Elections. It's effect on Eco Development. Electoral Reform

[PKBasu]

Congratulations to the people of Bihar for handing a huge victory to democracy!
And congratulations to Nitish Kumar for finally winning the fight against corruption which he has been waging (largely with futility) for the past decade. Now it is up to him to prove that Bihar can be governed, and pulled back from the abyss of non-governance it has suffered from for the past decade: Laloo's first half-decade in power at least involved some attempts at meaningful social change and not merely Luddite rejections of modernity. Interestingly, Laloo himself has finally returned to governance in his current role as union Railway minister -- thankfully putting an end to the ridiculous charade that passed for his rule over Bihar.

Both Nitish Kumar and Laloo Yadav were young recruits to Jayaprakash Narayan's Bihar movement of 1974, which eventually spread across the country and ousted Indira Gandhi from power in 1977 (after the intervening Emergency, which served to finally unite the ever-disparate non-Congress opposition for the first time). Both were attracted to VP Singh's notion of social justice (which really was a continuation of the socialist tradition that JP belonged to, having formed the Congress Socialist Party in the 1940s within Congress and in 1951 outside the Congress -- with an invitation to Nehru to join and lead it, which he declined). But they parted ways over the issue of corruption -- and more precisely over the fodder scam in which Lalu was indicted and later fully implicated. Integrity was a central plank of JP's approach to politics -- and in abandoning it with impunity, Laloo drove Bihar into the abyss it has been in over the past decade, driving the land of Ashoka and the Buddha closer and closer to earning the epithet of "the Zaire/Congo of India".

[PKBasu]

Nitish Kumar is the sort of upright politician that is rare in India. A dogged, determined figure who is humble and focused just on the job at hand without using devious methods to achieve his goals:

http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/nov/23bpoll1.htm

The real challenge is to see whether this is the sort of personality who can get things done in India's labyrinthine political and bureaucratic system.

[Sandeep]

Hopefully he will do something good to Bihar. He is an electrical engineer, not tht it matters, but atleast there is some hope tht some one who is a graduate has took over CM post and knows the importance of technology and development which is very important for Bihar today.

[India1989]

That is good that Bihar has a good CM. Hope there is some developments in there. Bihar seriously needs to develop to make India go up in Human Development Index

And yes according to GDP India is ranked 10th now.

What do you think about the Kashmir issue guys.
What will you think would happen. Will India get the full Kashmir or just have what part it has.

[paulo_eddie]

closer to earning the epithet of "the Zaire/Congo of India".

ssshhhh PKB....u might offend the congo-ites...10 years ago we coulda said that...today the congo-ites might be citing bihars example as a model of how things could be if development is not paid heed to!!
oh and great victory and long overdue too! i hope the former electrical engineer(nitish kumar) can finally show bihari's what electricity actually looks like!

[jaydeep]

PTI report on swing in voting percentage in Bihar election.

A negative swing of less than one per cent votes against it cost the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Secular Democratic Front dear, while a positive swing of 9.68 per cent catapulted the National Democratic Alliance to power in the politically volatile state of Bihar.

Negative vote swing of 0.87pc cost Lalu power

Jaydeep.

[PKBasu]

Rediff's analysis is a bit ridiculous.
They have forgotten that the Congress aligned itself with Paswan's LJP in the February election -- not with the RJD of Laloo -- although the Congress candidates were withdrawn from many RJD seats to minimise electoral contests between the two. In this election, on the other hand, Congress aligned itself with Lalu (and against Paswan's LJP).
The addition of Congress to Lalu's alliance should actually have bolstered his electoral support considerably. That it did not suggests that there was a very big swing of votes against the non-NDA parties. Since the LJP's alliance was much smaller (lacking the Congress and CPI-M, who were with it the last time) it naturally appears to have the largest swing against it.
The vast majority (60-70%) of Indian voters have strong party loyalties. It is the other 30-40% of "undecided/unattached" voters who determine electoral outcomes. This time in Bihar, that group has swung quite decisively to the NDA (the constituents of which were unchanged between February and this election in October-November).

[Kumar]

Nitish Kumar is the sort of upright politician that is rare in India. A dogged, determined figure who is humble and focused just on the job at hand without using devious methods to achieve his goals:

http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/nov/23bpoll1.htm

The real challenge is to see whether this is the sort of personality who can get things done in India's labyrinthine political and bureaucratic system.

Sincerely praying and hoping that Nitish kumar can do something right in Bihar!!!

[Dhruv]

I love the headline. The analysis is a shaky but the headline is great.

It would ssem to imply that Lalu lost power because his part got 0.87% less votes than in February when he was tied with the NDA alliance. The fact that the NDA alliance got almost 10% more votes this time had nothing to do with it.

So the headline seems to imply that if Lalu had got the 1% more of votes even if the NDA had got the 10% extra votes they would be tied or the NDA would have lost the election. That's why I like copyrighters, yes the ananlysis itself has some flaws but the headline itself is brilliant.

[jimmy]

I love the headline. The analysis is a shaky but the headline is great.

Great .. in which sense???

[PKBasu]

Actually, the analysis is even worse than I initially realised. Lalu's party did not, in fact, see a significant swing away from it, since it had candidates in fewer seats this time than in February!
Although most commentators are saying this election represented a great shift by the voters of Bihar, etc., the real story is largely this: a little over half of Paswan's victorious legislators from February got fed up with him and defected to the NDA (mainly to Nitish and George's JD-U, with a few going to the BJP). Most of the "swing" in vote shares merely represents the fact that the majority of these new members of the NDA retained their seats -- thereby bolstering the NDA's vote share and seat share. There was a small swing vote in the NDA's favour, but the outcome was largely decided by March, when the legislators decided that Paswan was no longer a leader worth sticking with.
If the NDA is to win Bihar decisively in the next election(s) there, it will have to ensure that Paswan's forces (including the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc) stay separate from the RJD-Congress-NCP-CPM bloc.

[jaydeep]

Another different point of view about Bihar election from T V R Shenoy.

Nitish Kumar, do thank Sonia

And another one from Saisuresh Sivaswamy.

The message from Bihar

And cabinet minister Jitan Ram Manjhi resigned in the wake of a controversy over his alleged involvement in a teachers training institutions scam in the 1990s few hours after taking oath.

Jaydeep.