Headlines
Nitish Kumar: Soft-spoken and socialist at heart (Profile)
Patna, Feb 20
He graduated as an engineer but
plunged into Bihar politics in the early 1970s. Sophisticated and
soft-spoken Nitish Kumar, known for his development and good governance,
is again set to become Bihar's chief minister.
Nitish Kumar had
resigned last year after his bold step of snapping ties with long-time
ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) proved counter-productive, and
resulted in the Janata Dal-United's rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
With
a commitment to good governance and socialist principles, Nitish Kumar
has once again assured the people of Bihar that if he gets an
opportunity again, he will serve them in the same spirit that he did for
eight and a half years.
He has made it clear that good governance was and will remain his priority.
Nitish
Kumar led the JD-U and its then ally, the BJP, to a sweeping victory in
one of India's most populous and politically key states in both 2005
and 2010, displacing his one-time mentor Lalu Prasad.
Due to
Nitish Kumar's vision and hard work, a lawless, under-developed state
was in the news for development, high growth rate and improved law and
order situation.
"It was the technocrat (engineer) in him that
reflected in his bid to develop Bihar and Nitish Kumar became a 'vikas
purush' (man of development). Even his critics agree that he has been
trying hard for a turnaround of the state," according to JD-U state
president Vashisht Narain Singh, who has been close to Nitish Kumar
since the 1990s.
For one who for years seemed to work under the
shadow of the more vocal and more charismatic Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar
could emerge as a leader in his own right only after he broke away to
chart an independent course in the mid-1990s.
His first stint in
power in Patna was short lived. Becoming chief minister for the first
time March 3, 2000 with the support of half a dozen 'bahubalis'
(criminals-turned-politicians), he had to resign within a week after
failing to prove his majority.
Five years later, he was back in
the saddle, thanks to an alliance with the BJP, a party he had courted
since 1996 but whose Hindutva politics he strongly rejected.
It
was this different stand that he claimed forced him to end the JD-U's
17-year-old alliance with the BJP after it chose then Gujarat chief
minister Narendra Modi as its face for the 2014 polls.
But the break-up proved costly in the general elections, with the JD-U reduced to two seats out of the state's 40.
As the results came out, Nitish Kumar accepted responsibility for the debacle and put in his papers.
Manjhi was picked by him as his replacement.
But Nitish Kumar's differences with Manjhi widened so much that Manjhi was expelled from the JD-U after he refused to resign.
As
chief minister, Nitish Kumar, a man of few words, went about rebuilding
a Bihar that had universally come to be identified with bad politics,
poor governance and low quality of life.
Without noise and
bluster, he relaid roads that had virtually ceased to exist, built
12,000 bridges and completed long delayed infrastructure projects,
appointed over two lakh school teachers to rebuild the shattered
educational system and ensured that doctors attended health centres.
He
cracked down on criminals and gangsters with strong links to politics.
He ordered speedy trials and over 80,000 criminals, many of them
politicians, were convicted.
In no time, Bihar's notorious crime
rate dropped, so much so that young women began to venture out at night
in cities like Patna.
But what won Nitish Kumar his popularity
was the decision to gift bicycles to thousands of girls so that they
could go to their educational institutions without any hassle. Later his
government announced it will provide sanitary napkins to girls.
Like Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar was a product of Bihar's student movement of the 1970s.
A
teetotaller who detests tobacco, the widower has a son. He keeps his
family away from the limelight, with his son Nishant Kumar out of
politics.
Born in 1951, Nitish Kumar was elected to the Bihar
assembly for the first time in 1985. He became president of the Yuva Lok
Dal in 1987 and secretary general of the then undivided Janata Dal two
years later.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1989 and went on to win five parliamentary elections from Bihar.
A
minister of state in the V.P. Singh government, he became railway
minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government but resigned when a
train disaster claimed the lives of about 250 people. He returned to the
cabinet as minister for surface transport and agriculture.
But
all through his innings in Delhi, he never lost sight of his ultimate
goal: govern Bihar to develop it with his pet agenda "development with
justice".
(Imran Khan can be contacted at [email protected])