But one must give full credit to Nitish Kumar, who by political acumen and administrative capability managed to trounce the man, who had such a powerful stranglehold over Bihar politics. He systematically countered Lalu on the all the fields and just not only relied on the slogan of good governance. To counter Lalu’s grip on caste politics he stitched his own alliance and empowered the Extreme Backward Castes.
Similarly, to weaken the Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan and to challenge the monopoly of Dussadhs and Ravidas (Chamars) in the Schedule Caste politics he coined a new concept of Maha Dalit.
The 20 per cent reservation to the Extreme Backward Castes among the Other Backward Castes in the urban and local civic bodies was a master-stroke. So was the decision to increase the percentage of women from 33 to 50. The rise in women voting percentage is largely attributed to this factor. In rural areas of Bihar, where there is large-scale male migration to other states, women have come to play a more decisive role. Nitish realized this fact very well.
The empowerment of the EBCs and women was enough to shatter the old order at the grassroots level of democracy.
Nitish succeeded where the Extreme Backward Caste leader, Karpoori Thakur, did not. True it would be unfair to compare the two as the situation in late 1970s was quite different. But it is also true that the formula of separate reservation for the Extreme Backward Castes mooted at the time of Karpoori Thakur did not yield the desired result. In contrast their empowerment at this crucial post-Mandal juncture worked.
Nitish got it all easy because of another reason. If prolong incumbency factor was heavily loaded against Lalu Yadav the Congress party too did all to inflict wounds on itself.
Just when the Upper Castes were expressing their anger and ganging up against Nitish, as they were upset with him over the reported move to enact Bataidari law to empower the sharecropper––who were mostly Backwards and Dalits––the Congress party decided to do something unexpected. Instead of posing as an alternative it decided to change the horse in the mid-stream. It overhauled its organization only a couple of months before the announcement of the election dates on September 6.

Though initially the Grand Old Party of the Indian politics was expected to perform much better it failed to capitalize on the opportunity provided to it by the fast changing politics of the state in earlier months of 2010.

It is true that in the last few years the party was always in the news for all the wrong reasons––defeat and infighting. But when it got an opportunity to rise to the occasion it replaced its state party chief Anil Kumar Sharma, a man from landed Bhumihar caste, with equally inexperienced man with weak support base, Chaudhary Mahboob Ali Quaisar. The latter was not at all prepared for such a responsibility. Honestly speaking he got too little time to understand the ground reality and the condition of the party.

The Upper Castes became disillusioned. As they can not fall back on the RJD-LJP alliance for obvious reasons they were bound to switch their loyalty back to the NDA, which changed its stand on the issue of sharecropping.

The complete decimation of Congress, a national party, along with RJD and LJP, also led to the rise in fortune of the BJP. Everyone was expecting the Janata Dal (United) to do better but even the BJP state leaders were not expecting that their own party would perform so well. It surpassed the figure of 2000 Assembly election when in the undivided Bihar it won 67 seats.

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