Bihar spooks brewers with alcohol ban talk

Bihar sent shares in breweries and liquor firms down as much as 10 percent on Thursday after the country's third-most populous state said it was considering a ban on alcohol, prompting concerns that others could follow.

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Alcohol has been traditionally frowned upon in India for religious and cultural reasons, but a growing middle class has made the country a booming market for drinks makers, and only a handful of districts and states have an outright ban, including Gujarat, Modi's home state. The southern state of Kerala is introducing limits on alcohol sales.

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"More than the obvious financial impact, this is a directional negative if rest of the state governments emulate Bihar and Kerala, in our view," analysts at brokerage house Motilal Oswal said. more

Nitish will have problems enforcing the ban

Pyaralal Raghavan / ToI
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has made a bold move by announcing a ban on liquor in the state from April next year to fulfil the promise made to the electorate before the elections. This is a major reversal of the liquor policy that his government had implemented in the earlier years which saw a substantial expansion of liquor shops.

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The major challenge before the Bihar chief minister is not the loss of revenue from the liquor ban but the problems associated with enforcing the ban. Given the popularity that liquor has gained in recent years it would be difficult to wean away the habitual drinkers without accompanying efforts to spread the message of temperance through social and religious organisations. This is all the more so because the law and order machinery in Bihar is far too inadequate to police the state and restrain any growth in production and sale of illicit liquor which is bound to happen as soon as the ban sets in.

Most recent numbers on the availability of police personal in the states for 2012 show that there were only 67 policemen for every lakh people in Bihar which is clearly insufficient given that other states like Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand had a much higher ratio of 162, 174 and 178 respectively. The ratio of policemen to population even in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were at a higher 89 and 98 respectively.

So the big question now is how the Bihar chief minister can implement the liquor ban given the insufficient law and order machinery and the rickety bureaucracy in the state even if he manages to find tap new resources to make for the loss of excise duty revenues from liquor which is only a minor part of his total revenues. more

Egg on NDTV's face

Nalin Mehta / ET
For calling the election wrong, NDTV, a pioneer in India's psephological and election result coverage, the channel has already apologised. It is a cruel reminder of how fickle a mistress live TV can be even though NDTV was right that pollsters all over the world sometimes get it wrong. 

As they did in Britain where the British Polling Council ordered an independent enquiry into how no poll could predict David Cameron's victory earlier this year. Or how no Israeli poll predicted Benjamin Netanyahu's latest poll victory. Or how the Greeks and Turks recently got their election 'results' wrong as well. 

But NDTV's big blooper was not that their exit poll was wrong. It was that it called the counting trend wrong. The channel blames "incorrect" data. The News Broadcast Standards Authority has reportedly Nielsen, the agency that supplies a common feed to all subscriber news channels, for an explanation. The fact is that whatever the data may have been, calling the election so early in the morning, when only postal ballots are counted first, is inexplicable. more

Bihar: what happened and why

Surjit S Bhalla / IE
The next time BJP officials say they lost big just because of electoral arithmetic, tell them that argument has as much credibility as the discredited notion of the BJP losing because of caste-based voting. The BJP lost big because of their divisive campaign, whose purpose was to instil fear among those not preordained to vote for them. It was a lousy political campaign and the BJP, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah ignore this reality at their present (and future) peril. more

The anguish and anxiety of the Upper Caste

Ajaz Ashraf / scroll
The one untold story of the Bihar election is that the anguish arising from nostalgia for the past and the anxieties about the future drive the Upper Caste to rally behind the Bharatiya Janata Party. Lacking the numbers to counter the assertion of Other Backward Classes and still perceived as exploiters to have lower castes band with them, the Upper Caste is unmindful of electoral strategies such as religious polarisation, hate rhetoric and fictionalisation of history to stoke caste pride (claiming that emperor Ashoka was a Kushwaha is an example) for creating a governing majority for themselves. more

BJP doesn't know who to blame

Charu Kartikeya / catch
Even as observers are busy identifying the many fathers of the Grand Alliance's victory in Bihar polls, Bharatiya Janata Party is trying its best to leave its defeat an orphan. more

Economic Expansion: Nitish’s Next Challenge in Bihar

Tina Edwin / Quint
Bihar needs to grow like China did (until recently), but not by building ghost cities and sweat shops. The state has the lowest per capita income and the size of its economy is still very small. In this context, the 9.3% compounded average growth rate (CAGR) of the previous 10 years is too little for a state where over 40% of the population still lives below the poverty line. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) data show that state’s economy was the 14th largest in the country in 2014-15, moving up by just one notch from the 15th position it occupied in 2004-05 when Nitish Kumar first assumed office as the chief minister.

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Bihar could reap demographic dividend with increased focus on education and skill development, for both boys and girls. Nitish and his allies should use the massive mandate they got in the recent Assembly election to change the face of the state with a model of development that is based on inclusion and meritocracy. He owes it to the people who voted for him. more

Modi's Bihar loss a triumph for secular India

Murtaza Haider / Dawn ANN
Here, the real questions to ask are:

What made the Bihari electorate say no to the BJP's divisive communal politics?

Were there any differences in the economic models presented by the incumbent chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, and the one offered by the BJP?

Is there any truth to the claim that the economic gains and prosperity in Gujarat were a result of Mr Modi's leadership as its former chief minister?

Has Gujarat under Mr Modi developed at a faster rate than Bihar did under Mr Kumar?

I turned to reports that compared the relative growth rates between Gujarat and other states to seek answers to these questions.

Many Indian political analysts believe Mr Modi's economic model is that of crony capitalism where business conglomerates, closely aligned with the government, disproportionately benefit from economic growth.

They think that Mr Modi's brand of economics is exclusive, big business, capital intensive, social sector neglect and hence, without experience of the welfare state by the people.

The upper classes under such regimes generate undue profits and support the regime in return because the regime promotes wealth generation, while ignoring its distributional responsibilities. more

The Bihar blowback

Imtiaz Alam / The News
With Pakistan the Modi government’s relations are expected to remain quite bumpy, even though he may at some point of time find it tempting to go for a quid pro quo over terrorism by state and non-state actors that the two sides accuse each other of committing. Moreover, the Indian big business that Modi represents is very keen to improve relations with Pakistan. 

Lastly, it is quite amusing to find Pakistanis overwhelmingly sympathising with the secular forces of India as opposed to Hindu fundamentalists seeking an exclusivist majoritarian Hindu polity, as if they (these Pakistanis) also desire secularism in a majoritarian Muslim Pakistan. There could not be a better development than this in the last 66 years of a divided Subcontinent if there is a convergence of minds among the people of India and Pakistan over secularism. The defeat of religious extremism in both countries could provide a solid basis for peace and harmony in the Subcontinent. more

Dusty Bihar exposes Modi’s feet of clay

The eastern state of Bihar has a population close in size to that of the Philippines: elections to its assembly matter greatly to its more than 100m, largely poor inhabitants. But the latest one mattered to Narendra Modi, the prime minister in Delhi, chiefly because of its importance in his quest to recast national politics to his advantage. And so the thrashing in Bihar of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), at the hands of two Bihar political heavyweights who buried past enmities to oppose Mr Modi, represents the biggest setback in his political career.

Victory in Bihar would have sent, through indirect election, friendly faces to the national Parliament’s upper house—which, unlike the lower one, Mr Modi does not dominate. That would have helped him more easily push through bills aimed at fulfilling his pledge of economic reform. But more importantly, he and his electoral henchman, Amit Shah, the BJP’s president, intended Bihar to be a template for the party to spread beyond its strongholds in western and central India to become a truly national movement.

Other state elections loom, including in West Bengal in the east and Assam in the north-east, Uttar Pradesh (the most populous state) in the north and Kerala in the south. Do well in those, and by the end of 2017 the BJP would be well placed to gear itself for a general election two years later that could establish an almost presidential Modi rule. To give a measure of the importance Mr Modi placed in Bihar, he attended 30-odd election rallies in the state—extraordinary for a prime minister who presumably has much else to do.

Yet since the Bihar results on November 8th all longer-term calculations are moot—even whether Mr Modi will prove more than a one-term prime minister. The BJP ran against a “grand alliance” led by the state’s incumbent chief minister, Nitish Kumar (pictured, next page), with a record of boosting growth and cutting poverty, and “Lalu” Prasad Yadav, whose corrupt and lawless tenure as chief minister in the 1990s came to be known as the “jungle raj” but who calls on large numbers of followers; the alliance seized more than three times as many seats in the state assembly as did the BJP (see chart).


In the general election in 2014 Mr Modi swept to a landslide victory with an aspirational message that highlighted growth and jobs. In Bihar he and Mr Shah are to blame for the ugliest and most socially divisive state election in memory. Caste is a critical fact of life—and politics—in Bihar, a state that is still nine-tenths rural. The grand alliance bolted together a coalition of the state’s middle- and lower-tier castes. The BJP tried to even the game by tying its traditional core from the upper castes to a cluster of small parties representing Dalits, the lowest of the castes.

But at a crucial moment the leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-nationalist outfit that is seen as the BJP’s ideological parent, said India’s whole system of awarding benefits to lower castes was being abused for political ends and ought to be reviewed. That spread alarm among poorer groups. And then Mr Shah warned that a victory for the grand alliance would lead to celebrations in neighbouring Pakistan. His coded message to Hindu chauvinists was that, dangerously, the alliance was the party of Muslims, who make up 17% of Bihar’s population.

Attempting to pit the Hindu castes against Muslims—the BJP also made much of protecting the cow, sacred to many Hindus—was reprehensible. Fortunately, it did not lead to the kind of communal violence that has recently been ticking up elsewhere (and which BJP leaders have been slow to deplore when Muslims are the victims). Still, the results show that the BJP got punished for its crude tactics.

Back in Delhi, Mr Modi’s prestige is damaged. Party managers’ insistence on “collective” responsibility for the loss in Bihar is a charade. He and Mr Shah have run the party with an iron grip, laid down the electoral strategy and directly recruited RSS members as campaign foot-soldiers. Yet for the first time dissenters in the BJP—admittedly, none younger than 78—have spoken out. They said, in a jab at the overweening Mr Shah and his arrogation of authority, that the party had become “emasculated” over the last year. In private some of the prime minister’s advisers lament the trust he places in Mr Shah.

As for opposition parties, especially Congress, which the last general election annihilated as a national force, prospects look suddenly cheerier. Congress tagged along with the grand alliance in Bihar, and will want to do the same with dominant regional parties in other state elections. Such parties, meanwhile, have seen in Bihar the merits of ganging together to take on the BJP. But whether Congress is yet ready to learn the lessons of its national defeat is unclear. It suffers from a paucity of fresh ideas, venality on a grand scale, an underwhelming Gandhi/Nehru dynasty at whose pleasure the party serves, and an unwillingness to refresh its leadership.

Lacking an upper-house majority any time soon, Mr Modi needs to rethink tactics for his programme of economic modernisation. Later this month the Parliament will convene for its winter session. On the agenda is reform to bankruptcy laws to help banks recover loans; long-debated legislation to make it easier for companies to acquire land for plants; and the introduction of a nationwide goods-and-services tax that would do much to knit India’s economy together and raise revenues. Mr Modi ought now to reach out to the opposition in hopes of getting the agenda passed.

There is still much that he can do without legislation, his aides say. That includes easing rules to make it easier to do business, and pushing for infrastructure—roads, ports, utilities—that India badly needs. Only too aware of the need to reassure investors, this week the government announced sweeping liberalisations to the regime regulating foreign investment, including in sectors like retail, banking, construction, broadcasting and even defence. In theory the changes will make it possible for more foreign firms to get automatic approval for investment. And Apple will at last be able to open its own stores in India.

On November 11th Mr Modi climbed on a plane to London to convey an upbeat message. Though the government of David Cameron promised to grill Mr Modi on rising intolerance at home, both prime ministers will be happiest emphasising the trade and investment deals that are likely to emerge from the visit. Mr Modi, with the help of RSS workers, will also hope to whip up enthusiasm among an invitation-only crowd of 55,000 from the Indian diaspora at Wembley stadium. So long as he can count on their fervour—and overseas Indians have been crucial in underwriting his political rise—he may find a welcome distraction from the setback in Bihar. more

Bihar: Another triumph of the alternative

Ashish Talwar / ToI
After his resounding victory, Nitish Kumar has joined the company of Arvind Kejriwal, Pawan Kumar Chamling, Naveen Patnaik and K Chandrashekhar Rao. All five have two things in common, not only are they non-BJP/non-Congress chief ministers but more importantly, were elected post 9/13/13. An ominous sounding date but it was the day Narendra Modi was anointed by BJP as its prime ministerial candidate for 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Modi’s initial success in several states and the national election proved that his party had banked on the right leader especially since he took the Congress to its political nadir. more

Bihar polls: One cheer for democracy

Jug Suraiya / ToI
The sound drubbing that the BJP received in the Bihar polls – in which Narendra Modi campaigned with a vehement vigour that many felt was unbecoming of a prime minister – has shown that playing the communal card ensures not a winning but a losing hand.
So, one cheer for our secular democracy.

But the Bihar results reinforced the entrenchment of the other two harmful Cs in our polity: caste and corruption. more

Bihar’s political dynasties: 7 winners, 15 losers

Of 22 political dynasties that contested the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections, seven families won and 15 lost.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had fielded eight candidates from these 22 families, the Lok Janshakti Party (6), the Janta Dal (United) (5), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (3), the Hindustan Awami Morcha (3), the Samajwadi Party (1) and one independent. more

How Grand Alliance Turned Vote Share to Seats

All the constituents of the victorious Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) – the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Janata Dal (United) and the Congress – managed to register a share-to-seat multiplier of more than 4 in the recently concluded assembly elections in Bihar.

The share-to-seat multiplier of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropped to 2 for the first time in 15 years in the Bihar assembly. more

'Who is Amit Shah?' BJP MP Attacks Party Chief

Bhola Singh, a BJP parliamentarian from Bihar, has slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah for the party's massive defeat in the assembly elections in the state, saying Mr Shah must explain or step down.

"Who is Amit Shah? He and the PM are who they are because we entrusted them with all our power," said Mr Singh who, just two days ago, launched a blistering attack on the Prime Minister and other leaders, saying they made unseemly comments during campaigning in Bihar.

"Cancer has spread throughout the BJP, which has to be removed," Mr Singh added. more

Upper castes also supported Nitish, Lalu

Not just the Dalits, OBCs and Muslims, the upper castes too supported the Nitish-Lalu combine, with a majority of the upper caste candidates of the Grand Alliance winning the Bihar assembly elections.

This is contrary to common perception that the overwhelming upper castes supported and voted the BJP-led NDA in Bihar assembly polls.

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Lalu Prasad's RJD has fielded five upper caste candidates -- three won the polls and two were defeated. Congress fielded 16 upper caste candidates, of whom 12 won the polls.

Similarly JD-U fielded 18 upper caste candidates and majority of them won the polls.

According to Congress leaders here, 12 of the 27 Congress candidates elected to the Bihar assembly are upper castes.

BJP has fielded 69 upper caste candidates, but only 22 of them won the polls. Most of the upper caste candidates of BJP allies Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), and Hindustani Awam Morch (HAM) were defeated. more

Bihar and beyond

A K Bhattacharya / BS
In the 2010 Assembly elections, the BJP contested 102 seats and had a vote share of around 16 per cent. This year, it contested more seats - 160. But the BJP's vote share increase kept pace as it rose to about 24 per cent. If its vote share has not declined significantly and its defeat is largely attributed to its failure in getting the arithmetic of alliance right, then why should the BJP's campaign managers worry about tweaking the party's electoral strategy in the coming polls? I nstead, it is likely to work more on getting its alliance arrangements in place so that there is no need to modify its poll campaign planks.

There is yet another factor that will be at play. The next Assembly polls are to be held in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In none of these states, barring perhaps Assam, is the BJP likely to face a situation similar to the one it had to contend with in Bihar. That is because the BJP on its own is not yet a major force in these three states. In Assam, where the BJP has gained in presence in recent years, the Congress has already begun talks of a strategic alliance with other local parties to give the BJP a tough fight. But then these elections are to be held in April 2016. The BJP, therefore, could continue to experiment with its current campaigning strategy as the real losses would be marginal even if its strategy went wrong. more

The Way Forward for the BJP

Tufail Ahmad / indiafacts
The first lesson from the 2015 Bihar elections is this: in just two years the BJP has emerged as the only party with a nationwide character.

The second lesson from Bihar: by any definition, the electoral verdict is not for development or social justice, which usually is the plank of Left-of-the-centre parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Yadav and Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar. It is not even arithmetic. The reason the BJP was comprehensively defeated in Bihar is because it has emerged as the largest party against which all other parties were allied, determined to defeat it. Throughout the course of election campaign, the BJP was attacked as if it was Bihar’s ruling party. This was also the case in Delhi elections last year. more

How Modi's Bihar defeat will hit reforms agenda

Milan Vaishnav / BBC
n the short run, Bihar is a significant setback for Mr Modi in three ways: it damages his prestige, complicates politics both inside and outside the ruling alliance, and makes parliament more of an obstacle. Over the longer term, however, one should not overstate the broader impact on Mr Modi's economic reform plans.

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Decisive defeats in successive state elections in Delhi and Bihar have resoundingly punctured the halo of invincibility that has surrounded Mr Modi and his trusted lieutenant, BJP president Amit Shah.

This loss of prestige, in turn, creates space for disgruntled voices within the party who are either underwhelmed by Mr Modi's governance or demoralised by Mr Modi and Mr Shah's iron grip on the party apparatus. The humbling rout in Bihar will give fresh oxygen to BJP dissenters. Beyond the ruling alliance, the election has two further political implications. more

बिहार में ये हुआ क्या?

Kalpesh Yagnik / Bhaskar
1- प्रश्न : यह क्या हो गया बिहार में?
उत्तर : बिहारियों ने सारे देश को दिखा दिया कि चुनाव कैसे लड़वाए जाते हैं।

2- प्रश्न : लड़वाए जाते हैं- या लड़े जाते हैं?
उत्तर- बिहारी मतदाता ने गज़ब का धैर्य और उत्साह दोनों दिखाया। प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद मोदी ने 30 के करीब चुनावी सभाएं लीं। ख़ासी भीड़ अौर जोश दिखा इनमें। जागरूक मतदाता उन्हें सुनकर मन बनाना चाहते थे। परिणाम देखेंगे तो पाएंगे इनमे से अधिकांश जगह भाजपा हार गई। ऐसा तो राहुल गांधी की उत्तर प्रदेश चुनाव की रैलियों के बाद हुआ था।

3- प्रश्न : भाजपा इतनी बुरी तरह क्यों हारी?
उत्तर : दाल। दलित। दादरी। दंभ। more

The return of Opposition

Neerja Chowdhury / ET
Bihar 2015 is about Nitish Kumar just as India 2014 was about Narendra Modi, his support cutting across communities, without which it would not have been possible for the Mahagathbandhan to win an impressive 179 seats. There was an undercurrent of sympathy visible for the Bihar CM. It was as if people wanted to make up for the defeat they had inflicted on him in 2014, given the immense goodwill they had for the CM, as they spoke of how he had built new roads, provided more bijli, given cycles to their girls to go to school and college, in what is a bottom-up model of development.

The success lay in the way the alliance converted arithmetic into chemistry. The credit for this goes to Lalu Prasad Yadav. Together, the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress had 45% of the vote in 2014. This is almost the voteshare they have polled in 2015. Not only did the former rivals Nitish and Lalu sew up the grand alliance, but the RJD chief agreed to Nitish being the chief ministerial candidate, with the distribution of tickets taking place amicably.

Most importantly, the allies were able to transfer their votebase to each other, and move in step — which they will have to continue to do in the coming days if they are to be a credible alternative. The Congress, which increased its seats six-fold, may be able to provide a cushion to the alliance. more

Modi, Shah, Jaitley responsible for debacle: Arun Shourie

Arun Shourie, a minister in the Vajpayee government, who is no longer with the party, accused Shah and Jaitley of fomenting a coalition against Modi by forcing the other opposition parties, which commanding over 69 per cent of vote, to get into an alliance.

He said that the BJP came to power at the height of Modi's popularity with merely 31 per cent votes. "It is Modi, the master strategist (Shah) and Jaitley," he said when asked who should be held responsible for the defeat. "There is no fourth person in the party or the government." more

More to Nitish win than caste math

Narayanan Madhavan / HT
There’s more to this than the failure of grand oratory.

Hindsight, they say, gives us 20-20 vision, but it is becoming clear that the Bihar elections in which chief minister Nitish Kumar won his third term in power for Janata Dal (United) in a grand alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress, had more than plain rustic appeal.

It might have been a shrewd combination of things beyond old-world kinship based on loyalties fashioned after Yadavs and their rival caste in Bihar, Kurmi, to which Kumar belongs.
Among the new factors could be social media and its natty use, the rise of women as an empowered political group in Bihar and development measures such as large-scale electrification in the backward state often cited as a hinterland steeped in darkness.

One secret sauce, it emerges, was a social media campaign handled by a team loaned by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Sitting across the Yamuna in UP, a team handled Twitter and Facebook campaigns for JD(U). more

Bihar beyond caste alliances

Sanjay Kumar / mint
The verdict of the Bihar assembly election is clearly a vote for development—not for what Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised, but for the work done by chief minister Nitish Kumar during his two terms in government.

The results should not be seen as merely the victory of caste alliances and electoral arithmetic crafted by Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress. Even for a section of voters, who voted for the Grand Alliance (GA) on caste identity, it was backed by their firm belief that in the past, RJD chief Lalu Prasad was instrumental in giving them voice, self-respect and pride.

These voters attached a different meaning to development from their own dictionary. This verdict is also a complete rejection of the divisive style of politics, experimented with by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), not a rejection of the work done by the central government. more

Along with BJP, national news channels also get it wrong

Shailaja Bajpai / IE
All those watching TV would have been highly amused by how quickly panelists changed their tune: having discussed reasons for BJP’s victory, they now had to give reasons for its defeat. Sometimes, they used the same arguments: it was Modi’s agenda for development that was giving BJP a win: no, no, it is Nitish’s development work that has worked wonders for him! 

So what happened in hour that turned victory into defeat and vice versa? 

On NDTV 24×7, Prannoy Roy said it had never happened before- there was a very fundamental error. Chaubey boasted that unlike the other channels, CNN-IBN had conducted its own counting on the ground along with ETV—which is why they got it right. Yogendra Yadav jokingly said, it was ‘the triumph of the locals over the national’ (NDTV 24×7)—and he seemed to be right. Most national news channels go by figures put out by Nielsen while the regional channels went by the reports of their people at the counting centres. more

A reporter’s diary on why Modi lost

Shivam Vij / qz
It can easily be said that the Bihar results are a reflection on Modi’s government in New Delhi, because Modi himself campaigned extensively in Bihar, telling voters about his achievements as prime minister so far. He spoke, for instance, of signing up hydropower projects with neighbouring Nepal and Bhutan, which would bring electricity to Bihar. He also spoke of the Jan Dhan Yojana, an effort at banking inclusion, which has so far given bank accounts to 190 million citizens for the first time.

However, poor voters complained that they had queued to sign up for the bank accounts under the impression that they would get money from the Modi government into those accounts. The impression was fed further by the opposition parties, who went around Bihar showing voters a video of Modi from the 2014 campaign. In the video, Modi was seen telling voters that they could get Rs15 lakh ($22,700) each if he managed to bring back India’s black money stashed abroad.

It is important to consider the points voters across Bihar have told me. For the next few days, there will be a lot of commentary on the Bihar results, on the arithmetic of caste and religion, on personality clashes and vote share percentages, but most will miss the voice of the electorate. more

Bihar results: Caste, IOUs and Narendra Modi

Was it the development that Nitish Kumar did in Bihar or was it the simple caste arithmetic of him tying up with Lalu Prasad – the Index of Opposition Unity (IOU) – that sealed the BJP’s fate? The debate can go on till kingdom come, but Lalu Prasad’s RJD doing better than Nitish Kumar’s JDU suggests caste politics is alive and kicking more

How pollsters and TV channels were clueless

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan / scroll
Never before in the history of post-Independence India has anything like this every happened, said Dr Prannoy Roy of NDTV this morning, covering the announcement that the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Yadav combine was leading in the Bihar assembly election results. But Roy's never-before comment didn't have anything to do with the achievement that Kumar and Yadav had pulled off. Instead, it had much more to do with NDTV's own response to the results.

That's because, not even an hour into counting of votes from electronic voting machines, NDTV said it had prepared a projection. That's right, as early as 9 am, the channel known for straightforward, accurate election reporting called the Bihar assembly election in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The network's Hindi channel, NDTV India,  even used the world "landslide" to describe the BJP's win. An hour later, it was clear that NDTV had gotten it completely wrong. more

Today's Chanakya Apologises

Rituparna Chatterjee / Huffpo
Today's Chanakya, a public opinion polling company, on Sunday apologised for wrongly predicting the Bihar election results. Chanakya created quite a stir when they predicted 155 seats for NDA against 83 for the grand alliance of RJD and JD(U) even as all major exit polls either foretold a neck and neck fight between the two or gave the alliance a slight edge. more

Takeaways From the Bihar Election Results

Niharika Mandhana / WSJ
Modi Wave May Have Crested
In last year’s national elections, Mr. Modi overcame caste and class divisions – and trumped powerful regional parties – to win broad support for his promises of development. He made a similar pitch this year in Bihar – saying he would bring progress to one of India’s poorest states – in more than 30 public rallies.

His defeat by a wide margin shows that the aura of invincibility around the prime minister is fading and it has cast a shadow over the BJP’s plans to expand its footprint beyond its traditional strongholds. The party faces a series of state elections in the next two years, including in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, in 2017.

Modi’s One-Man-Show Doesn’t Always Work
In all the state elections since Mr. Modi came to power, he has been his party’s chief campaigner. In most of them, the BJP has not declared a chief ministerial candidate during the campaign. The strategy appears to have failed in Bihar, where Mr. Modi’s development plank faced competition from Nitish Kumar’s reputation as Bihar’s “Development Man.”

Analysts say Mr. Modi needs to encourage a second-rung leadership to develop in the BJP rather than centralize power and influence. “Otherwise when the overflowing euphoria gets juiced out, like it has in Bihar, the party will have nothing else to rely on,” said Dipankar Gupta, an Indian sociologist and professor at India’s Shiv Nadar University. more

As RSS Feared, Amit Shah Lost Bihar For BJP

Rana Ayyub / ndtv
As they say, ask a child in Bihar his caste and he will tell you the difference of caste between him and his closest friend. Shah tried to win the caste formula in Bihar by adding to the mix Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, a Mahadalit and Ramvilas Paswan. But he made the PM the face of the election campaign despite suggestions from senior leaders in Bihar including Shatrughan Sinha and Kirti Azad to consolidate local forces.

The PM, without any pretence of diplomacy, auctioned financial packages in his rallies for Bihar and targeted infamously the DNA of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. It is from here that the BJP started to make a steady decline in the state. The campaign, which started on the development plank, gave way to the worst possible personal barbs about Mahagathbandhan leaders.

The last straw in the decline of its fortunes came when Mohan Bhagwat gave his controversial statement on reservations, asking the BJP not to ignore the aspirations of the upper class. Then the BJP's Union Minister VK Singh appeared to compare the murder of two Dalit children to a dog being killed. more

Defeat no surprise for the BJP

Mohua Chatterjee / ToI
The BJP's defeat was probably not a complete surprise for the ruling party at the Centre, despite voices within the party getting stronger about their prospective win after at least two exit polls reflected a clear victory for the NDA combine.

It is another matter that the massive margin of defeat handed down by a resurgent Grand Alliance was beyond calculation, BJP leaders admitted almost candidly by noontime, when the picture was clear. more

Meet the man who helped Nitish win Bihar

First, he spread a master plan for BJP's election campaign during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 that scored Narendra Modi the Prime Minister's seat. Then, the same man joined hands with Nitish Kumar this year for the Bihar Elections, helping the Grand Alliance sweep the Assembly Elections with a clear majority. 

Prashant Kishor, 37, who hails from Buxar in Bihar, came out to support Nitish earlier in May this year, calling him one of the most credible politicians who had improved Bihar on many fronts. more

Nitish : Bihar’s Chanakya-turned-Chandragupta

Nitish Kumar, often referred to as Chanakya of Bihar politics, lived up to the moniker when he surprisingly joined hands with arch rival RJD boss Lalu Prasad to script a third consecutive term for himself as Chief Minister after being bruised and bloodied in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Following the age-old proverb enemy’s enemy is a friend, the 64-year-old JD(U) leader whose party won just two of the State’s 40 seats in the Lok Sabha poll, a development that impelled him to step down and hand over the reins to Jitan Ram Manjhi, joined hands with Mr. Prasad to halt bete noire Narendra Modi’s juggernaut in Bihar. more

Exit polls overestimate odds of a close election

Karthik Shashidhar / mint
As Election Metrics has mentioned several times in the past, there are two important steps to forecasting the outcome of elections in India. The first step is to determine the vote shares of different parties, which is usually done using a randomly sampled survey. The next step is to convert the thus obtained vote shares into seats, which is a rather complicated process given India’s first-past-the-post election system.

The problem with a massive realignment of alliances is that pollsters are deprived of a “prior model” in order to convert the vote share predictions to seats. In the absence of such a model, most pollsters have simply extrapolated from the vote share predictions to forecast seat distributions. And such extrapolation continues after the exit polls also. more

Bihar Polls Is Going to Be Important

Rishi Iyengar / Time
Running for a third consecutive term in Bihar, Nitish is hugely popular for engineering an economic turnaround and making it India’s fastest-growing state last year — not unlike the rapid development Modi is credited with bringing about during his four terms as leader of the western state of Gujarat.

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Kumar’s return as chief minister could pave the way for his potential bid to become the South Asian nation’s leader when Modi’s current term concludes in 2019, while a defeat would almost certainly dash his further ambitions and provide a crucial fillip to Modi’s slowing rise. more

What exit polls do not predict about Bihar

Suryakiran Tiwari and Subhash Chandra / daily O
If we take the lower and higher end of the ranges for both alliances across six polls, we get a number that makes no sense. The NDA is expected to draw 93-155 seats, while the MGB is set to get 83-132, according to the exit polls. While Today's Chanakya predicts an outright victory for NDA with 155 seats, the India Today-Cicero one says NDA will emerge as the largest alliance with 120 seats. C-Voter and News Nation, on the other hand, give a simple majority (122 seats) to MGB, while AC Nielsen and CNX give them 130 and 132 respectively.

An average of the polls (poll of polls) shows a marginally-hung Assembly with MGB slated to emerge as the largest alliance with 118 seats and NDA just behind at 117 seats.

In terms of vote share, the average of the polls show no difference between MGB and NDA at 42 per cent. While News Nation expects 46 per cent vote share for MGB, Today's Chanakya projects 46 per cent for NDA. "Others", who have historically been an important component of Bihar politics, also expected to register a 16-17 per cent vote share. more

Will Modi’s Bihar Loss Derail India?

Shuli Ren / Baron's Asia
It is still a close call, but exit polls seem to suggest Modi’s coalition may lose this battle. 4 exit polls have favored the opposition Grand Alliance while only 2 prefer the BJP coalition. The Modi government has already stepped back and said Bihar’s local election was not a referendum on the prime minister.

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The market may perceive Modi’s Bihar loss very negatively. Investors were hoping that a Bihar win could provide Modi with the political mandate to pass the long-delayed Goods and Services Tax Bill.

India is definitely losing some of its shine. Last week, foreigners net sold Indian stocks again. But year-to-date, India still received $4.3 billion net foreign portfolio inflow, a close second to Taiwan, which has seen a lot of money going in lately to play the Taiwan presidential election. more

Bihar forecast: 175 for JDU+, 60 for NDA

Surjit S Bhalla / IE
Here comes the forecast: First, the caveats, no information except historical analysis and a visit to Bihar. Both (data and visit) indicate that the people of Bihar seem to be happy with Nitish on at least three counts: The building of roads, electrification of villages, and enhancement and encouragement of gender equality (free bicycles for girls entering high school etc). But good governance is in short supply on the NDA side these days. 

All things considered, the NDA should find it difficult to top 80 seats with a reasonable probability of obtaining seats in the 50-70 range. If forced to make a point estimate, I would say 175 seats for the JDU+ and 60 seats for the NDA. more

The Shameful Reality Of The Elections In Bihar

Nandan Sharalaya and Shruti Kedia / HuffPo
As India struggles to come to terms with the economics of politics, it is now widely acknowledged that election expenditure (Vidhan Sabha) cannot be limited to a paltry Rs 28 lakhs. Stipulated with the good intention of making elections accessible to people of modest means, the low limits ignore the numerous expenses associated with election campaigns. As a result, election expenditure limits have driven campaign spending underground and have forced candidates to under-declare expenses. This ensures that only tainted candidates with illegal money and the networks and capacity to spend it can possibly thrive under such distorted conditions. more

Win or lose Bihar, Modi story is almost over

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay  / dailyO
Regardless of the Bihar verdict, the Modi story, as it was anticipated, is facing a danger of nearing its end. Win or lose, the square in which Modi has boxed himself into, will have the so-called fringe forces as his fellow dwellers. The logic behind this is simple - a victory in Bihar will be greatly due to the "background noise" that has been created all over the country by both supporters and detractors. more

The result of Bihar results

TK Arun / ET
Contrary to expectations, the BJP losing in Bihar will not mean a setback for governance at the Centre. In fact, if the Opposition suffers a loss in Bihar, it could turn more obstreperous at the Centre and make progress on the government’s legislative agenda ever more difficult.

There are just two possible outcomes in Bihar. Either the BJP-led alliance wins or it loses. Consider first the eventuality that a survey by this newspaper of capital market participants found more likely, of a BJP defeat in Bihar.

It would definitely mean some loss of face for the PM, who has led the BJP campaign without nominating a local leader as the chief ministerial candidate. more

Leadership ratings: the biggest clue to Bihar results?

Suryakiran Tiwari / HT
While most of the opinion polls say the NDA will emerge victorious (in-fact only two, Cicero and CNN IBN put the Grand Alliance on top), all of them consistently show that Kumar is the top choice for the chief minister’s post among voters. The NDA’s unnamed CM candidate comes up with a share which is much lower than the predicted NDA share. This contradiction is unusual and could play a crucial role in determining the outcome.

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We considered a small sample of recent elections (for which full data was available) and noticed an interesting trend. In all the cases, the gap between leadership ratings and vote share/ intention to vote ratings was quite small. In fact in the National Election study by CSDS during the Lok Sabha election, the preference for Modi was 35.7%, and the NDA vote share was 38.5%. In 2009, the combined rating of UPA leaders was 39.7% against a vote share of 36.5%. more

The 'What Ifs' of Bihar Polls 2015

Santwana Bhattacharya / Sunday Standard
Tight hai,” is what the locals tell you, fairly ubiquitously, across village, dusty qasba and city. It’s like a bloody-minded sporting encounter that has already seen fortunes in flux, and shifting as we speak, except the consequences will be far wider than in the make-believe combat of sport. more

Bihar polls show Modi's shifting goalposts

Arun Srivastava / Kashmir Times
Modi had descended in Bihar with the tag of Vikash Purush but within a week he put a new face of OBC PM and just before the fourth phase of the polling he has embellished himself with the EBC PM. Like a versatile actor he has been living different characters on different occasions with the sole aim of enticing the voters. more

BJP has ensured the death of electoral reforms

Anshuman Tiwari / dailyO
No matter who wins the Bihar battle or what conclusions one may derive post the election, one thing is sure that the country has embarked upon the age of its worst electoral politics. India’s ruling and largest political party has not only missed a major opportunity to commence electoral reforms, but has also left no stone unturned to authenticate corrupt electoral practices. One shouldn’t wonder if candidates with criminal background go berserk during the Bengal Assembly polls next year.

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BJP was supposed to lead this reform after coming to power, but the party conveniently disregarded electoral reforms and went on promising scooters, houses, petrol and land in exchange of votes in Bihar. more

Why predicting Bihar verdict is difficult

Mayank Mishra / BS
Even at the risk of going wrong, I will still talk about some of the broad trends that I observed. My interaction with a range of people in as many as 10 districts of the state has convinced me that there is no fence sitter this time who is going to be swayed this way or that way through last minute campaigning. People have, by and large, made up their mind and they are voting according to their conviction. Higher voter turnout in the first four phases is perhaps an indication of that.

Another visible trend is that Nitish Kumar has retained most of his popularity despite 10 years of incumbency. Even those who said they won’t vote for him did acknowledge that the Nitish Kumar regime has been very good for Bihar. What is more, supporters of Lalu Prasad have begun to take pride in the leadership of Nitish Kumar. Whether the goodwill translates into votes is very difficult to guess though.

And my third observation is that only three leaders—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad—have occupied mind space in Bihar. They are the ones who are part of most conversation and others are seldom discussed. The outcome therefore will be a reflection of who has occupied the maximum space. more

Caste-plus-Nitish versus religion-Plus-Modi contest

Praveen S Thampi / ET
Bihar wants to break out from the cycle of poverty and migration. But our politicians are instead offering it more caste and religion. A spirited poll campaign that began as a debate on two types of development models has fast degenerated into a smearcampaign on reservation and Pakistan. 

A decade of JDU-BJP rule under Nitish Kumar has brought Bihar back from the brink and it is poised for the next leap. But the estranged partners, in their quest for easy power, have resorted to the lowest denominators. One wants to vote your caste while the other has stooped a few levels below assuming a blatantly communalist posture. Hopefully, Bihar will rise above such short-sighted politics. more

Voters have a difficult choice in Bihar

John Elliott / Independent
The voters of Bihar, India’s poorest state, have a difficult choice deciding who to vote for in current assembly elections if they put aside their usual caste and religion-based preferences and go for the party that will be best for development.

They can choose a mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) headed by Nitish Kumar (below), chief minister for the past ten years, who has transformed many aspects of daily life in what was a mafia-ridden basket-case society. Or they can choose Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, who has dominated the BJP’s election campaign but has not announced the name of the regional politician he would anoint as chief minister.

This suggests that the voters’ safest choice is Kumar, the capable leader they know, who can be expected to expand the road, bridges, electric power and other government-funded infrastructure developments that have been built, along with improved basic education and law and order. more

A heartland-rending tussle

Shekhar Gupta / BS
Mandal's children are the key players in this Bihar election, and their victory - and that of caste politics - lies in the fact that even their challengers, the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have to also speak the same language. On the secular/communal issue, Narendra Modi still persists with his original "who is the enemy you want to fight, the other religion or poverty" line. But he is now repeatedly reminding voters of his humble caste origins. His partymen, including the senior-most state leader Sushil Modi, hail him as a leader from "Extremely Backward Castes", or EBCs.

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The RSS's objective is an old one: to unite with faith what caste divided. The children of Mandal are not atheists or iconoclasts like the DMK of the past. But they want to use caste to dismantle political hierarchies it created in the first place. That is why backward/lower-caste politics is such anathema to the RSS. But Narendra Modi and Amit Shah know their politics. That is why the alarmed switch to reservations, and raising the threat from "vote bank" politics.

I shall risk saying that caste is winning in this tussle with faith, in spite of the fact that the BJP now has power at the Centre with a full majority, rules more states than it ever has in India's history and its main rival, the Congress, lies decimated and in terminal decline. But its prime minister belongs to an EBC and finds it important to keep underlining that, with pride. more

For Nitish, rural electrification can be a winner

SA Aiyar / ToI
Forget caste arithmetic. Economic development gave Nitish Kumar his Bihar election victories in 2005 and 2010. He looks set to win a third victory based on development, the trump card this time being rural electricity. more

A tussle between identity and aspiration

Vinod Sharma / HT
Never mind the constant that is caste. But there’s a huge gap between what the people want and what the netas talk in Bihar.

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The popular quest for a quality life finds tangible expression in political chats at tea-vends and kiosks lining rural markets. Talk to the youth and they want jobs, women want empowerment and education, the depressed classes social justice and the minorities safety and equity in opportunities.

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From voices on the ground, it seemed that Nitish is able to negate the downsides of aligning with Lalu on the strength of his work in the power sector and the network of roads he has built. His campaign is a counter to Modi’s; the RJD chief ’s rustic match to Amit Shah.
Much maligned though he is by the BJP, Lalu’s force-multiplication of Nitish is there to be seen in the alliance’s social aggregation. more

The irrelevance of Bihar

Meghnad Desai / IE
Despite much ballyhoo, the outcome of the Bihar election is unlikely to change Indian politics much either way. If the NDA coalition wins, the Rajya Sabha arithmetic will still be unfavourable for the government. It will have to learn how to build a consensus in Parliament if it wants its business done. Majority in the Lok Sabha is neither necessary nor sufficient to govern India. What any government has to do is to build a coalition around a programme everyone can agree on.

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If the RJD/JD(U) coalition wins, it would still not provide a viable national opposition to the BJP. The vacuum left by the shrinkage of the Congress in the Lok Sabha remains. As the junior partner, the Congress’s problem is the Lok Sabha even if it manages to break the duck in Bihar. It has to get out of the hurt feeling at having been rejected by the electorate and find a way of behaving like an opposition, not just for this but several more Parliaments. Rahul will have to rebuild the party, which has collapsed all across India. Stalking Modi is not enough. more