People as well as politicians are attaching great importance to the hotly-contested Bihar Assembly elections, mainly because of the impact it is likely to have on national politics. The Bihar poll results will indicate whether the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections was a transient phenomenon or indeed there has been a durable shift of India's electorate to the Hindu right.
After four phases of the Bihar elections, the Janata Parivar alliance is said to have more than an even chance of winning. If the alliance wins, it will indicate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is on the wane. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, already under fire for growing incidents of intolerance in the country, will become more vulnerable to attacks from intellectuals and the Opposition.
The lower castes in Bihar seem to have tilted in favour of the Janata Parivar alliance, especially after Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's ill-timed call for a review of the caste-based reservation policy introduced to redress centuries of inequality. Even Modi's comment about according five per cent reservation to a particular community does not seem to have swayed the vote bank of Other Backward Classes, Dalits and Muslims. But the comment did lower the esteem of the office Modi holds.
The lower castes might have realised that repeated references to "jungle raj" by the NDA government was its way of expressing resentment against lower caste empowerment. The NDA represents the interests of the feudal-minded upper castes. It would be no wonder if the NDA ends up losing the Bihar elections. The underprivileged in Bihar care as deeply about social dignity as development. In Chief Minister Nitish Kumar they have a leader, who represents both and their political messiah.
G David Milton, Maruthancode
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