Shifting Alliances in Bihar

The grand alliance in Bihar between Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, in which the Congress too was accommodated in the April-May 2004 general elections, was based on short-term goals. It was the desire for self-preservation rather than the lofty goal of secularism that got the two leaders to bury the hatchet. The façade could have been maintained for a longer period, but not when the elections to the Bihar assembly were round the corner and not when there was such a sharp polarisation of the political landscape in the state between pro- and anti-Lalu social forces.