The return of Lalu Yadav and why it matters

(NOTE: This article was published in the INDIA TODAY edition dated August 14, 2023)

“Didn’t learn to be afraid, didn’t learn to bow out. Have fought, will fight, won’t be afraid of jail, and will come out a winner in the end.” These were the words that accompanied the Instagram reel that Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav posted of his father, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav, playing badminton at the indoor court of the Patna Secretariat on July 28. Wearing a loose-fitting polo shirt, sweatpants and slippers, the 75-year-old politician looked pleased as he first served, then followed it up with a delicate return, in the video.

The message was unambiguous. That Lalu, who just about eight months ago went through a kidney transplant, is in fine fettle and ready to take on any challenge. Only a few days back, at the party’s Foundation Day event in Patna on July 5, he had thrown one such challenge at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Ukhad ke phenk denge, Narendra Modi ko (we will uproot Narendra Modi),” the Bihar strongman had declared, before switching to chaste Bhojpuri—“jahiya tu na rahi to te tohar ka hoi (what will happen once you lose power)?”—triggering loud cheers from the RJD workers. It was Lalu’s way of letting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government know that he is undeterred by the fresh land-for-job scam chargesheet that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed against him, his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejashwi, his chosen heir.

Age and ill health may have taken a toll on him, but on that day, Lalu seemed to have rediscovered his trademark wit and extraordinary connect, something that many had found lacking when he last campaigned for the Bihar assembly by-election in October 2021. As the former Bihar chief minister spoke, the whole gathering seemed energised. That video of him playing badminton could only come as a reassurance to his partymen that their septuagenarian leader is still very much in the game.

If Lalu is back in the thick of politics ever since he returned to Patna in April-end, after a successful kidney transplant in Singapore in December 2022, it could well be because he has much catching-up to do. The RJD boss missed campaigning in two key elections—the Lok Sabha one in 2019 and for the Bihar assembly in 2020— owing to medical complications as well as imprisonment in the fodder scam cases. Lalu was in jail from December 2017 to April 2021, before securing bail from the Jharkhand High Court. Though he addressed a couple of public meetings in October 2021, he appeared a shadow of his former self—the firebrand leader he was known to be ever since entering the student politics at Patna University in the 1970s. But things seem to have worked out well for him after the transplant, followed by recuperation in Delhi.

In fact, Lalu did not take a break even for a week after his return to Patna on April 28. On May 3, he was seen personally serving fish and chicken curry to the RJD legislators during a get-together at his residence. That personal touch apart, Lalu told his MLAs to tour the state and back the year-old Mahagathbandhan (MGB), or Grand Alliance, government led by Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United)’s de facto supremo Nitish Kumar. Lalu himself has done just that, as was evident during two incidents in July alone. First, when an “ego battle” between the RJD’s education minister Chandrashekhar and an IAS officer threatened to snowball into a major discord between the two alliance partners, Lalu backed Nitish’s decision to continue with the officer who has been tasked with improving the quality of education in government schools. The RJD chief also silenced his old loyalist and legislative council member Sunil Singh, who had called JD(U) minister Ashok Choudhary “untrustworthy”. In fact, in a closed-door meeting, Lalu is reported to have told his party MLAs not to sweat the “small things” and focus on the bigger electoral battle next year.

Though Lalu’s public posturing has been belligerent and homespun, MGB insiders concede that he has had a calming effect on the alliance. Of the 160 MLAs who back the Nitish Kumar government, Lalu’s RJD alone has 79, making it the single-largest party in the Bihar assembly. Yet, instead of flexing his political muscle as perhaps a ‘lesser’ politician may have done, the way Lalu has reined in his overenthusiastic partymen, telling them not to go overboard while asserting their loyalty towards Tejashwi, only goes to show how seasoned a politician-patriarch he is.

If last year, the RJD accepted Nitish’s decision to make two of its ministers resign—sugarcane industry minister Kartik Singh in August 2022 followed by agriculture minister Sudhakar Singh in October—without any demur, it was largely because Lalu wants his party to let Nitish run the government unencumbered. Nitish is known to be a stickler for the rules, who does not like any kind of interference in his working, and Lalu is backing his old friend-turned-foe-turned-friend to the hilt. In fact, unlike during the earlier MGB government that was in power between November 2015 and July 2017, Lalu has not been making calls to bureaucrats as frequently as he used to.

RJD insiders who talked to INDIA TODAY on the condition of anonymity say even before his kidney transplant, Lalu was instrumental in the rapprochement between the two parties (Nitish in July 2017 had broken ties with the RJD and gone back to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, or NDA). Though Tejashwi led the closed-door talks with Nitish that led to the revival of the MGB and the formation of its government in August 2022, those in the know claim it was primarily Lalu who broke the ice and strongly backed the idea of JD(U) and RJD coming back together. In fact, a month before the new government took over, Nitish, who was then heading the NDA regime in the state, visited Lalu in a Patna hospital when he suffered a fracture after a fall on the stairs at home. As Lalu was later airlifted to Delhi, Nitish ensured all medical expenses for the former chief minister’s treatment at AIIMS were paid from the state exchequer.

So is it just emotion that is driving this camaraderie between the two leaders, whose political rivalry has been the stuff of legend? Not really. Lalu knows the power that the RJD and JD(U) pack together. If Lalu commands the support of the formidable M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) bloc, Nitish has the backing of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), Mahadalits and a few other disadvantaged but politically substantive groups in Bihar. In 2015, the two parties, along with the ally Congress, had cornered 178, or 73 per cent, of Bihar’s 243 assembly seats. (Today, along with the Left parties and an Independent MLA, the alliance occupies 160 seats in the assembly, well above the halfway mark of 122.)

The challenge, admits a senior RJD leader who prefers to remain anonymous, is bigger this time. “Narendra Modi is too formidable an opponent to be taken lightly in the general election,” he says. “Lalu knows that with Nitish by his side, the alliance can punch well above its weight, but only if they present themselves as a united force.” No wonder, the RJD boss is doing everything he can to make sure that the alliance stays unbroken.

Another senior party leader who talked to INDIA TODAY on condition of anonymity says the fact that Lalu can reach out to leaders cutting across the political divide, especially his rapport with the Congress leadership, also stands him in good stead. “From Pappu Yadav, who has been critical of Tejashwi Yadav in the past, to Mukesh Sahni, who stormed out of the RJD alliance in 2020, nobody is off limits for Lalu. If Lalu is present and leads from the front, he will inspire greater confidence than Tejashwi can ever do,” the RJD leader concedes.

Though Lalu’s return is unlikely to change the status quo within the party, which, for all practical purposes, is being led by Tejashwi, the patriarch’s presence will definitely boost its electoral prospects. It has been nearly five decades since Lalu first stepped into the Lok Sabha after winning from Chapra at the age of 29 in 1977. Much has changed in the Indian and Bihar political landscape since then, but not the popularity of this shrewd tactician and mass leader. This, despite convictions in the fodder scam cases, the first of which came in 2013 and saw him lose his Lok Sabha membership.

Of course, there is also his role in Nitish’s grand plans of forging Opposition unity at the national level, which gave birth to the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, in Bengaluru on July 18. From cracking a joke with Rahul Gandhi— when the RJD chief asked the Congress leader to trim his beard and get married—during the first Opposition meet in Patna on June 23, to backing Mamata Banerjee at the Bengaluru meet on the issue of the Congress’s and Left’s feuds with her ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, Lalu has shown he is back in the reckoning with his strategies, wit and wisdom.

On July 17, as the septuagenarian leader reached the Taj West End hotel in Bengaluru for a dinner hosted by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on the eve of the Opposition meet, a security officer was seen assisting him as he climbed a few stairs. On everything else, though, the patriarch is on a firmer footing, something the Opposition’s INDIA and the Grand Alliance back home will need to put up a good fight in 2024.

THE CULT OF LALU YADAV

• Was instrumental in the RJD-JD(U) patch-up; has kept his partymen in check, letting Nitish run the one-year-old Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar unencumbered.
• Has a key role to play in Opposition unity at the national level; can reach out to leaders across the political divide, shares a special rapport with the Congress leadership.
• A shrewd tactician and mass leader, his popularity has remained by and large intact, despite convictions in the fodder scam cases.
• Commands support of the formidable Muslim-Yadav bloc; his presence can boost his party’s as well as the alliance’s electoral prospects in 2024.

(The article was published in the INDIA TODAY edition dated August 14, 2023)

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