Nitish Kumar ... No where to go

Nitish Kumar is a nowhere man now and he will do another somersault because the BJP and Shah are cannibalising him and without an ally he is negligible. He will still prefer to walk out, go it alone and become a martyr allying with the winner of 2019 ... says a senior JDU leader.

• Nitish Kumar has a soul which troubles him only when he has political power at stake. From being a contender for the PM's office to now being reduced to Shah’s collateral damage it has been a sharp and steep fall for Nitish Kumar.
• Yesterday’s loss of the Jokihat seat to the ally RJD, he betrayed was the latest in the series of reverses Nitish Kumar has faced after he joined hands with erstwhile bête noire Narendra Modi. 
• The latest in the serial snubs is Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari publicly turning down his demand for special status for Bihar, Nitish Kumar has had to repeatedly swallow his pride.
• Nitish Kumar’s humiliation at the hands of the Modi and Shah duo has a larger lesson to all the NDA allies of BJP. AP Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu reportedly told senior Congress leaders that he does not want to become Nitish Kumar in the hands of the BJP.
• Even Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena supremo who ended the longest running alliance of the BJP breaking ties has privately mocked Nitish Kumar’s plight. 
• The biggest lesson is how dangerous the BJP under Shah and Modi has become to its partners, that the Akali Dal lost its traditional seat it had retained for 20 years to the Congress in the by-polls yesterday, must be realizing. 
• Shah’s arrogant treatment of Nitish Kumar, his repeated insults, his gobbling up of the JDU’s political space and the recent warning that the BJP will not make any concessions in seat sharing have all been observed by the fence-sitting opposition leaders. Amit Shah's plans to cut Nitish Kumar and JDU down to size and grab more Lok Sabha seats is an open secret in Bihar. So much so that Nitish Kumar who had used Rahul Gandhi as a scapegoat to walk out of the alliance is now sending feelers to the Congress to bail him out.
• Nitish Kumar has also reached out to “friend” West Bengal CM Mamta Banerjee, who was his colleague in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. Much to his consternation Banerjee bluntly told him “Modi is no Vajpayee. He will eat you up alive”.
• Left with no options, Nitish Kumar might break all alliances and is likely to go "Solo" in 2019 General elections, like Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena supremo. Amit Shah is likely to eat humble pie in front of Thackeray as Maharashtra accounts for the second largest number of Lok Sabha seats (48), but Nitish Kumar will be given no quarter. But it is unlikely that Thackeray will give in to Shah’s sweet talk but Nitish Kumar is desperate for any BJP deal.
• Navin Patnaik, Odisha CM has now reached out to the leaders of the united opposition after seeing how the BJP treats allies. Patnaik already had a quiet meeting with Sonia Gandhi. Naveen Patnaik is likely to make some joint moves with the united opposition as Rahul Gandhi is in touch with him. Patnaik realises the writing on the wall that the Modi wave is over and hence sitting on the fence is no longer a feasible option.
• Shah is facing allies bleed away from him due to his shortsighted pursuit of winning every electoral battle that has compelled divided opposition to get united for survival. 
• Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, is acting as a catalyst of opposition unity having brought together opposite community leaders Jignesh Mevani and Hardik Patel in Gujarat and giving BJP a fight and fright.
• The Congress's new MPCC chief Kamalnath is negotiating with Mayawati for an alliance in MP which would add at least another 4-6% Dalit votes. The Congress is committed to reaching out and creating a rainbow opposition coalition across the country. And uneasy Shah has put in CBI on the job of breaking the BSP away.
• But as the Air Asia case registered against Ajit Singh on the eve of the Kairana result showed that vendetta politics of Modi and Shah have diminishing returns. The leaders being targeted are more determined to band together. Sharad Pawar of the NCP, who Modi hailed as his political guru, has also ended his tacit understanding with Modi and is now a prime mover of the united opposition.

However hard Amit Shah tries, it seems that he is unable to split and divide the opposition. The BJP’s  unprincipled power grabs are now working against it. Sources close to Nitish Kumar says that he thought Modi was here to stay. The same Nitish Kumar now privately says that Modi was an accidental PM. A bubble on a wave which will burst in the big fight of 2019. 

Nitish Kumar’s somersault has now become a statutory warning to the united opposition - ally with the BJP at your risk.

Dashrath Manjhi breaks a mountain

  

  

• Dasarath Manjhi (1934-2007), an illeterate daily wage earner, shot into limelight after he constructed a 360 feet long, 30 feet high and 25 feet wide passage through Gehlour hills with a hammer, chisel and nails working day and night for 22 years from 1960 to 1982. His feat reduced the distance between Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya district (Bihar) from 55 km to just 15 km, bringing him international acclaim.
• He resolved to build the road after his wife, Falguni, died of injuries on the way to the hospital in Wazirganj.
• Dashrath Manjhi belonged to Bihar’s Musahar community, nearly 98% of them are landless and not even 1% of them are literate, which makes them the community with the country’s lowest literacy rate. 
• After finishing his epic project he met the brass of the state administration with a request to construct a metalled road through the mountain.
• When Manjhi had met Nitish Kumar at a janata durbar in July 2006 in Patna, Nitish Kumar stood up in reverence to the man with Himalayan resolve and made him sit on the Chief Minister’s chair. 
• The state government had allotted a five-acre plot to Manjhi in Karjani village, which he donated for construction of a hospital. The government had recently announced to name the hospital after Manjhi. Everybody is now waiting for the six-bed Dasrath Manjhi Hospital to open in Dasrath Nagar. An additional public healthcare centre providing OPD services at Gehlaur is all that they have in the name of medical care.
• The mountain man’s only son and daughter in-law are handicapped and the family lives in abject poverty. For his own family, Manjhi could do nothing more than procuring an Indira Awaas Yojna unit.
• Dashrath Manjhi, the septuagenarian ‘mountain man’ ['pahad purush' to locals] of Gehlour died at the AIIMS, New Delhi in 2007 from cancer of gall bladder. When he died at 73, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had reached his village to receive his body and offered a state funeral. 
• In Manjhi’s own words, "What I did is there for everyone to see. When God is with you, nothing can stop you. I will keep working for the development of the villages here so long I am alive. I am neither afraid of any punishment from any government department for my work nor am I interested in any honour from the government".
• "It is a sad story. A state that spends millions of rupees for decoration of ministers' houses failed to fulfil his dream of building a metalled road through the mountain," said Arun Singh, a journalist who first discovered Manjhi in the 1990s. "Manjhi died a frustrated man. His work was neither recognised nor awarded. But people will remember him and his story will inspire many," Arun Singh, who knew Manjhi for over a decade, told.

Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for his beloved wife Mumtaz, the world's greatest monument of love. Thousands of labourers took more than 20 years to build the Taj Mahal. Dashrath Manjhi' monument of love may not be as beautiful, but is more awe-inspiring than Shah Jahan's feat. 

Read the detailed article

MOUNTAIN MAN DASHRATH MANJHI

If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished.

Mountains can be crumbled into atoms .. Swami Vivekanda

Eventhough Manjhi was breaking mountain out of his intense love for his wife, he was also making a huge contribution to his fellow villagers who stands benefited of his arduous work. It is so much easy to appreciate but so much difficult to do that too day & night for 22 years. Manjhi's work is second only to the Chinese man Liu Guojiang after he spent 56 years of his life building a 6,000-step mountain staircase for his wife's convenience, although she doesn’t go down the mountain that much.. In 2001, a group of adventures were exploring the forest, they surprisingly found the elderly couple and the over 6,000 stairs of hand carved ladder.

Nitish Kumar, CM of Bihar for 6th time!

On July 26, 2017, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has resigned, citing irreconcilable differences with ally RJD on the issue of corruption charges against his deputy Tejashwi Yadav. Legislators of NDA constituents and JD(U) will elect Nitish Kumar as their leader, Sushil Kumar Modi says; BJP will be the part of the government.

On July 28, 2017, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar won the floor test in the State Assembly. Nitish Kumar and the BJP, won the test with all of their 131 votes intact. They needed 122 votes to win. The Opposition garnered 108 votes. 

The Bihar elections 2015 saw the coming together of JD(U), RJD, and Congress as Grand Alliance that was voted to victory. Out of 243 seats, JD(U) bagged 71 seats, RJD 80 and Congress 27, totalling 178. BJP's previous tally of 91 was reduced to only 53 seats. Nitish Kumar became the chief minister of Bihar for the fifth time and RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's son, Tejaswi Yadav, became the deputy chief minister.

• Earlier in 2013, Nitish Kumar left the NDA after Modi was declared the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. A BJP leader quipped "We did not leave him, but he left us in 2013".
• Modi tweets “For the bright future of the country, and especially Bihar, it is the need of the hour to rise above political differences and join the fight against corruption.” Political differences and immoral alliances can't be equated.
• In 2015 Bihar elections, Modi in his aggressive campaign, addressing over 30 rallies and announced Rs 1.25 lakh-crore development aid package and failed with no action till date. The PM said the package would be in addition to Rs 40,657 crore pledged to ongoing highway and power projects bringing the total to Rs 1.65 lakh crore, besides Rs 8,500 crore of unused money from Bihar’s last central package.
• Citizens can see through such moves of parties suddenly getting bright ideas on development a month before the elections. People may be happy to take the benefit but they will also ridicule it and do their own thing. Biharis did not go for Modi's dangled Rs 1.25 lakh crore carrot. They preferred 'work on the ground'. It is BJP leadership's gross underestimation of Aam Aadmi's intelligence.
• Similar is the fate of Modi's development packages announced to Sikkim and J&K.
• BJP does not favour mid-term polls in Bihar. When it is 'elections ka jumla,' all is fair, as Amit Shah says.
• In the existing alliance Nitish Kumar is junior partner to Lalu Prasad Yadav where as his in new alliance with BJP he will be dominant partner. That makes all the difference apart from bringing him closer to Delhi's power corridors.
• BJP even though mandated to sit in opposition will now occupy positions of power and rule the state, albeit immorally.
• After Jayalalitha's death, Modi's brazen attempt to meddle in Tamilnadu without even a single MP/MLA seat for BJP, were stalled by Sasikala's adamancy which landed her in jail with a quick judgement in a 20 year old disproportionate assets case.

Nitish Kumar Gymnastics - Cartoon by Dr. Subramanian Swamy

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, 

the great difficulty lies in enabling the government first to control the governed; 

and in the next place obligate it to control itself.

How can an unprincipled fight corruption with immorality?

My View:
After Indira Gandhi came back to power in Jan 1980, Bhajan Lal the then Janata Party's CM in Haryana immediately defected with a huge chunk of Janata Party's MLAs to Congress and continued as CM. This brazen act made him notorious as an exemplar of 'Aayaram Gayaram' culture in which opportunist politicians show no principles & loyalty. Nitish Kumar's brazan acts of today are similar to that of Bhajanlal then. In Indian Politics there are no permanent friends; no lasting principles & nothing else except any & every method to stay put in power. Nitish Kumar on one hand talks about fighting corruption of Lalu Prasad Yadav's son and on other hand resorts to much worst political & moral corruption to retain his CM chair by jumping into NDA. People of Bihar are betrayed by all politicians. Their 2015 mandate stands mangled. Corruption exists in all walks of life but politics of immorality, unprincipled and spiritual corruption is the worst of all. There may not be immediate loss of anything to public at large but its inherent effects in long run are incalculable.