No matter which way the numbers are stacked, there is only one clear winner in the long-drawn Bihar Sudoku: A Sikh gentleman generally resident in Delhi who barely intervened in the turmoil of India’s most turbulent state except to give Lalu Prasad Yadav the chance to convert what was a self-inflicted wound in March into suicide in November. When the Almighty was writing Dr. Manmohan Singh’s destiny, He took a lot of care to ensure that every loophole was properly sealed. Nitish Kumar has not yet won the Bihar election. He has only won an opportunity. We will know whether he has converted that opportunity into a hard political victory by this time next year.
If Nitish Kumar believes that he can do everything, he will achieve nothing. Bihar is not suffering just from the sins of Lalu; Lalu was only the most cynical of a long line of chief ministers who compounded a disease that began in the 1960s. It might shock readers to know that Bihar was consistently ranked among the best-administered states in the 1950s; but there is no point discussing how prosperous Bihar was when Chandragupta Maurya was in power.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will be tested on a five-point report card. I was going to put “law and order” at the top but felt, on consideration, that it might be too ambitious. If the new chief minister can ensure order, even if he cannot implement the full majesty of the law, he can claim distinction. There has to be a curb on the dacoits and gunmen who form a parallel, and more effective, administration. He should import high-profile consultants who can draw up, and perhaps oversee, a comprehensive plan that addresses the menace district-wise. On a practical, and politically incorrect level, a few trigger-happy policemen might be needed.
Priority No. 2 will be Naxalites. Bihar shares a long border with Nepal that is porous for criminals, smugglers and those who dress up violence in ideological clothes. The sharp escalation of Naxalite violence across the country is also an indictment of the Union Home Ministry. As far as this terrible problem is concerned, Delhi’s response is to jerk a knee before the cameras whenever a story bursts on the front pages, and retire hurt when the news disappears from public view. Clearly, unlike straight crime, there is a social dimension to this problem, which has to be addressed politically. Nitish Kumar must involve the leftist parties in a bipartisan effort that must be transparent and sincere. The chief minister will probably run dry of his resources of sincerity after a year’s pressures and strains, so it is best that he start doing something right away.
Third: The economy. Nitish Kumar should stop trying to think of the answers, because there is no answer that will take less than fifteen years to implement. He will have long passed his sell-by-date by then. But there is something that can be done, which is a deft combination of the cosmetic and practical. Bihar is littered with tombstones of projects aborted. For decades, its leaders have laid the foundation of grand schemes that never saw as much as a wall being built, let alone a chimney constructed. The chief minister could go back to what had been sanctioned (this will save a lot of time), get a fast-track reassessment done, offer the best terms to industrialists of repute, and bring at least a few tombstones to life. Fourth: Urban renewal. If someone were to control the mosquitoes of Patna, he would be renamed Chandragupta.
Disease is another name for neglect and filth. So far, the city’s services ensure little more than comfort for the residential area of the political class, up to a point. There should be a Ministry for Infrastructure in the Bihar Cabinet, with a politician of some ability heading it, and a strong bureaucrat in charge. To treat a road as a joke, as Lalu did, is to sign the death warrant of the economy.
Finally, the government will be severely tested on Hindu-Muslim relations. So many of Lalu Yadav’s crimes were forgiven because he was absolutely flawless in ensuring peace between communities so easily provoked into violence. His government imploded because even Yadavs and Muslims deserted him in large numbers. Nitish Kumar found a brilliant political answer by creating his core vote around backward castes other than Yadavs, but there had to be a spillover from the Lalu vote to ensure such a comprehensive victory. Lalu was complacent because he was convinced that no one would get a majority, and no one was better than him in cobbling a coalition. Complacency is the blood brother of power.
Nitish Kumar’s problem is accentuated by the fact that the BJP is his ally, and too many of its leaders find Muslim-baiting irresistible. But the challenge is greater than being the good cop of the alliance. Nitish Kumar has to use power to create a vote base as solid as Lalu’s. Only then can he hope to change political equations. If he grows, he will be a potential leader of a Third Front. The “if” should be written in capital letters. A key to his future will be the level of trust he can create among Muslims. I suspect that he will at some point announce a job reservation for backward caste Muslims (akin, in some ways, to the four percent Karnataka model rather than the hurried, ill-thought Andhra scheme that was punctured by the courts). This will create friction with the BJP, which will do him no harm either.
If victors are hard to identify, losers are not. Victors demand applause; losers invite sympathy. The biggest loser in Bihar was Shatrughan Sinha, because he decided to lose when his side was winning. All wars have collateral damage, the serious-sounding term for being shot dead by your own side. Shatrughan Sinha, erstwhile film star and BJP minister pulled off something spectacular: He shot himself dead. No wonder his nickname was Shotgun Sinha. I hope this gives pause to the myth that film stars enable you to win elections. This proposition was always demeaning to the Indian voter.
To collect a crowd is not synonymous with collecting votes. Former film stars make a difference when they become politicians, in the extraordinary manner that N.T. Rama Rao did, or Jayalalitha has done. Lalu Yadav may have suffered a setback, but he is still in play. His fate will be determined by the quality of Nitish Kumar’s performance as chief minister. And thus to the question that I hope has been nagging you: How has Dr. Manmohan Singh become the winner of the Bihar election? In just about every which way.
Defeat in Patna has made Lalu Yadav impotent in Delhi. After the first Bihar elections, Lalu was powerful enough to demand and obtain a disgraceful recommendation to the president dissolving the Bihar Assembly without due consideration. If he had won, he would probably be discussing a better portfolio for himself at the center — for starters. Now, the prime minister can take Lalu’s support for granted. An occasional smile will be sufficient to keep him happy.
A simple fact will explain more. Dr. Manmohan Singh has never been in danger of being destabilized by the BJP-led opposition.
Why would any party of the ruling alliance exchange the comfort of power for the uncertainty of an election? The only party that might conceivably have an interest in another election is one that hopes to do much better. For the past year, voices have been gathering strength in the Congress that, with the BJP in disarray, a midterm election could win the party up to 200 seats. The additional seats would come from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra (where the Shiv Sena is fading into inconsequence). It is axiomatic that another election would mean the end of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s tenure in office, irrespective of how the Congress fared.
The defeat in Bihar has ended all talk of a midterm poll. Unless some seismic event takes place that no one can foresee, the government of Dr. Manmohan Singh is safe for the rest of its tenure. The accidental prime minister has become a politician of substance.

Yesterday’s enemies join hands to help Kashmir victims
Nasim Zehra

FOR Pakistan the donor pledges were a positive development but for now the task and troubles remain on the relief front. In a single day on November 25 three Press reports have appeared to underscore the absolute need to move into high gear if the wave of second deaths has to be averted. Government statements form neither of the stories. According to OCHA figures around 200,000 people living in the Neelum, Jhelum, Allai Valley and Kaghan Valley are vulnerable. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees who said in Balakot that he hadn’t “seen a disaster of these proportions” maintained that their primary task was to ensure that “the people get through winter without tragedy.” He asked the international community to keep intact the recovery the momentum and told them it was “payback time” for a country that hosted 3.2 million Afghan refugees.
The Nato Air commander in Pakistan also warned that in Bagh alone 35,000 people were still unprepared for the harsh winter. On Thursday the Nato Air Commander Andrew Walton, who is heading Nato’s relief effort in Pakistan, underlined that providing food and medicine was “a race in all senses of the word” before winter snow sets in and cuts off communication links. Reports from the Balakot area also suggest that over 100,000 people still remain inaccessible to relief workers. They have no way of protecting themselves against the freezing winter. Their “hope is dying.” The Nato Commander, who is in Pakistan with about a 1000-strong contingent of engineers, doctors and paramedics for relief, termed the response of Pakistani authorities and the Inter-agency coordination “exemplary”. UN agencies have praised the government’s efforts. The Nato forces have been more complimentary. Their task is to provide urgently makeshift relief camps for people in Valleys at high altitudes — at 5,000 feet. This is the population that the army has not been able to cover adequately.
Steve Coll in The New Yorker this week writes about the use the mule contingent but the New York medics group working in high altitude areas talks of how there is minimal relief work conducted in the high terrain. Clearly, in the earthquake zones, the urgency of the task multiplies as the race between what reaches the despairing people first — deadly cold or the shelter and food-is already underway. Significantly, practical engagement in relief work by the government, western armies, civilians and the various Pakistani relief organisations provides these otherwise, mutually contentious groups, an opportunity to find common ground. Today, yesterday’s partners of the anti-Soviet jihad stand violently opposed to each other.
However, this violent opposition stands somewhat diluted in the earthquake hit zones. Paths of many from among these various contending groups have crossed as they carry on the relief work. In the November 21 issue of the New Yorker the American writer Steve Coll documents this in his article. Coll noticed that within a mile radius the Jamaatud Dawa, the US army relief contingent, the Al-Rashid Trust and other NGOs are sharing a work zone. There is a kind of normalcy about the interaction between yesterday’s antagonists in these highly trying times. Grief is often a humanising emotion. It is more so when the destruction is so complete and the suffering so over- whelming. Grief sharing among antagonistic groups in the earth-quake hit nightmarish zones of Azad Kashmir and NWFP has been an intensely personal and emotive experience. The humane task of helping the despairing survivors, has for now united these people of different colour, culture and religion. The tutored and even internalised mutual antagonism is now in suspension.
Musharraf resisted being drawn into the Western and Indian media debate on the involvement of “extremist organisations” in the relief work. In one of the earlier BBC interviews he simply said “no one would be kept away from helping the earthquake victims” but at the same time he said activities of the politic-religious organisations would be closely monitored. Reflecting Musharraf’s views on the ground the army says, “we’re helping everyone not stopping any one.” There is also coordination going on. Many European workers in the Neelum areas are using the ferry service run by the Dawa group for crossing the river. Infact working in close geographical proximity to the religio-political organisations last week the commando of Nato forces in Pakistan said that Nato faced no danger from Islamic organisations in the affected areas. Clearly the motives that have brought relief and rescue teams from thirty different countries may vary but collectively they all have built an admirable chain of humanity.

What lies beneath Israel’s political ‘earthquake’ this week?
Ramzy Baroud

MOST of what has been written or said to depict Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s departure from the Likud party is parable to an ‘earthquake’, the eruption of a volcano and has, without a doubt, turned the Israeli political map ‘topsy-turvy,’ to borrow Haaretz’ Gideon Samet’s phrase. Like an earthquake, it was unforeseeable except to the prudent few, mostly in Israeli political circles who predicted a dead-end in Sharon’s dealings with the Likud, the same political party he helped create 30 years ago.
But acknowledging the significance of the undeniably consequential event is one thing. Succumbing to a flawed analysis that it is a real opportunity to resuscitate the so-called peace process — is entirely a different matter. Similar to his unilateral move to ‘disengage’ from the Gaza Strip earlier this year, Sharon’s decision on November 21 to desert the Likud ship in favour of a new centre-based ‘liberal’ movement a political party tentatively known as the National Responsibility — the right-wing prime minister has managed to once again control the media discourse surrounding his newest quest.
Careful exploration of the US media’s coverage of Sharon’s announcement that he, a 77-year-old leader with a long history of political extremism and longer history of war crimes, has become a ‘centrist’ would reveal a bizarre finding: the media almost immediately accepted Sharon’s new self-designed credentials. Associated Press writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti perceived the event as part of Sharon’s ‘slow metamorphosis from hawk to moderate.’ Bloomberg.org rushed, hours after Sharon’s move, examining the opinion of mostly pro-Israeli apologists. “Israel’s political upheaval may advance Mideast peace prospects” it hastily concluded. Alison Caldwell, of Australia’s ABC Radio, referred to Sharon and other Likud defectors as “the more progressive members” of the right wing party. The depiction of Sharon as a moderate, risking it all to salvage the peace process, along with his more progressive colleagues is a misguided, if not an embarrassing inference, to say the least.
While one can decipher the source of the upsurge in Sharon’s reputation in the media as a ‘liberal politician’ — his decision to disengage from Gaza being the most obvious — one cannot help but wonder whether Sharon’s enthusiasts who hurryingly registered his renewed ‘commitment’ to the road map were even aware of his concurrent decision to further expand three major illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories — Maale Adumim, Adam and Ariel. If they were aware of his future designs, wouldn’t responsible journalism compel reporting that the road map calls for the halting of settlement expansion for it shall prejudice the outcome of any final status negotiations? However, the ongoing portrayal of the process of split-up and formation in Israeli politics as one with the potential of determining the future of the peace process and the omission of every other fact that may negate such an assertion if not entirely.
True, the upheaval and subsequent reshuffling that recently took place among the Labour Party rank had more to do with redefining Israel’s priorities than achieving peace with the Palestinians. The deposing of the elitist Deputy Prime Minister and former Labour Party leader Shimon Peres, in favour of the more socialist-like Amir Peretz is in essence an attempt to reroute the government’s focus and resources to poorer Israeli communities, whose plight has deteriorated as a result of the government’s endless spending on its ongoing illegal settlements projects in the West Bank. The changes in the Israeli political scene must not be discounted as an exclusively Israeli affair in its possible outcome or dismissed as inconsequential to the conflict. However, to exaggerate its meaning to the peace process is to once again allow Sharon’s design to prevail, placing Palestinians under yet more pressure to ‘reciprocate’ while their land is being actively stolen, as their aspiration for a meaningfully sovereign state is gravely diminished.