By Eva Cheng
The Hindu-fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the leading party in the 24-party coalition that has ruled India since October, has seized power through the back door in the country's second most populous state of Bihar despite failing to win enough
seats to gain that right at the state's February 12-22 assembly elections.
Bihar has a population of more than 100 million people. The incumbent ruling party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), won 124 seats. This was more than any other party and entitled the RJD — according to constitutional guidelines and tradition — to form government if it could get enough coalition partners.
While the RJD was trying to form a government, the BJP, backed by minor partners and with the blessing of the state governor, sneaked in and installed itself as Bihar's government.
A parliamentary vote of no confidence in the BJP state government has been scheduled before March 13. Bourgeois parties such as the RJD and Congress have, in collaboration with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a social democratic party, threatened a bandh (a general strike) in Bihar should the BJP survive. The Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (Liberation) (CPI-ML) will hold a separate bandh.
The CPI-ML has a significant mass base in Bihar and has held six assembly seats for some years. Since the February poll, the CPI-ML is the left party with the most seats in the Bihar Assembly. While the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the CPI-M are considerably bigger nationally, they did poorly in the Bihar Assembly: the CPI won just only five seats (down from 26 in 1995) and the CPI-M won two seats (down from six).
Before the elections, six CPI Bihar Assembly broke away to form a pro-RJD group. A few other CPI assembly members, together with some CPI office bearers, joined the RJD outright.
The CPI-M has done poorly despite securing backing of the RJD in a politically dubious partnership. The CPI had also been in alliance with bourgeois ruling establishments in Bihar, but this time it entered into a seat-sharing scheme with the CPI-ML under which the two parties would campaign for the other's candidates where they were not fielding their own.
As an influential revolutionary left party in Bihar, the CPI-ML is treading a delicate path. In voting against the BJP government in the no confidence motion, as the CPI-ML says it plans to do, in practical terms it is supporting the RJD to form government as a "lesser evil".
The RJD, during its reign in Bihar in the 1990s, has enjoyed mass appeal because its leader and Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav belongs to the "backward" Yadav caste that makes up 11% of Bihar's population. The RJD's populism is based on anti-feudal posturing.
Despite its rhetoric, the RJD regime has proved to be keen in defending the interests of the upper classes and castes. In 1997, Yadav was formally charged with involvement in a financial scam, triggering a broad campaign within Bihar for his resignation. The CPI-ML was a key force in that campaign.
CPI-ML Polit Bureau member B. Sivaraman, speaking to Green Left Weekly from Delhi, said that if the BJP government is defeated in the no confidence motion and the RJD seeks in turn a vote of confidence, the CPI-ML would abstain in order not to prevent the RJD forming a government.
"If and when the NDA [the BJP-led coalition] government is voted out, and the question of supporting one bourgeois government against the other is raised, the question of which is the 'greater evil' would concretely come to the fore", Sivaraman said.
"Even if there is the slightest margin available for the CPI-ML to maintain an independent stand without openly supporting an RJD government, we would go for that. But if our support becomes crucial, then we must consider that. But that would be the last resort."
While violent suppression of working class resistance is a daily occurrence in India, it was particularly bad in Bihar. Private armies, employed by landowners and other ruling class elements, are regularly deployed.
During the Bihar elections, members and supporters of the CPI-ML were subjected to repeated raids, bombings, shootings, arrests and other attacks by opponents and by the police, resulting in the deaths of at least two supporters and many serious injuries.