It is now well understood that Indian politics is undergoing a phase that is termed the “Bharatiya Janata Party-dominated political party system”, with the ruling party, the BJP, having the ability to effectively compete across most States unlike others. The other large national party, the Congress, has a nation-wide presence but is handicapped by severe weaknesses in quite a few States, which it seeks to overcome through State-wise alliances. These alliances benefit the regional parties that are also finding it increasingly difficult to tackle the BJP on their own. The INDIA bloc (Congress, regional parties and the Left) remains a selective State-wise alliance that is determined by the need for unity against the BJP. This is particularly so in some States in western India (Maharashtra for example) and the Hindi heartland (Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) whose polities include long-time regional forces besides the Congress, and where the BJP had a close to 90% success rate in seat winning terms in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In Bihar, the INDIA bloc should fancy a fighting performance — the RJD is the single largest party in the Assembly in seat and vote share terms and the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) of the RJD, the Congress and the Left came very close to upending the BJP-Janata Dal (United) ruling alliance in the 2020 Assembly elections. While Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s never-ending pursuit of alliance-switching has meant that the alliance will lose out relatively on the support base that the JD(U) enjoys among non-Yadav Other and Extremely Backward Classes, the RJD has shown the ability to remain resilient even as the Congress and the Left add to an ideologically coherent anti-BJP voice. The Congress has grown closer to the Mandal parties by emphasising the need for a caste census while the Left remains a small but viable political entity in Bihar because of its base among the poor.

As with other alliances in States such as Tamil Nadu, the ideological coherence and the compatibility of social bases have served as the glue for the INDIA bloc in Bihar but the nature of the constituent parties and their recent histories have thrown up irritants in seat sharing. The Congress’s welcoming of controversial former Member of Parliament, Pappu Yadav, who has faced criminal cases, and his party into its fold, ill-behoves the party’s messaging against the criminalisation of politics. The relative decline of the Mandal parties and the rise of the BJP have made it imperative for the former to reinvent their positions to move beyond their reliance on strongmen and narrow identity politics. While the Congress has done well to reorient its focus on social justice, bringing itself closer to the RJD, it should avoid the temptation to emulate these aspects of old Mandal politics that prioritised casteist identities as the basis for political mobilisation.