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Ishwari Bajpai is Senior Advisor at NDTV; he has been a journalist for 30 years, and has covered the elections since 1984.)
"Lijye teer aur bhujaye lantern" may draw a ripple of applause for beleaguered Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as he campaigns in Saran, North Bihar, but it is an outdated battle cry.
In 2014, Lalu's lantern is outshining Nitish's teer or arrow as both try to keep Bihar from falling to the Modi juggernaut. And that is what the election has boiled down to in Bihar: Narendra Modi.
Whatever the result in Bihar, there is no question that Modi has been able to define the election as a referendum on him. Wave or no wave, he is the single talking point amongst voters and politicians. Enormous credit must go to his propaganda machine - even in the smallest village in North Bihar, the watermelon-seller talks about Modi. And not just Modi as another heavy-hitter, but Modi as the man who has developed Gujarat and says will develop India.
The people of Bihar, seeped in poverty, have lived with hope. It was that hope that drove them from the Congress to the hope Lalu offered of caste upliftment. When Nitish brought the hope of good governance, he won their support. Both to some extent came true, but poverty has remained the story for much of Bihar.
Whether the hope parented by Modi's promises of economic vitality will translate into reality is tomorrow's story. Right now, there is a hunger to see him.
At a large public meeting in Hajipur, Modi is applauded as he promises the Gujarat development miracle of 24 hours of electricity to an audience that lived with four hours of power supply under Lalu and gets about 12 hours a day now with Nitish. As he attacks the "Ma-Beta non-performing government" pivoted by the Gandhis, Modi promises fast-pace development and no corruption if he is elected.
The large crowd, baking in the mid afternoon sun, are not all committed BJP supporters. Many have come to listen to him, to gauge the phenomenon they have heard about and perhaps decide whether to cast their vote for him. They cut across castes and occupations and listen carefully to what he has to say.
To demolish his credentials, Lalu and Nitish are heavy-handed at their rallies about the Gujarat riots of 2002. "He has tried to side- track communalism with this promise of development. Only God can save India if Modi becomes Prime Minster" warns Lalu.
Nitish debunks the development narrative of Gujarat claiming that the school dropout rate there is very high. "What kind of state is Gujarat without peace and education?" he asks. At a smallish rally in Saran, where Lalu's wife Rabri Devi and the BJP's Rudy Pratap Singh are in a close fight, Nitish is campaigning for his local candidate. He claims that "Modi will bring back crony capitalism, to pay the moneybags that supported him."
In Bihar, where caste is still a very important criteria for voting, the anti-Modi vote is coalescing around Lalu because it seems that that he can bring together Yadavs and Muslims ( a combine of 35%) and thwart a Modi sweep. Nitish, having lost the upper castes and upper OBCs to BJP after the split with them, is finding it difficult to get the secular vote. The key, according to everyone, including BJP leader Sushil Modi, is how the Extremely backward Classes ( EBCs), who form upto 35% of Bihar population, will vote. Sushil Modi is confident that the BJP has reached out to enough of them to make the difference.
Unfortunately for Nitish, his story of what he has done for Bihar and the governance he has provided are solid achievements but lost in this election with its focus on development vs communalism. Even those who voted for him in the last assembly election seem to be drifting, not because they don't appreciate what he has done, but because. As the man making mithai in a small village in Ara district said, "This is a fight about who will be PM and not about who will be CM". In that straight fight, Nitish has no place, and Modi clearly has the edge.
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