The Patna Protocol

An epic battle is underway in the proverbial badlands of Bihar, where many political lives swing between irrelevance and renewal. Even as cracks appear in the artificial alliance of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, the BJP wants more than a victory. It is fighting for a mandate worthy of India's most popular politician and its unsurpassed campaigner. Narendra Modis next phase of modernisation will begin from the backwardness of Bihar, writes PR Ramesh from Patna.

- PR Ramesh

On a warm Tuesday in the middle of September, a few anxious representatives of India Inc, worried about the hurdles slowing the nation’s economic reforms process, called on Rahul Gandhi, vice-president of the Indian National Congress, at his 12 Tughlak Lane residence in the Capital. Among the things worrying them was the inability of political parties to agree on an implementation deadline for the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Gandhi, according to one member of the group that met the leader, plainly indicated that it was not the proposed tax itself that bothered him and his party, but the regime in power at the Centre. The main opposition party, not too long ago the prime mover of GST, had proven a significant barrier in the passage of the bill designed to give reforms their much-needed momentum in aid of growth.

So determined had the Congress been to thwart the Narendra Modi-led Government in Parliament on the tax that, in early September, a vexed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had to announce the jettisoning of a proposed special session of Parliament to get quick endorsement for the bill. While it had been okayed by the Lok Sabha, the bill had not found adequate support in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA needs majority support to press forth its agenda. Any large state that the BJP wins will bolster its numbers here.