Motihari, Bihar:
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told NDTV that he is the most qualified to be Prime Minister, but first he needs to win Bihar.
We caught up with Mr Kumar as he arrived onstage at a gathering in Motihari, in North Bihar, to a muted response from the crowd.
The crowd, for this part of Bihar, was thin - just about 5000 strong, surprising for a region that had voted heavily for the BJP-JD(U) alliance in the 2009 elections. Overall the alliance won 32 of the Bihar's 40 Lok Sabha seats. In the 2010 assembly election, they jointly won 206 of 243 seats.
But now, the alliance has broken and Mr Kumar is a lone campaigner, making his somewhat unexciting pitch for a special status for Bihar.
Narendra Modi hovers like a spectre over the proceedings. Mr Kumar has mastered the art of referring to him, without name. He warns the crowd to beware of "those who will descend like a prophet to make false promises."
The depth of Mr Kumar's animus towards Mr Modi surfaces in an interview to us, when we ask him about Mr Modi's apparent popularity, in Bihar.
Taking a dig at his former comrade, Lok Janshakti Party's Ram Vilas Paswan's tie-up with the BJP, Mr Kumar says that the BJP has 'insignificant' allies. And that Mr Paswan is guilty of double standards, given that he had resigned after the Gujarat riots of 2002.
The accusation of double standards against Mr Paswan is ironic. Mr Kumar himself stayed on in the Atal Bihar Vajpayee cabinet as Rail Minister after the Gujarat riots. Rebutting the charge, Mr Kumar says, "But were we in the Gujarat cabinet? We were in Atalji's cabinet and we had full faith in Atalji. We are not justifying what has happened. When we quit, we clarified our stand, that we will not accept any new disputed issue. When our alliance was formed, it was decided that the contentious issues would kept aside and they were. Also that no controversial personality will be brought forward, that was also done. Atalji had acceptability and respect everywhere, but today BJP is in a different avatar and we do not accept it, so we broke away from the BJP."
Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, once Mr Kumar's deputy Chief Minister, and considered a close friend, had a different version of the BJP-JD(U) breakdown. He says, "Now he feels that he has also been Chief Minister for three times, was a Railway Minister, and he didn't want somebody from a backward community to become the Prime Ministerial candidate. Because this is the base of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar and so they can't digest a backward community leader becoming the Prime Ministerial candidate. All these things were there at the back of his mind and because of these he betrayed the mandate and ditched the BJP."
When confronted with this alleged ego clash with Narendra Modi being the reason behind the alliance break up, Mr Kumar rebuts it, by making a startling claim - that he is more qualified than Mr Modi to be PM. "Whether I am a Prime Ministerial candidate or not I am telling you, I was an MP for six terms. I have been a Union Minister of State in the VP Singh government. I handled an important ministry in Atalji's government. I was also an MLA in Bihar. I have been running the government in Bihar for last eight-nine years. I don't have any ego clash. Our party is not so large we do our job. We do work without showing off."
Throwing his hat in the ring, he adds, "There are people who are going around canvassing for themselves. Who has more experience than me? Does he have an experience even of a single day in Parliament?"
By Mr Kumar's reluctant standards, this amounts to a major admission of Prime Ministerial ambitions. The news makes it to the front pages the next day.
But first, he will have to win Bihar. The task looks uphill. Even those who come to his own rally are divided about his government's performance. Some tell us that Mr Kumar as ensured better roads, less crime and benefits for the old, and women. But others butt in angrily, saying Bihar has worsened. They point to rising corruption, and to local works, like water tanks, which are incomplete.
To some extent, the criticism and the praise, suggests the unravelling of the social base created by the JD(U)-BJP alliance, and the creation of new ones: the few who speak in Mr Kumar's support are mostly Muslims, while the voices of anger come from the upper caste.
But the largest group of dissenters at Mr Kumar's rallies, who follow him around, are contract workers, hired by the state government to pad up a failing government system - teachers, health workers, census enumerators. They are angry that they have not been regularised, which ensures better pay.
It appears that the force of unmet aspirations unleashed by the new Bihar, are now returning to haunt Mr Kumar.