This November’s assembly election will be the first in Bihar after the untimely demise of two Biharis who, in their respective fields, significantly contributed in taking the discourse around viksit or developed Bihar to a different level. One is Sushil Kumar Modi and the other is Shaibal Gupta, founder and member-secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna. While Gupta was an economist, Modi took the practitioner’s track as one of the state’s longest serving finance ministers.
The question today is whether Bihar will continue down the development politics path, or go back to identity politics of castes and communities. What Gupta, a visionary scholar, had said about a quarter century ago is worth recalling even today. Venting his agony, he wrote in a monograph: “Let the Bihari sub-nationalism write a new script. It will be mediated with an eye for the national and global markets. This is only possible by forging a new identity in an atmosphere of a resurgent Bihar, wherein we can give befitting reply to all the existing clichés about Bihar’s identity, which generally conceptualises corruption and misrule as being synonymous to the state.”
Striving for all-encompassing development was the only way to liberate Bihar from corruption and misrule. It followed that Nitish Kumar made good governance a political plank and, over the years, people identified him as ‘Sushasan babu’. His approach reflected what a World Bank report titled ‘Bihar: Towards a Development Strategy’ had advocated. The 2006 report suggested ‘strategic efforts’ in five areas: improving the state’s investment climate; administration and procedural reforms; better design and delivery of core social services; budget management and fiscal reforms; and prioritising law and order.
On almost all the points stressed in the report, Bihar appears to have made a difference. An annual global investors’ summit that started in 2023 attracted proposals worth over Rs 1.80 lakh crore last year. The state government signed investment commitments with 423 companies during the two-day summit in 2024. It kept up the effort of attracting foreign direct investment by integrating into the Union commerce and industry ministry’s Foreign Investment Facilitation Portal, a single-point interface.
Showing a sense of urgency, Bihar also took several initiatives to enhance the ease of doing business. Among the noteworthy ones is the Udyog Samwad portal, which aims to be a one-stop platform for investors to access information on laws, rules, policies, circulars, and notifications affecting their business. Taking a business-like approach, the portal provides online guides to make investors understand the procedures with step-by-step instructions. In addition, the Bihar Single Window Clearance System has smoothened the functioning of all approvals required for doing business in the state.
Then there is the delivery of core social services in particular and social development in general. Today, many Bihar watchers agree that, thanks to the state government’s Jeevika rural livelihood programme to empower women self-help groups and the recently-launched Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojna, women as voters have tended to go for development rather than caste considerations. In addition, one must note remarkable increases in the budgetary allocations for social sectors—as a share of the state GDP—in the current financial year in comparison to the average allocation by all states last year. While the allocation for education is higher by a sharp 15 percent, those for rural development and health are higher by 5 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
The most noteworthy aspect is a remarkable improvement in the state’s law and order situation—in a way, institutionalising the end of ‘jungle raj’. Remember the heinous murder of young IIT graduate Satyendra Dubey (2003, Gaya), or of Dalit IAS officer G Krishnaiah (1994, Muzaffarpur), or of Shilpi Jain and Gautam Singh (1999)? They were just a few among many such innocent individuals who perished.
No wonder journalist Arun Sinha, in his book Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar, described Lalu Prasad Yadav’s regime as one that “represented a culture of loot and larceny with open patronage to miscreants and roughnecks, whose premier symbols were Sadhu and Subhash (Lalu’s brothers-in-law)”. Compare this with the fact that the number of murders in Bihar saw a significant dip in 2023, as did cases of kidnapping for ransom and violent attacks by Maoists.
All this presents the case before Bihar’s voters that the NDA, guided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and led in the state by Nitish, is the only way to go. The TINA (there is no alternative) factor is the sharpest arrow in the NDA’s quiver. A journalist commented that the political fixed deposit (of goodwill) cultivated by NDA leaders will help them gain interest. It underlines how hope and aspiration have replaced cynicism and frustration. With flyovers and bypasses liberating cities from endless traffic jams, Bihar voters want this infrastructure metamorphosis to continue.
Add to this three important factors that have enhanced the confidence of NDA leaders. Firstly, Rahul Gandhi’s attempt to stir the pot by levelling allegations at the Election Commission about its Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls has fallen flat. Secondly, compared to the Mahagathbandhan, the NDA partners have shown maturity and alacrity in finalising their seat sharing fairly smoothly. Thirdly, with the emergence of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, which is set to gain from the rift between Muslims originally from Bihar and those from Bangladesh, cracks are seen in the much talked about Muslim-Yadav vote bank.
The message is reflected in a comment by a Delhi-based academic from Bihar: “If Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh can liberate themselves from the BIMARU tag, why can’t Bihar? And for that, we don’t want to upset the applecart.” The expectation is that this appetite for development would make Bihar’s Gen Next want to continue with the status quo.
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe | Senior BJP leader
(Views are personal)
(vinays57@gmail.com)
