JD(U) bluster changes nothing

In the end, Nitish Kumar said nothing new at Sunday’s meeting of the Janata Dal (United) national executive meeting. He continued with the pretence that one leader determines the nature of a party. The suggestion is clear that if Modi is the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, the party would cease to be secular and the JD(U) would have to rethink its options. This is just brinksmanship. But in the working of a vibrant democracy, every party has the undisputed right to take decisions on behalf of itself: no party can tell another what to do. The JD(U) is unlikely to pull the plug on its 17-year old alliance with the BJP that now governs Bihar. It is a cosy partnership: between them, the two won 206 of the state’s 243 assembly seats. With 115 seats, the JD(U) is the senior partner, but the BJP’s success rate is more impressive. It won 91 of the 102 seats it contested. It is possible to argue that this happened only because the BJP was riding a Nitish Kumar wave. Neither Kumar nor the BJP has any reason to rush to test the theory. Kumar has to keep up a rhetoric that he hopes will prevent the Muslim voters of his state deserting the coalition, come election-time. That is all.

The JD(U) has no incentive whatsoever to break its alliance with the BJP. Nor does the BJP have any incentive to be seen to be buckling under pressure from an ally to declare its prime ministerial candidate before it chooses to on its own. There would be two gainers from the BJP declaring Narendra Modi as its PM nominee now. One is the Congress, who can then work to consolidate the support of minority voters and political parties that depend on them. The other gainer, of course, would be Modi himself. Why should the JD(U) or the rest of the BJP oblige them by setting and meeting arbitrary deadlines?