The Congress’s challenges in Bihar | Number Theory

.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, is leading a Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar. While the campaign’s immediate focus is around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral roll, its larger political import is difficult to miss when state assembly elections are just a couple of months away. Gandhi’s long itinerary across over 20 districts is also significant because it is after a long time that Congress’s biggest leader is campaigning in Bihar beyond

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi with Bihar LoP Tejashwi Yadav (in black) during the 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' in Aurangabad on Monday (INC India)

The Congress’s challenges in Bihar

• 
  Congress’s footprint has been falling in Bihar for a long time

  Bihar was the fourth state – Kerala, which elected a communist government in 1957, was the first – in the country to get a non-Congress chief minister when the Mahamaya Prasad Sinha-led government (an alliance between the Jan Kranti Dal and the Samyukta Socialist Party) took office in Bihar after the 1967 assembly elections. 1967 was the first election cycle where the Congress faced serious reverses at the state level even though it retained power nationally. A comparison of Congress’s Lok Sabha seat share in Bihar shows a similar trend. After adjusting for 13 (1962-1971) and 14 (1977 onwards) parliamentary constituencies (PCs) which are in present-day Jharkhand, Congress’s seat and vote share show a fall beginning in the 1960s itself. This number recovered briefly in the 1980 and 1984 elections, but continued to fall subsequently.
• 
  After struggling for a decade against both Lalu Yadav and BJP, the Congress finally decided to play junior partner to the RJD in Bihar

  Congress won just 51 of the 243 assembly constituencies (ACs) in present-day Bihar in the 1990 assembly elections in Bihar, just one-third of the 153 it did in 1985. This was only marginally better than its post-Emergency rout in Bihar, when it was reduced to just 46 ACs. The 1995 elections were even worse, and the party collapsed to just 15 ACs. Things did not change much in 2000, when it contested all 243 ACs again and won just 12. The humiliation of performing abysmally in three consecutive elections forced the Congress into some sort of adjustment with the RJD in the 2005 assembly elections, which has continued in subsequent assembly elections except in 2010, when the Congress did miserably once again. To be sure, even when fighting in an alliance, the Congress has never contested more than 35% of the state’s ACs or PCs.
• 
  Large parts of Bihar have not had a Congress MLA in decades

  This is the most difficult challenge facing the grand old party in the state today. Even by the 2005 October assembly elections in Bihar – Nitish Kumar would form his first full-term government after this election – 69% of Bihar’s ACs had not seen a Congress MLA in at least two decades . Another 22% of them had not had a Congress MLA in a decade. Because the 2008 delimitation changed AC boundaries, a longer-term comparison is not possible for the 2010, 2015 and 2020 elections. However, the Congress’s victories post-2008 delimitation are also very geographically skewed. This essentially means that the Congress does not have an identity beyond being RJD’s ally in Bihar, except in small pockets.
• 
  What does the future hold for the party in Bihar?

  Can Rahul Gandhi’s focus on Bihar revive his party’s fortunes in the state? We will know for sure when the Bihar assembly election results are declared later this year. However, what can be said at the moment is the following. The Congress lost ground in Bihar much before it suffered large scale losses at the national level or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) achieved its current national level dominance. The fact that its best strike rate since at least 1977 – it is difficult to segregate pre-1977 ACs into present day Bihar and Jharkhand – came in 2015, when the RJD and the Janata Dal (United) contested together against the BJP, shows that its electoral fortunes are also deeply linked to the dynamics of caste politics in the state. This is a challenge not just for the Congress but also the RJD since 2005 in Bihar.