnerve the Bihar chief minister.

The losses might have moved him for a while but they have, apparently, not affected his determination and penchant to work hard for the cause of the state.

Within two years of getting saddled as the state chief minister for the first term his wife for 34 years, Manju Devi, a teacher by profession, died in May 2007.

The people saw Nitish breaking down and weeping uncontrollably at the spouse’s death. But a little later, Nitish mustered the strength and courage to cope with the loss and ensuring grand victory to his party in successive polls.

Within two months of taking oath as the chief minister for his second tenure, Nitish suffered the loss of his mother, Parmeshwari Devi. The younger of Parmeshwari’s two sons, Nitish was very emotionally attached to his mother.

In fact, the first thing that the chief minister did after taking oath on November 26 was he had hurriedly rushed to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Cardiology (IGIC) where his mother in her 90s was admitted.

After that it was a regular routine for Nitish Kumar to pay visit to his mother and spend time with her in the hospital as long as she was there.

Nitish, in fact, cancelled all the invitations and meetings outside Patna after taking oath for the second term to take care of his ailing mother. The only place out of Patna that the chief minister visited was Rajgir to inaugurate the Rajgir Mahotsav. But that was only for a few hours.

“Look, I cannot afford to leave Patna as long as my mother is ill. After all, she has to be taken care of,” Nitish had recently told The Telegraph, responding to a query about his proposed meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek the special assistance for the state.

But then, the chief minister never shirked his routine work. In fact, he blended the filial duty to his mother and his duty to the state quite remarkably in his second term. While making it a point to sit with his mother everyday as a matter of routine, he has initiated several moves to strengthen “sushasan (good governance)” — his favoured mantra.

Soon after beginning his second term, the chief minister launched a campaign against corruption, invoking the Special Court Act and initiating the process to confiscate the property of corrupt officials and open schools in them. He abolished the controversial special fund to the legislators, winning praise from the people at large. On his instructions, all his ministers have declared their property which is on the state government’s website now.

Former principal secretary to the chief minister and now JD (U) MP, R.C.P. Sinha, who is also a close confidante of Nitish Kumar, confided: “He (Nitish) is a very determined person. He is a typical blend of a good family man and a capable administrator. But he has never allowed his family interests to interfere with his functioning as the leader of the people.”

Nitish is a sharp contrast to two other members of the state’s triumvirate, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan. While Lalu and Paswan earned “bad name” for promoting their family in politics, Nitish kept his family out of his political sphere all the time.

His partymen, long-time friends and even family members were sure that Nitish would quickly recover from the loss to resume his political and administrative work.