After rally, Nitish Kumar meets Chidambaram, Montek

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar today met finance minister P Chidambaram and planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a day after addressing a large and politically significant rally in Delhi on Sunday.

Nitish Kumar is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later in the day, after attending a 'Bihar festival' in the national capital.

The meetings are seen as more than courtesy calls, as during his rally in New Delhi on Sunday Kumar made a strong reiteration of his call for giving Bihar the status of a 'special state' which would enable it to access more central funds.

Moreover Kumar, whose party the Janata Dal (United) rules Bihar in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, was soft on the Congress, which heads the United Progressive Alliance government at the centre.

At the same time he continued to show his open antagonism to three-time Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, almost certain to be the BJP's candidate for prime ministership in the general elections due next year.

Modi, having improved the running of an already prosperous state, has become the doyen of India's business community. Kumar on the other hand is credited with turning around the fortunes of Bihar, once the country's most economically and socially backward state.

Kumar, a proponent of inclusive growth, has never made a secret of his dislike for Modi because of his tainted record on minority rights. Modi is widely accused of condoning if not orchestrating the anti-Muslim pogrom in his state in 2002.

Tellingly, no BJP leader was invited to Kumar's rally.

"We will leave everyone behind and move ahead with development. And we will present a model before the world. A development model … that takes along everyone together ... this is the real development model for India," Kumar said at the rally in an apparent reference to the 'Gujarat model' being touted by Modi.

The Congress has clearly kept its ears open, as no party is likely to win an absolute majority in the 2014 elections and another alliance government could be in the offing. Kumar showed at the rally that he is aware he could be a king-maker - along, unfortunately, with more parochial and narrow-minded parties like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.