Patna: Chief minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday said the country "would have been different" had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel been the first Prime Minister.

Though Nitish hastened to add that Jawaharlal Nehru was not "a lesser PM", his statement on the "iron man" echoed that of his new ally BJP which has been trying to lay claim to Patel's legacy and play down Panditji's contribution in the making of India.

Just how much of a U-turn it was for Nitish is clear from the fact that till last year, his government had ignored the Centre's diktats on celebrating Patel's birth anniversary , saying the state will observe it in its own way. Just a couple of years ago, Nitish's JDU had also opposed contribution of iron from Bihar's villages for the statue of Patel - India's first deputy Prime Minister - to come up off the Gujarat coast.

"The condition and direction of the country would have been different had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel been the Prime Minister," Nitish said at an event organised by the JDU's farmers' cell to celebrate Patel's 142nd birth anniversary on Tuesday.

This was the first time that that the JDU celebrated Patel's birth anniversary on such a grand scale.

The chief minister said Patel - who was also the first home minister of India - "would have been a better PM for farmers".

"I am not saying that Nehru was a lesser PM," he added. "However, everybody ignored Bapu's thoughts on decentralised progress and development of villages. Nobody accepted them as a model of development. The model of development that was adopted resulted in the fact that people living in villages and cities are still struggling against poverty.

"Had people adopted Gandhi's thoughts and tried to build the country of his dreams, India's position in the world would have been different. There is no meaning of this development in which people all around are suffering from poverty."

The development model impacted states like Bihar negatively, he said.

"Had the development been decided on the lines suggested by Bapu, the situation would have been different. But now we have to struggle for it," he added.

Nitish said his government was focusing on agriculture. He pitched for use of cow dung and cow urine in organic farming and said everybody knew about the benefits of the bovine excreta but did not utilise them properly.