The man who demolished Lalu's hold over Bihar

There were many who were surprised when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went out of his way during the short election campaign, he undertook in Bihar, to praise Lalu Prasad's stewardship of the railway ministry.

"I have congratulated Laluji for the turnaround in the finances of the Indian Railways. I believe that if he is elected he will turn around the fate of Bihar in the same way," said the Prime Minister.

In Patna, SK Mehrotra, former president of the Bihar Association of Industries snorted. "I do not think the Prime Minister is capable of this kind of subterfuge as well," he said. "It was not Lalu who is responsible for the performance of the railways, but Nitish," he said.

Whatever else he might be"" "pseudo secular", "a Chanakya in politics" and a "highly ambitious individual" (as his adversaries variously describe him) Kumar is going to be a performing chief minister. During his tenure as railway minister, Kumar introduced a large number of new trains, because of which passenger traffic has increased, and consequently the revenues of the Indian Railways.

Freight rates were made more transparent through rationalisation. More than that was the management of the constant sniping by co-NDA ally, Mamata Banerjee. He resigned from the ministry accepting responsibility for a railway accident and was moved to agriculture in the fag end of the NDA government.

Unlike Lalu Prasad, there were no spectacular-but-unworkable announcements""like a carriage-full of vegetables from Bihar to Delhi for the benefit of Bihar vegetable growers ""started by Lalu which ran for exactly 30 days.

Kumar began his political life with two other friends""Lalu and Ramvilas Paswan ""in the heady "Total Revolution "days of Jayaprakash Narayan. He contested Assembly elections twice in the 1980s but lost and his real winning streak started in 1989 when erstwhile Janata Dal leader Devi Lal gave him a Lok Sabha nomination from Barh. Since then he has represented this constituency five times in the Lok Sabha.

In 1994, Kumar parted ways from Laluand formed the Samata Party along with George Fernandes. It was Lalu's style of functioning, it was said at the time, that drove him away. But in fact, there are many who say Kumar let himself be used by the upper castes of Bihar in an elaborate web of intrigue in which they wanted to embroil Lalu.

The RJD chief saw this and instead tried to consolidate the Muslims and the Yadavs, the two communities that stood by him loyally for 15 years. Kumar, who is every bit as caste-conscious as Lalu Prasad, rode on the shoulders of Fernandes to create a party with Fernandes' sponsorship, though the strings were pulled from behind by Nitish.

Kumar, a trained mechanical engineer, likes to have people around him who are intellectual equals. Accordingly, all other things being equal, he would like to promote retired professors, doctors and professionals in politics.

But he too has discovered that it is hard to live on fresh air""even when it is the wholesome air of the diaras of Bihar. So the Samata Party and the Janata Dal(U) has consorted with history sheeters in the past.

It is such people whose presence is a fact of life in Bihar politics, that will pose the biggest challenge for Nitish Kumar. Will he make his peace with them?