What Sushil Modi did for Bihar, BJP
To be sure, politicians need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in politics. Sushil Modi was battling with this challenge both within and outside his party
For all its socio-economic similarities with other BIMARU states, Bihar is politically different from them. It is the only state where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not been able to achieve dominance on its own. And yet, it is a state where the BJP enjoyed uninterrupted power for eight years between 2005 and 2013.
As the face of the party in Bihar, Sushil Modi played a major role in getting the BJP on a firm footing in the state. Modi, along with his comrade in the anti-Emergency struggle, Nitish Kumar, was instrumental in creating what analysts have called the “coalition of extremes” in the state. Together, the BJP and the Janata Dal (United) managed to unite upper castes, Dalits, non-dominant OBCs, and even sections of minorities, to bring down the formidable Lalu Prasad Yadav. This political turnaround managed to course-correct what anthropologist Jeffrey Witsoe has termed as “democracy against development” during the Rashtriya Janata Dal rule. Law and order, investor confidence and infrastructural development, and the high economic growth that followed are what the Modi-Kumar duo can rightly claim as their legacy. As the state’s finance minister, Modi led the effort from the front. This is not to say that Bihar does not have economic problems today, but there is no doubt that it would have been worse off without the duo.
To be sure, politicians need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in politics. Sushil Modi was battling with this challenge both within and outside his party. That notwithstanding, it will be fair to say that Bihar would have taken a very different trajectory had Modi not improvised on the BJP’s core politics to make it amenable to a larger coalition. This is exactly why his party and state will miss Sushil Modi.
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