PLAYING THE CASTE CARD

THE CANNY BIHAR CM WAS THE SUTRADHAR WHO STITCHED UP THE INDIA ALLIANCE. HE ALSO PUT CASTE FRONT AND CENTRE OF THE DISCOURSE AGAINST HINDUTVA

- Amitabh Srivastava

ALUMNI OF THE old Janata school of politics have a knack for complex shoaling behaviour, coalescing into large units when it ensures better foraging success (and protection from predators), disassembling, then reforming wherever the waters are more conducive. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, as brilliant a student of that adaptive socialism as any other, put his name on the political calendar of 2023 with two landmark manoeuvres. Both throwbacks to the two hoary ideological gurus: Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. Which is to say, politics as an exalted idea of social justice and equity, and as a practice crafted around the grimier mechanics of Oppositional alliance-making-for best effect, built up to an ecstatic crescendo.