Capitalist class has ensured the re-election of Nitish Kumar in Bihar

After a prolonged, six phase election process that continued over several weeks, the results declared for the Bihar assembly elections show the incumbent JDU-BJP alliance, led by Nitish Kumar, having secured a commanding majority of 206 out of a total of 243 seats.

After a prolonged, six phase election process that continued over several weeks, the results declared for the Bihar assembly elections show the incumbent JDU-BJP alliance, led by Nitish Kumar, having secured a commanding majority of 206 out of a total of 243 seats.

It is not a surprising result. Over the past five years, the Nitish Kumar government has opened up many new opportunities for capitalist corporations to invest and expand in this state. The capitalist media promoted Nitish Kumar as the ideal reformer chief minister, as they had done earlier with Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra and Naveen Patnaik in Orissa. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the British DFID and other international organs of finance capital poured millions of dollars into the ‘development’ of Bihar. Today the capitalist media is declaring that the people of Bihar have voted for “good governance” in place of “casteist politics”. However, the oppression of dalits and others on the basis of caste has not ended in Bihar.

As everyone knows, by almost all social and economic indicators, the people of Bihar have suffered the worst kind of exploitation and oppression, even compared to other parts of India. Once famous all over the world for the naturally coloured cottons it exported, Bihar was turned into the most backward region under British colonial rule. The people of Bihar suffered some of the most brutal repression and wanton destruction after the Ghadar of 1857. The most backward feudal type of oppression of peasants and tribal peoples was established by colonialism and preserved by the Indian capitalist class since 1947, alongside ruthless plunder of natural resources. Lakhs of youth leave Bihar every year to study in other parts of the country; and millions of workers emigrate to work in farms, factories and services in many other states.

In recent years, Indian and international capitalist monopolies are seeking to step up their plunder and exploitation of the skilled labour and fertile land of Bihar, on a higher scale than ever before. The Nitish Kumar government that came to power first in 2005 had the mandate from the capitalist class to facilitate more rapid capitalist growth in Bihar. That is the reason behind the sudden increase in the building of roads and super-highways across the state, the more efficient working of some government departments that deal with private investors, and the crackdown on petty criminals and their gangs.

The “good governance and development” plank of the Nitish Kumar government is nothing more than a platform of providing the basic conditions needed to accelerate capitalist growth in Bihar. It is a platform to intensify capitalist exploitation and plunder, without eliminating the feudal remnants.

The re-election of Nitish Kumar is a vote of confidence in his leadership from the capitalist class, headed by the monopolies. Capitalist growth is being presented as the best possible future for Bihar, in the backdrop of decades of under-development and feudal backwardness. The contradictions that are intensifying today in Orissa should be a warning to the people of Bihar, of what the expansion of capitalist monopolies mean for the rights and wellbeing of the toiling masses.

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