Aditi Phadnis: Will he make it this time?

PLAIN POLITICS

The contrast strikes you immediately. Nitish Kumar's village, Kalyan Bigha, is just off a main road, a three-km walk on a kutcha path. Although he has been a chief minister, too, (though only for a short while), village residents say this has made no difference to their village "" his mother put together some money to refurbish the local temple, but that's about it. What has been developed are arterial roads in Nalanda (Kumar's district), a railway network connecting all the eight Assembly constituencies in Nalanda, an ordnance factory (a legacy of Defence Minister George Fernandes when he was representing the Parliamentary constituency) and a hospital for bidi workers: in other words political investments made in the general good.

Lalu Prasad's village, Gopalganj, on the other hand, unabashedly displays largesse showered on the region with the use of state funds. A helipad solely for Lalu and Rabri's use (I mean, in Bihar, how many people would you find using helicopters to get around?), smooth roads inside the village so that the former CM-duo is not put to inconvenience when it visits Gopalganj, a road for the sole use of Lalu Prasad and his family, named after himself, built using Jawahar Rozgar Yojana funds...

It is all this evidence, over 15 years of the Lalu Prasad family's rule over Bihar, that is likely to swing the result of the Bihar Assembly election (counting begins at 8 pm on November 24, and it is all going to be over by mid-afternoon) in Nitish Kumar's favour.

Why is Nitish Kumar going to win this time, when he was unable to get a clear mandate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the earlier round of Assembly elections? What has changed in these five months ?

Consider the manner in which the two protagonists "" Lalu and Nitish "" utilised the five months "grace" period they were given to form a government.

Lalu Prasad appeared, visibly, to be battling several fronts. First it was the struggle to ensure the people of Bihar heard the signal loud and clear: that Governor Buta Singh was carrying out the orders of not the President, not the prime minister, but Lalu. In other words, that rule by the Governor was actually rule by Lalu. The appointment of Arun Pathak as advisor and district-level bureaucratic reshuffles were all part of an exercise to ensure the faces the state represented were the faces identified with Lalu's administration.

Initially, everything hummed along smoothly. But then Buta Singh began to acquire a life of his own. The responsibility of acts of omission and commission by the Raj Bhavan began to be attached to Lalu. So, the later part of the five-month President's Rule stretch saw Lalu trying to strenuously deny he had anything to do with charity cricket matches, the transfer-posting industry that suddenly mushroomed and sundry other ambitions of the Raj Bhavan.

By contrast, Nitish Kumar hit the road. His "nyaya yatra" toured all over the state, just making contact with people, for which there is still no substitute in Indian politics. Kumar "" who knows details of each and every Assembly constituency in Bihar "" carried out a systematic networking campaign. While Lalu rushed around meeting Muslim leaders to stem the damage caused by the arrest of one of his erstwhile lieutenants, Shahabuddin, Nitish tried to tell the community that it is he who would be in charge of the NDA in Bihar, not the BJP.

The allies have had a part in Lalu's erosion. Not only did the secular ally CPI betray him by joining the Lok Janashakti Party (LJP), the Congress let it be generally known that while they were Lalu's allies for secular reasons, they had no particular interest in seeing him become chief minister again. This was reflected in the seat sharing as well as in the public speeches made by Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi, who conceded that mistakes had been made in Bihar and that if the RJD-led government was voted to power, the Congress would work to correct these mistakes. After Buta Singh's disastrous showing, this simply did not wash.

By contrast, in the NDA, the BJP and the JDU sat together and discussed in an adult, mature way, how the new entrants to the JDU (the eight MLAs from Ramvilas Paswan's party) could be accommodated. The BJP gave up its claim over as many as eight seats, to make their entry smooth. Those constituencies where JDU-BJP infighting had caused the loss of the seat, were reviewed. The BJP made no particular effort to accommodate Samata Party leaders Digvijay Singh and George Fernandes "" conveying to Nitish Kumar indirectly that they understood who his real friends were.

During the campaign, Nitish Kumar's speeches indicated he had a plan for the state: development, integration with India's bigger market economy, law and order... Leaders from Lalu's party offered little that was new. It was a replay of old, tired themes: caste solidarity and appeal, invocation of old loyalties and affiliations, the "after-everything-we've-done-for-you" line...

Nitish Kumar needs 123 MLAs to form a government in Bihar. Pollsters in Patna are giving him anywhere between 100 and 140 seats.