The personal electoral base of Lalu is much wider than Nitish Kumar, who defeats Lalu only in alliance and with support of BJP. The rally of Lalu is no doubt a success; if the gathering at Gandhi Maidan is taken into consideration, but the million dollar question is will Lalu regain his lost political ground by organizing such a massive rally?

Caste plays the most significant role in determining the results of election in Bihar. So long as the caste configuration was in favor of Lalu, he was winning the elections one after another despite all odds. His win was attributable to the support provided to him by the numerically strong OBCs, who constituted over 54 percentage of total population of undivided Bihar. After its bifurcation, the percentage of OBCs has gone further up and it constitutes around 65 percentage of the total population of Bihar. Hindu OBCs alone constitute 54 percent now. The downfall of Lalu Yadav was due to the desertion of non Yadav OBCs. That desertion took place, because he did not give proper representation to non Yadav OBCs. Nitish Kumar was the first big leader to desert Lalu for this reason alone, but he (Nitish) could not break the support base of Lalu among OBCs, because they still harbored hope in Lalu. Again Nitish was not strong enough to provide an alternative to Lalu and that is why he failed to damage Lalu till he joined hands with BJP.

In the meanwhile, Lalu continued his apathy towards non Yadava OBCs and he started depending in Muslim Yadav (MY) combination. He was made to believe that he was winning the election only because of the support of MY. With this belief, he turned more and more apathetic to weaker sections of OBCs and concentrated on empowering Yadavas and Muslims alone. The law and order was also deteriorating during his rule and the weaker sections of OBCs were suffering most from it. So the weaker sections started deserting Lalu and they got a platform in BJP- JD(U).

Now the political alliance of MY was not match for the BJP- JD(U) alliance, which was powered by the weaker sections of OBCs, which constituted over 40 percent of the total population of Bihar. Lalu has reduced himself as a Yadav leader in stead of a leader of OBCs and he had to pay heavy price for it. He could see his shrinking OBCs base, but he did not make any attempt to regain their confidence. Instead, he tried to rope in among the forward castes people to compensate the loss. He tried to broaden his MY alliance by bringing Rajputs in it and making it MYR. He even made many attempts to align with another powerful upper caste Bhumihar and started attending their caste meetings, where he advocated inter caste marriage of Yadavas and Bhumihars.

Significantly, during his earlier phase of rule, Lalu used to go abusive to the people of these castes, but with the loss of his hold over weaker sections of OBCs because of his MY politics, he started wooing the same castes. This brand of his caste politics failed. Weaker sections among OBCs had deserted them and Upper Castes people had not forgiven him. So Lalu dependent on MY alone started losing elections and a time came, when he himself lost first from Madhepura and later from Pataliputra. His worst performance was to come, when his wife Rabri Devi lost elections of both constituencies she contested with huge margins in November, 2010 Assembly Elections. His RJD has only 22 out of 243 seats of Bihar Vidhan Sabha.

There was a time when Lalu had many allies in Bihar. Left parties used to align with him, but now he is a loner. Ram Vilas Paswan is still with him, but he cannot be trusted for future. If JD(U) and Congress strike an alliance in the next Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Paswan would be happy to join that alliance, because most of his supporters do not feel comfortable with Lalu Yadav. If have a choice, Congress would like to join hands with Nitish Kumar. By fielding a candidate in the Maharajganj Lok Sabha by poll, Congress has made it clear that it has no love lost for Lalu in Bihar. Congress candidate will not win the elections, but he will spoil the chances of a win of Lalu’s candidate, because the caste of Congress and Lalu’s candidate is the same. By fielding its candidate Congress is helping only Nitish Kumar’s nominee, who is fearing sabotage from alliance partner BJP during the by poll.

Obviously, the political environment of Lalu is not conducive in Bihar. If Nitish leaves NDA and joins hands with Congress and Ram Vilas Paswan, even the Muslim support base of Lalu will not be intact. It may vertically split causing great loss to Lalu during elections. He still commands hold over his own caste men, who constitute over 12 percent of Bihar’s population and are politically aggressive too, but their support is not enough to make Lalu win. BJP has projected its own OBC leader in Bihar as Sushil Kumar Modi. If it projects Narendra Modi as its PM candidate, majority of weaker sections of OBCs would like to vote for the saffron party.

That is the reason, the crowd of Gandhi Maidan does not show the real strength of Lalu. He may carry big crowds of his own caste men in Patna from all over Bihar and fill up all the roads leading to the Maidan, but on counting booths they may not give Lalu’s candidates a winning edge. Lalu can hope to regain the lost power only by regaining his lost grounds among the weaker sections of OBCs, who constitute the biggest voting block in the caste ridden politics of Bihar.(IPA Service)