Signals from Bihar

Exit polls from Bihar point towards the state voters going in for change and rejecting the status quo. Most exit polls telecast after the last phase of voting on Saturday, November 7 have predicted that the ruling National Democratic Alliance, NDA, coalition will bite the dust. They indicate that the opposition Mahagathbandhan headed by the RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav will be a clear winner.
Exit polls in India have had an uneven success rate, sometimes coming true, and at other times, going way off the mark.The final outcome of the Assembly elections in Bihar will become available on the counting of votes on Tuesday, November 10. If the final results are largely in line with the exit polls, they will signal a sea change in the national polity. They will show that bread and butter issues matter more to the voters. They will also indicate the limitations of the politics of polarisation and the attempts to whip up the national versus anti-national sentiments.
The elections saw once again the BJP raising the spectre of the threats to the  country’s unity posed by so-called anti-national forces. In fact, the threat to the country posed by forces from across the borders was a recurrent theme in the election campaign speeches by the star BJP campaigners including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Significantly, Tejashwi Yadav refused to walk into the trap and instead kept the focus on the central as well as the Nitish Kumar led Bihar government’s failure to tackle the COVID-19 crisis and aftermath effectively. The plight of the Bihari migrants forced to walk back to the state after the COVID-19 lockdown was a case in point.
If the exit polls come true and the JDU-BJP coalition is voted out, it will have a deep impact on the national polity.An immediate impact may be its influence on Assembly elections coming up in other states such as West Bengal and Assam.The Congress as well as other opposition parties will  now have a clear way to tackle the strategy of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dispensation  of raising the national versus anti national divide to garner support.The results will also signal that the Narendra Modi led dispensation is not invincible and can be defeated with the right emphasis on people’s issues.
Let us wait for the final results on 10th November.

(Political Analyst)