Is Lalu Prasad a cute manipulator and Nitish Kumar a dour doer who must control his alliance partner? Why is Bihar important? Can young politicians change the beat of India's heartland?
These questions and their answers ricocheted off the walls of Calcutta's historic Victoria Memorial's western quadrangle on Sunday afternoon as The Telegraph's Sankarshan Thakur and political commentator Ashok Malik shared insights with moderator Mudar Patherya at a session - The Bihar election trail and the lessons Bengal's leaders can take on board before Elections 2016 - of the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet organised in collaboration with The Telegraph.
There was plenty of wry humour to send frequent titters through the audience - a mishmash of journalists, expats, people with roots in and connections with Bihar, civil service hopefuls and curious onlookers. Like when Patherya coaxed Thakur to demonstrate the change in Lalu's body language in front of "outsiders". Thakur had narrated how the RJD chief would become a different person when women reporters from Delhi joined a congregation of Bihari journalists he knew. Thakur tried to put his legs up on the seat and fell back on his Bihari lilt to show how Lalu would order a spittoon.
"I have still not come across a politician as charismatic as Lalu," Thakur said, adding: "I mean that in good ways and bad." He said women reporters often find Lalu Prasad "cute" - proof that the politician has outsmarted them with his act: "He has had you for breakfast, lunch and dinner."
The peg for the session was Brothers Bihari, the political biographies of Lalu and Nitish authored by Thakur. Lalu had told him, Thakur recollected, that when he combed his hair riding a buffalo, the upper caste people would be aghast: "Ganwar ka beta hoke kesh thhakarta hain! (The illiterate's son is doing his hair)." That's the "sort of mythology" Lalu has benefited from, he added.
Malik pointed out that Lalu had pounced upon an interview that was "largely gobbledygook" to infer that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had called for a review of reservation. "I don't think Bhagwat meant that, but Lalu grabbed that moment and pushed the BJP to the back foot," Malik said.
In contrast, Nitish can hold a one-hour press conference without giving you a headline, Thakur said. While even his critics would be hard-pressed to find a stick to beat Nitish with - all the BJP could come up with was "arrogance", Thakur said - the chief minister is a "single man" who would be hard-pressed to leave a legacy beyond himself and talk of him being Prime Minister material was a stretch, Thakur felt. He said the fear of the RJD running riot was real. The veteran journalist said he knew of RJD leaders barging into police stations and declaring " Ab toh hamara raj hain (It's our rule now)."
Dour and boring he may be but Nitish is proof the states have begun to reward politicians who stick to work, Malik and Thakur agreed. The era of big caste mobilisation is over, Malik said: "You need caste-plus now. Nitish wouldn't have won this big mandate purely on the basis of caste."
The Bihar results had served as a reminder for Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he could not be spearheading his party's charge in state elections, Malik said. The results had also underlined the need for Opposition unity against a mighty opponent like the BJP, Thakur added.
Why is Bihar important? "We talk about India's youth bulge or demographic dividend - depending on how we feel about it that morning - that's essentially coming out of two states: Bihar and UP," Malik said.
Bihar has India's highest fertility rate (number of children born on average to a woman) and these two states are India's future, whether one likes it or not.
Thakur offered a reality check: "Even if Bihar continues to grow at 13 per cent - a huge deal - for the next 25 years, it will only come within sniffing distance of the national average of development."
The panellists pointed out that political violence is fading out from Bihar and aggravating in Bengal. Malik said Bengal was always violent, but just had "better PR". Though chief minister Mamata Banerjee is under no threat yet, Bengal is ready for a "nativist party... something like the social coalition that the CPM represented," Malik said. He admitted that the BJP was not yet ready to fill those shoes. A young woman asked if young politicians such as Tejaswi, Tej Pratap and Akhilesh Yadav could herald change. Malik said Akhilesh - beyond his suaveness - had brought no new politics to the table. Thakur said in an ideal world Tej Pratap and Tejaswi should learn the legislative business first, "but that's not how Indian politics functions."
