Deconstructing Nitish Kumar

Book review of The Battle for Bihar: Nitish Kumar and the Theatre of Power

This book holds a fact-filled and merciless, albeit empathetic, mirror into the soul of one of our interesting politicians — Nitish Kumar. Arun Sinha’s 400-page book painstakingly draws out the many identities of his “very intimate friend” — they were batchmates in engineering college — and demonstrates how they have defined and damned Bihar’s chief minister, currently facing perhaps his most challenging political test.

Nitish’s professed identity is of a “professional politician” acutely conscious of his social supremacy as the recipient of people’s winning vote in a democracy. He is a proud Bihari driven by the need to replace Bihar’s image