Five things about the Bihar elections that you must know

1. Too many parties, too few seats

You probably know that the Bihar assembly elections are mainly about the Nitish Kumar-led Janata combine and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. Last week saw the formation of a “third front”, a coalition of six parties, the best known among which, Samajwadi Party and Nationalist Congress Party, were formerly part of Janata coalition: they parted ways because out of 243, they were given zero and three seats respectively. (Lalu Prasad Yadav tried to cajole the SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is also Lalu’s samdhijee, offering five seats from his own pie, but to no avail.) SP and NCP will now contest 85 and 40 seats respectively, even though both the parties are aware they are not exactly front-runners (or even crawlers). Pappu Yadav, who recently floated a party called Jan Kranti Adhikar Morcha, is also part of the third front, and will contest 64 seats. Pappu flirted with the NDA till August, but his demand of 35-40 seats was too much for the BJP, and the deal didn’t go through. The third front is, at least for Mulayam and Sharad Pawar, more of an ego massage than anything else.

There is yet another coalition of six parties, this one from the Left. In the 2010 assembly elections, of all the Left parties in Bihar, only the Communist Party of India won a seat. Like the third front, the Left coalition too hopes that the voters disgruntled with both Janata and NDA would rally behind them; but considering BJP voters would never vote for the Left, this coalition too, like the third front, might play spoilers for the Lalu-Nitish duo.

Then there is Asaduddin Owaisi, whose party All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen is contesting 24 seats from the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region. Owaisi surprised himself by winning two seats in last year’s assembly elections in Maharashtra; with luck he might win a seat or two here too. But Owaisi’s entry risks further polarising the electorate on religious lines, and he might willy-nilly end up helping BJP in Seemanchal and elsewhere in the eastern state.

Last but not the least is Shivsena, famed for catering to regional and ethnic interests in Maharashtra, and its antipathy to UP-Bihar migrants. Only Uddhav Thackeray can fully explain why his partyis contesting assembly elections in Bihar on as many as 150 seats. Shivsena may play spoilers for BJP like the third front, AIMIM, and the Left coalition might for Janata. But it seems Shivsena’s real motive is to win a few seats in Bihar so it could bargain with BJP for some additional seats in the state cabinet back home in Maharashtra.

2. Why has the BJP dumped a quarter of its sitting MLAs?

By the time the BJP declared its second list on September 19, it had already refused re-nomination to 19 of its sitting MLAs, only a little less than a quarter of its lot. (In 2010, it had won 91 of the 102 seats it contested.) This is a risky experiment: the official reason given by Team Amit Shah is that they want young faces and a larger representation from the non-upper castes. Fair enough!

But it turns out larger representation from the non-upper castes means larger representation from the dominant backward castes, Yadavs especially. At last count, the BJP has fielded 36 Yadavs – out of 154 seats – to counter Lalu’s core vote-bank; at 42%, the BJP continues to give the upper castes a disproportionately high representation. (Significantly, Lalu hasn’t fielded even one Bhumihar, politically the most dominant upper-caste group, out of his 101 odd seats.)

Also, “young” for BJP, it turns out, means giving tickets to sons of three of its senior leaders – C. P. Thakur, Ashwini Choubey and Ganga Prasad – as well as other scions who recently fell out with Nitish.

3. Bihar Politics Pvt. Ltd.

Of course, BJP is hardly the only party devoted to son-rising. Irony wasn’t lost when a few days ago the Lok Janshakti party’s Chirag Paswan, with the traditional arrogance of a scion, said in Aaj Tak’s Seedhi Baat interview that if he had his way, he wouldn’t give tickets to any of his family members. Chirag denied a ticket to his brother-in-law Anil Kumar Sadhu (who wept inconsolably on TV channels), but still conceded tickets to sons of two MPs from his party, including one from his family.

Jitan Ram Manjhi’s party Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) has two tickets for scions, one of which is his own son. Lalu, who often cares less for politically correctness than other party bosses, recently said, “Bal-bachcha chunav nahi ladega to kya gai, bhains charayega.” Both his sons,Tejaswi and Tej Pratap, are contesting from two of Janata’s crucial seats.

4. Criminals continue to rule the roost

That all major parties in India field criminal-politician candidates is well known. It’s still befuddling as to why parties claiming Dalit identity in Bihar field upper-caste goons. This time Manjhi’s party has given ticket to Lovely Anand, wife of yesteryear Rajput don Anand Mohan, a convicted criminal who is currently serving a life-term in jail. The LJP has similarly given ticket to another bahubali called Kali Pandey. Political scientist Milan Vaishnav’s work has earlier shown that weakened public institutions give rise to a politician-criminal breed that enjoy community support and can also raise funds for the party. Criminals are, in short, valuable assets for all parties, and will continue being so.

5. Why are Manjhi’s MLAs contesting on the BJP tickets?

As per a unique arrangement between HAM(S) and BJP, five MLAs belonging to Manjhi’s party will fight the election on a BJP ticket. This sounds strange, but here is what it possibly means: the BJP didn’t want to give Manjhi more than 20 seats, but was also unwilling to let him go because it would have made the BJP look like an anti-Dalit party. In any case, upper-caste political scions Nitish Mishra and Ajay Pratap Singh of HAM(S), who are part of this compromise, could have switched sides to BJP and managed to get a ticket. In a close electoral contest, overall number of seats won by a coalition is as important as the number of seats a party can individually win. For the time being, this arrangement meant a win-win situation for both: Manjhi saved his honour, BJP saved its seats.