Within two weeks of historian Ramachandra Guha suggesting Nitish Kumar’s name for the position of Congress president, the seasoned Janata Dal (United) leader has reminded Guha of what Tip O’ Neill once said – “all politics is local”. With his resignation as chief minister of Bihar, Nitish has reasserted the urgency of the immediate response to the essence of political sustenance. That’s a major takeaway for all those who were seeking a narrative of anti-BJP electoral formation when the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) of the JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress stormed to power after the assembly elections of 2015.

In terms of his political messaging, Nitish isn’t an easy politician to understand. In distancing himself from his principal ally RJD, Nitish has retained the political initiative which he always wanted even when he had formed the pre-poll alliance with the Lalu Prasad-led party. During the course of his less-than-two-year term as the chief minister of grand alliance government, Nitish had his ways of keeping RJD on its toes. One of the ways of ensuring that was keeping the door of allying with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) always open. From his support for demonetisation to exchanging notes of mutual admiration at the Guru Gobind Singh birth anniversary ceremonies in Patna, Nitish had made it amply clear to the RJD leadership that the alliance wasn’t to be taken for granted, he had other attractive options to explore.

By all accounts, RJD, the largest party with 80 members in the 243-member assembly, had a baggage of liabilities- specific social sections to please and a slew of corruption cases against its top leadership. The party’s need for allowing JD (U) to lead the government, with its tally of 71 assembly seats, was as much guided by caste calculus as it was influenced by the personal political capital of Nitish. The electoral appeal of Nitish has been his brand of governance blended with astute social engineering of non-Yadav OBCs, EBCs, Mahadalits and a section of minorities. Governance and his alliance with the BJP in his earlier stints as Chief Minister (2005-2013) had also cemented his hold over a sizeable section of upper caste votes. His severing of ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was more of a response to a threat perception of working under Narendra Modi’s style of steering NDA rather than the NDA itself. That’s not to rule out the prime ministerial ambitions that Nitish could also legitimately have nurtured in the opposition space.

In the last two years, it seems, Nitish has developed a good working relationship with the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre. That, obviously, has in no small measure being helped by the inconvenience of working with an ally in Patna which is quite capable of punching above its weight. Having placed his two sons, Tejashwi and Tej Pratap, as deputy chief ministers, Lalu could only hope that the spectre of corruption charges didn’t undermine the political sway he had won in 2015 elections. That wasn’t to be.

In hindsight, apparently, the fresh corruption charges and the Central Bureau of Investigation raids on Lalu and his family, particularly charges against deputy chief minister Tejashvi Yadav, provided a context for Nitish to take a call on his political branding and realignment of political forces in the state. While resigning, he marked governance as his principal asset by saying, “It was getting difficult to work” and blended it with branding of probity as he described his resignation as “a call of conscience”. What, however, is interesting is that his exit from 1, Anne Marg might be a case of jumping the gun.

The signs of his realignment with the NDA were clear.  The Prime Minister was quick to laud Kumar’s resignation as an act of “joining the fight against corruption”.

Nitish promptly thanked Modi for his words of praise.

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In all likelihood, 1 Anne Marg isn’t going to change its occupant any time soon. Nitish, expectedly, will lead a new government in Bihar with a new partner. BJP has already sent the letter of support for a Nitish-led government to the Bihar Governor in-charge, an apt culmination of events triggered by the JD (U) leader supporting Ram Nath Kovind as the NDA’s candidate for President. The new government will be sworn in on Thursday in Patna.

In making the ‘local’ central to his political enterprise and governance key to his craft of political communication, Nitish looks at a future in which Lohiaite politics of post-Mandal churning need not tick the ideological boxes designed in the national capital’s seminar rooms and reams of preachy editorials.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @anandvardhan26.