In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, I was tasked with reporting from Bihar, a province pivotal to Indian politics. After nearly 20 days traversing the length and breadth of the state, covering over 2,500 kilometres, the journey laid bare a harsh truth: even after the advent of democracy, the exploitation of the common man remains a brutal reality.
Near the capital, Patna, in Samastipur district, I encountered the Musahar community, the lowest rung of Dalits, ground down by poverty and the caste system. To quell the pangs of hunger, they catch and roast rats from the fields and homes. It was a searing illustration of deprivation at the very fringes of a nation aspiring to be a global power.
My political reporting took me about 150 km from Patna to Darbhanga, where I sought out the then BJP candidate and former cricketer, Kirti Azad. Informed that he was deep in his campaign trail in the remote village of Pali and would remain there for three days, I abandoned the comfort of the city and drove towards the back roads.
The journey was marked by scenes of neglect. As soon as any signs of habitation appeared on the dust-caked roads, village children and dogs would raise a din, chasing the vehicle. At one point, just as we thought we had shaken them off, a crowd surrounded the car. Upon learning that a journalist from Delhi had come to inquire about their well-being, they pointed to the village’s sole problem: a broken electricity transformer.
They implored me to help get it fixed.
The object they led me to was barely recognisable as a transformer—it was a rusted, iron-sheet carcass, a relic of neglect. When I pressed them on how long it had been out of operation, they initially looked at each other, until a woman offered a definitive answer: “It burned out the day after Guddū was born.”
Eager to meet this child whose arrival had plunged the village into darkness, I expected a toddler. Instead, a sturdy young man, who had failed his matriculation several times and was now a farmer, stood before me.
Guddū’s birth, it turned out, had occurred 24 years earlier. For two and a half decades, the village of Barambora had been without power. They had knocked on every door, but the insensitive bureaucracy had remained unmoved.
The local Sarpanch (village head) was busy campaigning, promising the villagers that a vote for the BJP to make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister would fix the transformer. The villagers repeatedly sought confirmation from me: was Modi truly powerful enough to restore the lights to their homes?
The rot of maladministration ran deep. Ten kilometres away, in the village of Tumoul, there was electricity, but funds meant for purchasing poles had been pocketed by officials. Wires were strung between bamboo sticks, collected from the villagers themselves.
Another village, Dawoodi, right opposite an electricity sub-station, was in darkness. The engineer at the station revealed that 10 years prior, his predecessor had sent a file for funds to buy just 500 meters of wire, but no action had been taken. In Sahibpur, Begusarai district, electricity came in 1984 but was washed away by floods the same year; three decades later, no one had bothered to restore the poles or the power.
A retired Sociology professor, Dharmendra Kumar, who returned to his ancestral village in Samastipur after retirement, discovered a newspaper report detailing government expenditure on repairing an old, rusted tube-well near his farm.
Using the Right to Information Act, he learned that official files had been continuously recording repair expenses for the same defunct tube-well for the past eight years. These anecdotes from 2014 encapsulate a state struggling under the weight of systemic failure, where basic amenities are a broken promise and corruption is a continuous cycle.
A decade later, it would have been an ideal story to find out if the remote village in the Pali region had gotten its transformer.
Bihar remains, at heart, the last bastion of socialist politics, dominated by the two powerhouse socialist parties: the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal (United) (JDU). Historically, Bihar has been a crucible of political resistance. Mahatma Gandhi launched his challenge to British rule from Champaran district in 1917, and in the 1970s, socialist leader Jaya Prakash Narayan led the student agitation against the authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, an agitation that birthed political titans like current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, former CM Lalu Prasad Yadav, and the late Ram Vilas Paswan.
In contrast to the prosperous western and southern states, Bihar is resource-poor, yet its politics carries a unique, compelling romanticism that makes control over the state a matter of prestige for national parties. The state is also infamous for its entrenched caste-based politics. In the past, the first question a reporter would face in a village was, “Kaun Jaat Ho?” (What is your caste?).
The defining feature of the current election is that, for the first time, it is being held following the completion of a state-wide caste-based census in 2022. The census data has dramatically challenged the long-held social structure. It revealed that Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute the largest bloc at 36% (comprising 112 sub-castes), followed by Other Backward Classes (OBCs) at 27%, and Dalits and Adivasis (tribals) at approximately 21%. This means nearly 80% of the population is historically excluded from the centres of power.
According to Anand Mishra, Political Editor of Frontline magazine, this census is "deeper than vote-bank politics; it has awakened social consciousness. When castes know their numbers, their silence turns into power." Consequently, every community is now demanding a share of power proportionate to its population.
The slogan ‘Jiski Jitni Abadi, Uski Utni Hissedari’ (Share commensurate with the population) of the 1990s, when Lalu Prasad Yadav implemented the Mandal Commission recommendations, is resonating again. Lalu's politics empowered the Yadavs, Muslims, and other OBCs, bringing them into the political mainstream, but his era eventually gave way to ‘Jungle Raj’ (lawlessness) and corruption.
This is the backdrop against which Nitish Kumar, the nine-time Chief Minister, is fighting perhaps his most precarious election. He came to power promising Sushasan (good governance), pledging to end corruption, empower women (50% reservation in Panchayats), enforce prohibition, and provide school scholarships. But his constant political somersaults—allying with the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav one day and the BJP the next—have worn down his credibility.
Currently part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Nitish Kumar is facing a slow but deliberate attempt by the BJP to diminish his influence. The BJP, historically a party of upper castes and one that often-eschewed caste-based politics, has now masterfully woven caste into its Hindu unity narrative. It is no longer seeking to erase caste but to leverage it.
The conferment of the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) on former CM Karpoori Thakur, a champion of EBCs, is a strategic move to penetrate this crucial vote bank, complemented by investment in the EBCs through loan waivers and preferential access to rural employment schemes.
The opposition, the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) comprising the RJD, Congress, and Left parties, is the natural claimant to the mantle of caste awakening, yet its foundations appear weak. Despite widespread anti-incumbency sentiment, the alliance is struggling with seat-sharing and seems to lack a cohesive vision beyond its traditional Muslim-Yadav (MY) vote bank.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav is striving to expand his base to include Dalits and EBCs, but he faces open distrust from older Yadav leaders. The Congress, the traditional weak link, is attempting to assert itself but risks damaging the alliance with excessive demands for seats. Political battles in Bihar are often won by grassroots networks, a field where the BJP is undeniably the strongest.
The state’s Muslim population, at 17.7%, is significantly underrepresented in the assembly, holding less than 8% of the seats. The BJP nominated no Muslim candidates this time. Only the Congress and JDU fielded a mere four each. The growing feeling among Muslims, particularly in the Muslim-majority districts like Katihar, Araria, Purnia, and Kishanganj, is that they are merely counts, not leaders.
This vacuum is being exploited by two key disruptors. Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is mostly contesting in Muslim-dominated areas. Simultaneously, Chirag Paswan, the BJP’s NDA ally, has emerged as a central figure. Projecting himself as a ‘Dalit youth leader,’ his slogan ‘Bihar First, Bihari First’ is a new regionalist rallying cry.
The other major new entry is political strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishore with his Jan Suraaj (People's Good Governance) party. His politics is built on the collective memory of the millions of migrant labourers who returned to Bihar jobless and helpless during the COVID-19 pandemic.
His rallies are dominated by a new language: “We don’t want communalism, we want jobs. We don’t want promises, we want bread.” He is centring his discourse on ‘Rozi, Izzat, Hissedari’ (Livelihood, Dignity, Share). Analysts believe that if Kishore can secure even three to five percent of the vote, it will primarily damage the BJP and its allies. This is a new Bihar, they argue, one that may no longer be satisfied with empty promises.
The BJP, meanwhile, is grappling with the pressure of adopting the ‘Uttar Pradesh model’—where Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric secured electoral success—a formula that falters in Bihar's complex caste dynamics.
The party's counter-strategy, according to Frontline, is to engage each of the 112 sub-castes with individualised policies—like the Karpoori Thakur Yojana for the Kushwaha community or the Ganga Matsya Sukh Shakti Scheme for the Mallahs—to tie them to individual interests rather than a collective identity against the upper castes.
The party’s think tank believes that if the sub-castes remain preoccupied with their own interests, a united political narrative against the upper castes cannot be formed.
The question that remains is whether Bihar’s politically conscious electorate will fall for this calculated strategy or whether the tremors of the caste census and the cries of the returning migrant workers will usher in a new era of politics.
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