Nitish

Patna, April 17: What has emboldened Nitish Kumar to be so “audacious” in his attack on Narendra Modi, to the extent of setting terms that virtually disqualify his Gujarat counterpart, Narendra Modi, from bagging the PM candidature?

A JD(U) strategist offered two explanations: Firstly, Nitish Kumar is confident his voter base has expanded to help his party grab at least 25 of the state’s 40 Lok Sabha seats on its own. Second is his ambition to keep options open after the 2014 polls.

Sources close to the Bihar CM told to The Telegraph that an internal survey Nitish ordered found the proportion of extremely backward castes (EBCs) to be around 30 percent and Mahadalits 15 percent. Together, these 150 castes constitute 45 percent of voters and are — according to Nitish’s calculations — the nucleus of the JD(U)’s strength.

Nitish carved the EBCs out of the Mandal block that Lalu Prasad initially commanded. He also separated Mahadalits from the overall Dalit block to create a niche for his party among the Dalits that Ram Vilas Paswan earlier commanded.

On the methodology Nitish employed to execute this “social engineering,” the strategist said that Nitish set to work soon after his NDA notched barely 142 of 243 seats in 2005. The first thing he did as CM was to reserve 16 percent seats for EBCs in panchayats and urban local bodies. The two local body polls since populated these bodies with a large number of EBCs.

Nitish then started schemes for old-age pension, free cycles and uniforms to poor students and money to poor parents to whom a girl child is born. All these schemes ensured that every EBC and Mahadalit household got a few thousands of rupees into their accounts regularly. These sections now depend on Nitish and fear losing a “regular income” if he’s replaced.

His detractors described such schemes as his “ploy to buy vote though public money” with little real development. But Nitish kept on raising budgetary allocations for such schemes to pursue “development with justice”.

The measures paid off in a big way with the NDA notching up an unprecedented 206 of 243 seats in 2010. The JD(U) alone has 117 seats — enough to run the Bihar government on its own.

The party think tank’s strategy is simple. “If we can notch up the numbers to run Bihar on our own and win enough LS seats to have our say at the Centre, why should we be aligned to any party?”

By parting with his 17-year-old ally, the BJP, on the issue of obstructing Narendra Modi from becoming its PM candidate, Nitish believes his party could make large inroads into the 16 percent of Muslim votes. Besides, he is sure about the around two percent of Kurmi voters and a certain percentage of non-Yadav backward voters. “In our calculation, we are sitting on a pile of at least 50 per cent votes,” a think tank member confided.

Another close Nitish aide said, “Narendra Modi ek bahana hain (Narendra Modi is simply a pretext). The JD(U) simply wants to grow on its intrinsic socialist values and strength.” But Nitish Kumar’s opponents, including the BJP, feel the JD(U) is day-dreaming. “Election results do not depend entirely on internal surveys and social engineering. Nitish’s calculations will go awry once the JD(U)-BJP alliance breaks up, as it will confuse the social equations that catapulted the combine to power,” RJD state party chief Ramchandra Purbey said.