 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are mapping the elections with Seema Mustafa and today we are going to discuss Bihar, another key state and where an alliance of sorts have been stitched between the RJD and the Congress. Seema, unlike UP where shall we say the alliance picture doesn't look very bright, this is relatively a better picture in terms of alliance, though the left is outside the alliance and as we know Bihar, the CPI, the liberation as well as the CPI have some pockets of strength. It seems that liberation still may get one seat, looks like, not clear at the moment. But do you think it is a better picture than what we were thinking a few days back? Yes, it's improved in the sense that the Congress has got off its high horse and agreed to part with a few seats to accommodate the regional parties. And it's a good thing that the RJD has been able to get Manji away from the BJP, has got Kushwaha and of course Sharad Yadav. And to the ML, they've offered one seat, ML wanted five seats now, which is a little high. So ML will have to realize whether it's going to accept that one seat, which could, it could have a good chance of winning. Also Begusarai, the other seat where CPI had Kanhaiya Kumar, who was quite a charismatic young leader in Bihar as well as other parts of the country, who's been a very, a good shall we say a voice in terms of being able to articulate a lot of the issues. Begusarai has also not been offered to the CPI and that's the other major. Yeah, and I think that also indicates, you know, it's sort of has, there's a commentary there on the larger elections that we are fighting, that while you're fighting or the regional parties in the Congress say that they're fighting to defeat the BJP, the kind of concessions that you have to make for each other to get in good voices, good leaders and not being made. I remember that Lalu, Yadav and Tejaswi both had actually been very keen that Kanhaiya contests from Begusarai or definitely from Bihar. But over the weeks it started changing or over the months it started changing because obviously people came and, you know, spoke in their ear and then this whole thing of Kanhaiya becoming a, which we were discussing a little before, becoming a counter to Tejaswi or to the RJD sort of was used to frighten them into not giving him a seat from Bihar, which I think is tragic because Kanhaiya is a good voice, he's a good leader, he articulates, he's got a lot of potential for the future and one would think that in this election you're going to leave all that behind and go and support the kind of voices you need but that's not happening. That's an interesting point that you're making that it's not only about shall we say defeating the BJP but how to jockey in what they are already thinking of a post-BJP scenario and whether that is even likely to happen is not, does not seem to be the calculation because otherwise we can't explain for instance what the Congress is doing in UP that it's really looking at the post-19 2019 elections and thinking about assembly who becomes a chief minister projecting Priyanka as a figure all of these doesn't make sense if we're talking of 2019 election and if you remember Ahul Gandhi made that statement, we're looking at 2022. In 2022 there should be a party left or a country left to fight an election right in the sense that this is a crucial election where you needed a break from what's been going on for the last five years and you expected the opposition to come together led by the Congress maybe into actually breaking a certain pattern that has set and has been set very adroitly and very cleverly by Prime Minister Modi and all the people working with him. Now you're up against somebody who's a human dynamo who's working day and night who's got all kinds of strategy and every trick in the book from lies to truth if you want to say. But you know you can't talk of 2022 when 2019 is if you're defeated in 2019. That's shall we say the short term against the really the shorter term that seems to be the problem that what is it that we are these parties. You know somehow sometimes it's so weird that you find the Congress or even the regional parties talk well actually not the regional parties because they never talk of a vision they don't claim to talk like that. But the Congress talks of a vision at a time when it should be looking immediate and it looks at immediate when it should be having a vision and somehow marrying the two has become very difficult. Looking at the pure electoral arithmetic if we see the 2014 election the J.D.U. Nitish fought independently of the BJP in that elections and you had the other parties coming together except the left some of the sections of the left fought independently. If you take that BJP got 31 seats out of 40 to where Nitish's party who fought separately if you put their votes together it would be the near sweep of the state. We have would have gone almost entirely to the BJP Nitish alliance. Now Nitish joined as you remember the Mahagad Vandan with Lalu swept the state grand betrayal again again went back to his old fold shall we say the BJP. Now with all this it would be argument is that Nitish has really lost significant support base and putting Lalu in jail which is what is he seen to have done and they were once upon a time the leaders of the Bihar student movement the face of the movement and the socialist movement at the time that has also gone against Nitish. So do you think it would have at least this significant electoral repercussions on I think I think we're also looking at a fairly bright leader in Tejaswi you know so while he might be taking his directions and instructions to some extent from Lalu Yadav he's shown a certain maturity right from the beginning when RJD and Nitish Kumar had come together to form the Mahagad Vandan and they formed the government and they swept Bihar in that sense and there were differences between Lalu and Nitish because of all the baggage they carried from the Jantatal days Tejaswi was playing a very major mediatory role and trying to ensure that the two kept together so he showed maturity at his young age from then and I think he's played a very key role in getting all these smaller parties together so regardless of what was happening between RJD and the Congress he worked in this last year or two years to get these very difficult characters like Mangi and the Koshwaha and others to get in them into the RJD to the point that right at the very end when the smaller parties were saying that you know one seat's not enough you've got to give us more he actually worked on the Congress to part with a couple of seats reduced his own tally and made sure that the smaller regional parties were accommodated to keep that alliance together now there also I think he's set out a larger message in Bihar just like Akhilesh Yadav has in UP that you've got to bend and you have to give up some to get much more well except for the Kanhaiya issue where of course that hasn't happened but also accommodating JDU figures like Sharad Yadav yes yes that's also another part yes and Sharad Yadav really had nowhere to go if RJD had not accommodated him because he took a position he moved out he's on his own we know he doesn't have much of a mass base he's become and always was the leader for a long time but even so he's been accommodated and they are giving him a seat or two so all of this seems to indicate that we will see some shift some shift from the 2014 figures and we are calculating this is our shall we say a scyphology a little early without much samples and so on we would say the Ditesh who got 17 percent of votes in the election standing on his own or otherwise that is going to lose we're going to see some losses and we project that there will be at least a five to six percent loss there and 2014 Modi was at his peak no longer the scenario particularly in the north you the Hindi heartland he is not going to give the come up all the promises that he had made have not delivered only thing that's happened is the really the commodization the hate all of that's only yeah I think I think what is very what we need to see and we'll only see that when the campaign starts and the candidates are announced which is just again without much substance but just a feeling that you get from the ground is that in this election you're going to unlike the 2014 election where all the cast moved out and they voted for Modi and the BJP so you had the Yadav youth you had sections of the Dalit which had earlier voted not BJP you had some sections of the backwards a lot of the vote that gathered around the upper cast somehow I don't know if you once getting the feeling from maybe after the assembly elections that everybody's settling back into their cast grooves you know so this time the Yadav voting say in UP for Akhilesh will be much larger section that voted for him in for that party in 2014 and the same is probably going to happen so that's putting it another way the BJP's upper cast consolidation has happened because of the kind of positions they have taken up therefore the other groups have also consolidated in in a reverse way because there's a very aggressive assertion of the upper cast and that has been fueled a little too aggressively maybe by the BJP through Palakot and Pulwama and the 10% reservations that they've given to the economically upward classes so that would you would know knowing how close the cast system is knit in these two states in the Hindi heartland as it were what impact on the other cast this is the home of the cast system in India because this is the ancient Magadha state and all of that it represents and that's why they talked of social engineering last time so-called social engineering of Amit Shah well he did have it because he went to Apnadaal he went to Kushwaha he went to Manji he got all of them out and he got all these people together now they just the fact that they've drifted away is an indicative not because they're great visionaries but because the cast are reacting upper cast consolidation again so we are looking at if for instance weakening of Nitish the shall we say the upper cast consolidation which means other sections move away from it we are looking at something possible in the range of 8% swing against what if you put Nitish and BJP votes together what you would see and it seems this this would be a 20-20 meaning 50-50 split that's that's what it seems to show if you remember in the last assembly elections when he did very well and he got together with RJD he was at his height he was at this peak right and everybody said the vote is for Nitish and Nitish is the great guy and I remember we covered the elections went into the villages everybody said Nitish way Nitish way but RJD got more seats yes that's true he got about 102 this guy got about 100 so RJD which didn't seem to be a major factor and before this election had almost gone down suddenly emerged and was 102 where Nitish got that was the real problem that Nitish had with Lalu because that whole Yadav base came back to you Lalu after a gap of 5-10 years and also a lot of the other sections yeah yeah yeah yeah but the other was his core constituency which had gone away to some extent or eroded it all came back and there is no sign in these intervening years that that constituency and support has cracked like you said earlier that Lalu being in jail is a sympathy factor and somehow that Yadav vote hasn't moved away you know somebody was telling me that Bihar still Lalu has a soft corner among the Bihari population irrespective of caste they might not vote for him but they still have a soft corner for him you know that's that is there not the upper caste by the way they think he's a goon they think he's a gundaa and he uses by the you know what's by the lathi yeah yeah and they have hated the bundle plank in any case and let's be very so there's that confrontation that continues yeah that that is consistent because they rule the state before the emergence of Lalu and Nitish and all these other figures they were ruling the state now coming back to if the left had come in this with the other sections together the if wishes if wishes were horses if our wishes were horses enough so that would have been even with this swing which we still think could could be even larger would be something like 23 seats for the shall we say the RJD the congress and the left you would have seen the 23 against 17 of the BJP and difference of six seats so the not giving the left any space could cost this alliance up to six seats this is what the figures seem to show because we're not in the moment as I said doing predictions we're just looking at the electoral the voting figures I'm not very I mean I I know that's the way it's sort of looking at your in your graph and probably that's true but that's something I haven't really analyzed because I think that the ML was asking five seats which even Manji wasn't so the RJD was not going to give that the cpm wanted one or two seats two seats the cpi was asking for five so about 10 15 seats I don't think the alliance would have given yeah I think the probably you know when you start the negotiations look at what the congress was starting in a negotiations I think if the both sides had gone to about five or six seats I think this was a credible demand and what it looks like it's credible even with the based on electoral arithmetic now here is the issue that both the congress and the RJD would like to win seats would like to gain seats but doesn't want the left also as we saw in UP other characterize other issues who becomes a chief minister this kind of calculation we have me I feel I feel it's just the fact and I'm telling you I really start from negative where all the regional coalitions are concerned so just the very fact that RJD and congress have kept that alliance together is number one good number two I feel that they've gotten these smaller parties which are very contangorous parties and got them there that's good so we've got two goods and one bad where the left wasn't accommodated but I think you know both CPI has an old base and also well it didn't really show up in the last election but yeah you know that's the distributed strength problem if you have distributed strength the winning seats is difficult they have some pockets but still distributed weakness shall we say or distributed strength whichever you put in these elections what is now going to be very important is for all the regional parties to hold together because if you look at it everywhere they are the ones who are striking successful coalitions as compared to say the congress the left has generally kept out of it because it's made it very clear it doesn't really want to get into this but it's really to have seated adjustments some adjustments here and there yeah offer seats to you know which will make sense to them it's interesting what you were saying that where the congress is the lead party the alliances are not happening where other parties are the lead party they're having that yeah I mean look at UP you know for all of us who followed elections just the very fact that you have the samajwati coming together with the mayavati and the BSP is something astounding they were hardcore rivals it's almost like the left coming together with Mamta in West Bengal you know these are things which you can't think would happen but here this is a little different to the sense don't forget that the bitter the started with what happened in a particular incident where mayavati was assaulted and she never forgave Mulayam for that no and they were two parties who were contending each other yeah but it was also at that time they were in alliance and then the mayavati was assaulted so they were in alliance but it's also what Mulayam did at that point of time which if you arrive in mayavati's shoes I don't think we would have forgiven either so I think that's what I'm saying it's very good that Mulayam going away and Akhileshi Merjig has also made that part of it also the Akhileshi's ability to like I said bend forward a little bend the backwards bend bend simply bend and offer an equality which you know Mulayam would never have probably offered even if he came into a coalition but it's very clear to go back to Bihar that your alliance is going to do well and definitely better than the last election that is almost a given also because apart from the fact that it's a broader alliance and a better alliance and more thought out the BJP is also suffering from deep factionalism there so it is all going to be as they are counting that in all the states is going to be Modi Modi Modi Modi so the whole vote sort of converges for the Lok Sabha for the prime ministerial candidate and doesn't really talk about the BJP now to what extent that actually happens will determine a lot of things so more presidential form of elections will that happen or not is the question thank you Siva for being with us we'll continue to map the elections the it's really now three weeks four weeks that we are going to start shall we say the election scenario unfolding in different states so we will we will continue to map it the way we have done for the last two weeks thank you for watching news click we had this election mapping that we are doing with Siva is also in collaboration with citizen do keep watching us and citizen as well