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Nitish the Survivor

Nitish Kumar has done it again. He realised that BJP is bad, communal and not trustworthy partner. This is after a tie-up once again with the BJP in 2017. Having come to power in 2005 along with NDA in Bihar, Nitish Kumar was seen as a saviour of Bihar that had seen unprecedented corruption during the long stint of RJD under Lalu and Rabri. He first broke with BJP in 2013 after Modi was made the face of the party to contest the 2014 general election. Came back with the BJP in 2017 and now in 2022 again going back to MGB. 

The pendulum-style politics of Nitish is very interesting. It makes him not unique as we all thought him to be. His one goal is to stay in power and be the CM of Bihar for life. People claim that he has national ambitions. He will be able to galvanise the anti-BJP parties to take on the government in the 2024 election. Let me put this in plain words. This is the end of Nitish Kumar. He will fade away in a year or two. RJD will eat into the JDU seats and there will be some defections to BJP. The fight for Bihar in 2024 will be a straight fight between RJD and BJP and all the other parties including JDU will be watching it from the sidelines. 

The media created Nitish Kumar as a clean and able administrator, in contrast to obviously RJD's Lalu. The bar was very low to start with and Nitish rode on the media bandwagon. But, everthing has a limit and today Nitish is seen as a greedy and ambitious politican who would look the other way on the issue of corruption to achieve his goal. Mamata is seen to be too regional to be the face of the opposition, so the media feels that Nitish could be acceptable to many. Everyone from Mamata, Kejriwal to Nitish feel that if Modi can go from being CM to becoming PM, they too have a chance. Of course, everyone of us have the right to dream and dream big, but reality is different.

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