After all, it was the hope of rapid economic growth which was responsible for his victory in May 2014. Unfortunately, Modi’s belief that the reforms are not like sprinting but resemble a marathon appears to have taken the wind out of the party’s sails in Bihar, resulting in the success of the Mahagathbandhan or grand alliance of the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Congress combine.

Of these three parties, it is the RJD which has edged ahead of the Janata Dal (United) in terms of seats apparently because its caste card had a greater appeal for the voters than the Janata Dal (United)’s somewhat diluted version of the BJP’s development plank.

But, it is undeniable that the two former foes and current friends – Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar – combined effectively to secure the most political advantage from their divergent political approaches based on Lalu Prasad’s traditional caste affinities with their focus on accentuating the upper-lower caste divide, and Nitish Kumar’s modernistic urge for bijli, sadak and pani.

It goes without saying that the outcome is a vindication of Nitish Kumar’s decision to break away from the BJP several months before last year’s general election in the belief that Modi’s emergence as the BJP’s foremost leader will scare away the Muslims.

It has taken a year and a half for the vindication to fructify because the BJP had won a massive victory in Bihar in last year’s parliamentary elections, compelling a disheartened Nitish Kumar to give up his chief minister’s position.

But, the waning of the Modi “magic” in this period, for a variety of reasons, has enabled the Janata Dal (United) leader to reaffirm his political status based on the popular belief that he had done a great deal for the state (bahut kaam kiya).

One of these achievements was to restore law and order after 15 years of the RJD’s jungle raj (1990-2005). The BJP’s expectation was that this unenviable reputation of the RJD will undermine Nitish Kumar.

If this did not happen, the explanation lies, first, in the fact that the RJD regained its influence among the Yadavs, its main base of support, after a brief (and partial) desertion by the latter in the parliamentary polls.

Secondly, the otherwise assertive Lalu Prasad graciously yielded the primacy of place to Nitish Kumar and did not behave like Big Brother although the Yadavs are numerically far stronger than the Kurmis, the caste to which Nitish Kumar belongs.

This factor may come to the fore later but, for the present, the two former chief ministers have evolved a fine symbiosis between themselves. The Congress, too, apparently played a low key, but crucial, part in cementing the alliance despite its position as a distant third in the threesome.

There is little doubt that the fading Grand Old Party will regard the outcome as the first step on its path of recovery from the low of 2014 if only because the “suit-boot kisarkar” – Rahul Gandhi’s jibe at the Modi dispensation – has suffered a humiliation.

Why did Modi lose his halo? It couldn’t be only the slow pace of economic growth which cooked the BJP’s goose. The party might have been able to explain it away, as Modi has tried to do, but two other factors let it down. One was the manner in which the Hindu Right ran amok, killing rationalists and suspected beef-eaters and thereby terrorizing the minorities and even liberals with the result that a large number of writers and their kind started voicing their protests by returning their awards.

The other was arrogance. When the Reserve Bank governor, Raghuram Rajan, virtually echoed the perception of the writers about the prevailing intolerance, the BJP’s Subramaniam Swamy, asked the government to sack him.

Swamy’s view that the disaffected writers had done “nothing for the country” showed that the BJP was the only party which had the interests of the country in mind. The others were, in effect, anti-nationalists, an opinion which was also expressed by the pro-BJP film star, Anupam Kher, when he described himself as a patriot while criticizing the protesting writers.

After the famous victory in 2014, Modi seemingly lost his way. He did not know how to control the extremists in the ranks of the saffron brotherhood, nor how to accelerate the process of reforms. He can be said, therefore, to have fallen between two stools.

Now, there will be a fear that the Indian growth story will grind to a halt because the winners in Bihar, barring Nitish Kumar, are not as enthusiastic about development as is Modi. Even Nitish Kumar’s preference for introducing quotas in the private sector will discourage the investors.

Unless Modi realizes that he cannot dilly-dally any longer about restoring discipline on his own moderate terms in the party and the saffron parivar, the prospects of the reforms are not bright. (IPA Service)