Bihar’s ballot is less an election and more a tragicomedy. The cast? Nitish Kumar, the turncoat titan; Tejashwi Yadav, the dynastic daydreamer; and, surprisingly towering above them without even contesting is Yogi Adityanath, the bulldozer monk from next door. Compared to Lalu’s Jungle Raj and Nitish weary opportunism, Yogi’s Uttar Pradesh gleams in contrast—a state once mocked as “BIMARU,” now is rebranded as investment-friendly, crime-free, and development-forward. Yogi’s reputation is his weapon. The shining contrast makes Biharis ask the most dangerous of questions: if they can have order across the border, why must we live with chaos here? Tejashwi Yadav, the heir of horror as the scion of the notorious Lalu Prasad Yadav, wants to market himself as the youthful face of progress. But his very surname is shorthand for the sepia nightmare of Jungle Raj. Under Lalu, Bihar was less a state than a shooting range. Mohammad Shahabuddin, convicted murderer and serial kidnapper, ruled Siwan like a sultan. Anant Singh, the “Chhote Sarkar” of Mokama, treated grenades as groceries. Munna Shukla collected murder charges like collector’s stamps. Ashok Mahto turned caste wars into carnivals of carnage. Kidnapping was a cottage industry, extortion an everyday economy. To rebrand the Lalu legacy as “change” is like repainting a graveyard and calling it a garden. Tejashwi himself, a former Nitish Cabinet member, is hardly unblemished. His last election affidavit listed 11 criminal cases, including cheating, forgery, conspiracy, and corruption-related charges. He is implicated in the IRCTC hotel scam and the ongoing Land-for-Jobs case, both involving misuse of political office. He was recently accused of possessing two voter IDs, alleging fraud when he went up against the SIR. The heir-apparent may rail against “lawlessness” today, but his surname alone triggers memories of that lost decade. These men were not aberrations but archetypes of a Bihar where the ballot box and the bullet magazine were inseparable. Tejashwi may speak of order, but the electorate remembers the chaos his clan presided over.
Against this list, Nitish Kumar looks almost virtuous, though his record too is double-edged. It was Nitish who launched “Har Ghar Bijli,” bringing electricity to every household, and who can credibly boast that 1.67 crore families now enjoy free power up to 125 units a month. Roads were built where once only ruts remained, and a solar push was announced to edge Bihar into modernity. But Nitish’s tragedy is that his achievements are overshadowed by his own opportunism. Once hailed as the man who dismantled Jungle Raj, he has since become the “somersault sultan of Patna,” leaping between alliances with shameless ease. He looks less like a statesman than a survivor, less like a builder than a broker. His critics note that crime has hardly vanished under his watch either: in 2022 Bihar registered over 3.5 lakh crimes, a jump of more than 20 per cent from the previous year, and by 2024 the figure still hovered above 3.5 lakh. Even Lalu now mocks him, claiming some 65,000 murders have occurred in Nitish’s tenure; perhaps an exaggeration, but telling in its sting.
Now Yogi, the Bulldozer Baba, but not on the ballot, rather all over it.
The saffron sheriff of Uttar Pradesh has turned bulldozers into a bahubali-blasting ballot symbol into election ads. Since 2017, UP Police have staged over 10,000 encounters: 222 criminals dead, 20,000 jailed, `4,000 crore worth of mafia property seized. Dacoity is down 70 per cent, rape has halved, murder is down a third. Expressways, airports, metros: bricks and bullets, both are handled with brutal efficiency. Critics can moan about “due process,” but in politics, perception is process. And the perception is this: Yogi delivers, dons disappear. He is UP’s darling, and Bihar’s daydream. So, what’s really at stake in Bihar? It’s not Nitish’s electricity, nor Tejashwi’s eloquence. Bihar once exported dons to Delhi. Now it may import law and order from Lucknow. For decades, elections in Bihar were stolen by booth-capturing goons with guns. This time, the ballot may be captured by a bulldozer driven not in Patna’s streets but in Bihar’s imagination. For the first time in Indian history, a Chief Minister could bulldoze to victory in a state he doesn’t even contest. This election is not Nitish versus Tejashwi. It is Lalu’s Jungle Raj versus Yogi’s Reform Raj, with Nitish reduced to a middle-managing mascot. For Biharis, the contrast is crushing: across the border, order; at home, opportunism. Across the Ganga, a saffron sheriff with swag and in Patna, a tired broker and a tainted heir. Bihar’s voters may well decide that opportunism is tolerable, but a return to ransom and rule by don is not. In that calculation, Yogi becomes the unlikely umpire as a man who, for the first time in India’s history, may bulldoze his way to setting governance standards in a state where he has no power at stake.