Bihar, May 04: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is back to doing what he knows best: establishing a direct rapport with the people. Though the assembly elections are six months away, the Chief Minister is already in election mode.
Nitish kicked off his Vishwas Yatra last week to thank people who had reposed faith in him by voting him to power in the last assembly polls and win their confidence again for a second term.
During his latest yatra through the countryside, Nitish has been interacting with people in remote villages to take stock of the numerous welfare schemes initiated by his government in the last four- and- a- half years.
In the past five years, he has undertaken a number of yatras like Nyay yatra ( march for justice), Vikas Yatra ( development march), Dhanyawad Yatra ( thanksgiving tour) and Pravas Yatra ( village sojourn). He apparently believes that there is no better recipe for electoral success than to win over the people by spending time in their midst.
It is not without reason as five years ago, the voters in Bihar had rejected Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad for the first time in 15 years, after Nitish undertook a yatra across the state. Last year, he went on to spending some nights in villages during another yatra before the parliamentary elections. Nitish had ostensibly undertaken the tour to get feedback from the people on the performance of his government but his real purpose was to establish direct contact with the people ahead of the polls.
He is the first Chief Minister in the state to have spent nights in distant villages, shared meals with the people in their houses and tried to sort out their problems on the spot. Nitish says that the idea behind such yatras was to take governance to the people’s doorstep. This paid him rich dividends as the National Democratic Alliance ( NDA) won 32 of the state’s 40 Lok Sabha seats.
His latest yatra underlines the same belief. In the first few days of his tour, he visited public distribution shops ( PDS) to detect irregularities, spent time in the classrooms of government schools to assess what the children are learning and met the poorest of the poor to know whether they had benefited from schemes like the Indira Awas Yojna, etc.
He has also made it a point to visit the house of any worker of his party in the district for dinner.
All this has apparently endeared him to the people and made him the common man’s chief minister. But he has not forgotten his nitty- gritty of politics in the dusty lanes of Bihar’s countryside. I N HIS addresses at the rallies during the yatra, the Chief Minister lists the development work being carried out by his government but he also makes it a point to take on the union government, accusing it of working against the interest of the state. But this time, Nitish has not restricted himself to his village expeditions alone. In between his hectic schedule he does not forget to post his views on his blog to address the large number of Biharis who are living outside the state. His bilingual blog has elicited great response from the expatriate Biharis who have lauded his development efforts in the state.
While traversing the countryside, Nitish also tries to be in touch with the Bihari diaspora.
He knows that there is no better way to hold political fort in Bihar than to connect with the people, without the trappings of a chief minister.
—Agencies