The Switch: Post Mortem of a Nitish-BJP Split

It's been a week since Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar called it quits on his long-standing ally, the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP). It's a game-changing moment in politics if ever there was one. That's because the state is extremely political and Kumar's entry into the opposition camp can completely change the game. Or is that just hype? In this episode, host Sunetra Choudhury who has reported on the state since Kumar first came to power in 2005, just focuses on the three principal players in this entire drama- Nitish Kumar, RJD leader and now deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav and their rival, the BJP. The post-mortem finds that out of all three, it is Tejashwi Yadav who stands to be the biggest gainer in this entire episode. He was just 28 when he was taken by surprise and jilted by Nitish Kumar. Five years later, he is far from being just his father's son. Yadav is now the party with the largest numbers in the state and he's got here, without the baggage of having to entice breakaways from the ruling party. Nitish Kumar has switched sides before but is the morality of being a party-hopper, really the most important point in this episode? Maybe not, considering that it comes so soon after the BJP's coup in Maharashtra. What's more pertinent is the manner in which the opposition has used it to launch the 2024 campaign. It is unclear if Kumar will be the opposition's face against Narendra Modi and if that will be a successful bid. However, the 2024 battle has certainly become much more interesting now. Finally, the takeaways for India's ruling party. The episode finds that just a month before the switch, party president JP Nadda had said this about BJP versus regional parties: ``We are such a party that is ideology-based, standing on ideological grounds. I always say this to people, if there was no ideology then we couldn’t have fought this huge fight. Everyone is sold out, and destroyed and those who haven’t will be destroyed. There will be one and only BJP that will exist. There is no such national party to fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party in today’s date. There’s no national party of any ideology left.'' These words have struck deep into the hearts of many party leaders. As Sunetra notes in the podcast, the BJP has been successful to reducing the Congress to a marginal player. So, will it do the same to marginal parties too? In this episode, Sunetra is joined by HCU Professor Tanweer Fazal and journalist Prakash K Rai