Nitish Kumar

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Nitish Kumar (born 1 March 1951) is an Indian politician.

He has been the current Chief Minister of Bihar, a state in India, since 2017 and has served in that position on five previous occasions.

He has also served as a minister in India's Union Government. Kumar is a member of the Janata Dal (United) political party.

He endeared himself to Biharis, who were used to low hopes in previous regimes, ensuring that doctors served in primary health centers, electrification of villages, paving of highways, and reducing female illiteracy by half, turning around a lawless state by cracking down on criminals and doubling the income of the average Bihari.

However, after a political crisis in Bihar, he returned to office in February 2015 and secured the state elections of November 2015.

He was elected as the national president of his party on April 10, 2016.

Following the appointment of Tejashwi Yadav, the Deputy Chief Minister and RJD representative, in a First Information Report alleging misconduct filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, he resigned again on July 26, 2017 as the Chief Minister of Bihar due to differences with the coalition partner, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).

Hours later, he joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, which had formerly been the opposition, and secured a majority in the assembly.

On the following day, he became Chief Minister again.

Early life

Kumar was born in Bakhtiarpur, Bihar, on March 1, 1951. His father, Kaviraj Ram Lakhan Singh, was an ayurvedic scholar, and his mother, Parmeshwari Devi, was a yogi. Nitish is a member of the Kurmi agricultural caste. "Munna" is Nitish Kumar's Nickname.

In 1972, he received a degree in Electrical Engineering from Bihar College of Engineering (now NIT Patna). He joined the Bihar State Electricity Board, half-heartedly, and then shifted to politics. Manju Kumari Sinha (1955-2007) married Manju Kumari Sinha (1972-2007), and the couple has one son. Manju Sinha died in New Delhi on May 14 due to pneumonia.

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Early political career

Kumar belongs to a socialist class of politicians. During his early years as a politician he was associated with Ram Manohar Lohia, S. N. Sinha, Karpuri Thakur, and V. P. Singh. Kumar participated in Jayaprakash Narayan's movement between 1974 and 1977 and joined the Janata party headed by Satyendra Narain Sinha.

Kumar fought and first time won his election to the state assembly from Harnaut in 1985. In the initial years, Lalu Prasad Yadav was backed by Kumar as leader of the opposition in Bihar Assembly in the year 1989 but Kumar later switched his loyalty to BJP in 1996, after winning his first Lok Sabha seat from Barh.

The Janata Dal had survived the splits in past when leaders like Kumar and George Fernandes defected to form the Samata Party in 1994, but it remained a baseless party after the decision of Yadav to form Rashtriya Janata Dal in 1997. The second split took place prior to Rabri Devi assuming power which resulted in Janata Dal having only two leaders of any consequence in it, namely Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. Paswan was regarded as the rising leader of Dalits and had the credit of winning his elections with unprecedented margins. His popularity reached to the national level when he was awarded the post of Minister of Railways in the United Front government in 1996 and was subsequently made the leader of Lok Sabha. His outreach was witnessed in the western Uttar Pradesh too, when his followers organised an impressive rally at the behest of a newly floated organisation called Dalit Panthers.

Sharad Yadav was also a veteran socialist leader but without any massive support base. In the 1998 Parliamentary elections, the Samata Party and Janata Dal, which was in a much weaker position after the formation of RJD ended up eating each other's vote base. This made Kumar merge both the parties to form Janata Dal (United).

In 1999 Lok Sabha elections Rashtriya Janata Dal received a setback at the hand of BJP+JD(U) combine. The new coalition emerged leading in 199 out of 324 assembly constituencies and it was widely believed that in the forthcoming election to Bihar state assembly, the Lalu-Rabri rule will come to an end. The RJD had fought the election in an alliance with the Congress but the coalition didn't work making state leadership of Congress believe that the maligned image of Lalu Prasad after his name was drawn in the Fodder Scam had eroded his support base. Consequently, Congress decided to fight the 2000 assembly elections alone.

The RJD had to be satisfied with the communist parties as coalition partners but the seat-sharing conundrum in the camp of National Democratic Alliance made Kumar pull his Samta Party out of the Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan faction of the Janata Dal. Differences also arose between the BJP and Kumar as the latter wanted to be projected as the Chief Minister of Bihar but the former was not in favour. Even Paswan also wanted to be a CM face. The Muslims and OBCs were too divided in their opinion. A section of Muslims, which included the poor communities like Pasmanda were of the view that Lalu only strengthened upper Muslims like Shaikh, Sayyid and Pathans and they were in search of new options.

Yadav also alienated other dominant backward castes like Koeri and Kurmi since his projection as the saviour of Muslims. It is argued by Sanjay Kumar that the belief that, "the dominant OBCs like the twin caste of Koeri-Kurmi will ask for share in power if he (Yadav) seeks their support while the Muslims will remain satisfied with the protection during communal riots only" made Yadav neglect them. Moreover, the divisions in both the camps made the political atmosphere in the state a charged one in which many parties were fighting against each other with no visible frontiers. JD(U) and BJP were fighting against each other on some of the seats and so was the Samta Party. The result was a setback for the BJP, which in media campaigns was emerging with a massive victory. RJD emerged as the single largest party and with the political manoeuvring of Lalu Yadav, Rabri Devi was sworn in as the Chief Minister again. The media largely failed to gauge the ground level polarisation in Bihar. According to Sanjay Kumar:

Even after serving imprisonment in connection with the 1997 scam, Lalu seemed to relish his role as the lower-caste jester. He argued that corruption charges against him and his family were the conspiracy of the upper-caste bureaucracy and media elites threatened by the rise of peasant cultivator castes.

In 2004 General elections, Lalu's RJD had outperformed other state-based parties by winning 26 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. He was awarded the post of Union Railway minister but the rising aspirations of the extremely backward castes unleashed by him resulted in JD(U) and BJP led coalition to defeat his party in 2005 Bihar Assembly elections.

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Awards and recognition

• Anuvrat Puraskar, by Shwetambar Terapanthi Mahasabha (Jain organisation), for enforcing total prohibition on liquor in Bihar, 2017
• JP Memorial Award, Nagpur's Manav Mandir, 2013
• Ranked 77th in Foreign Policy Magazine' top 100 global thinkers 2012
• XLRI, Jamshedpur Sir Jehangir Ghandy Medal for Industrial & Social Peace 2011
• "MSN Indian of the Year 2010"
• NDTV Indian of the Year – Politics, 2010
• Forbes' "India's Person of the Year", 2010
• CNN-IBN "Indian of the Year Award" – Politics, 2010
• NDTV Indian of the Year – Politics, 2009
• Economics Times "Business Reformer of the Year 2009"
• Polio Eradication Championship Award 2009, by Rotary International
• CNN-IBN Great Indian of the Year – Politics, 2008
• The Best Chief Minister, according to the CNN-IBN and Hindustan Times State of the Nation Poll 2007