The entire attention of India is currently focused on the state of Bihar. The Indian state of Bihar, bordering Nepal, is holding two-phase state or assembly elections on November 6 (20 Kartik) and November 11 (25 Kartik). The parties have made employment and good governance the main issues.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Janata Dal United (JDU), Lok Shakti Party (Ram Vilas), Hindustan Awam Morcha and Rastriya Lok Morcha, has released its election manifesto and pledged to provide employment to 1 crore people in Bihar.

Earlier, the opposition grand alliance's manifesto titled 'Tejswika Pran' mentioned that one person from every household would be provided employment. Tejashwi Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, along with various communist components and regional parties, are part of the alliance.

Both the alliances have made women's entrepreneurial development, subsidies to farmers, educational reforms, infrastructure development, etc. their main agendas. Voting is being held for 243 seats here. 74.3 million people have registered their names in the voter list. Of these, 39.2 million are men, 35 million are women and 17.25 are sexual minorities. There are 14,000 centenarians in this list.

JDU leader Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is contesting from the Barahara assembly constituency. After graduating in Electrical Engineering from Bihar College of Engineering in 1972 and working for the Bihar State Electricity Authority for a short time, Nitish joined the student movement in Bihar in 1974. In this decade, Congress leader Jayaprakash Narayan launched a campaign to end corruption and unemployment against his own party's government. The youth of Bihar, who were aggrieved by the injustices done by the Congress government and the landlords, gave great support to this movement.

Lalu Yadav, who won the student union elections at Patna University in 1970, had become very popular with his oratory skills. Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav, Sushil Modi, Ram Vilas Paswan and other youth who worked with him in this movement emerged as a decisive force in Bihar politics after this movement. After Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency on 25 June 1975, a large number of leaders and workers, including Jayaprakash, were arrested. 

Both Lalu and Nitish spent some time in jail. After the emergency was lifted and elections were held in 1977, Lalu Yadav got a Lok Sabha ticket from the Janata Party, founded by opposition leaders including Jayaprakash, in Bihar. He became a central member of parliament at the age of 29. In this election, the Janata Party won 52 of the 54 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. At that time, Nitish played a very important role in the election campaign and helped the Janata Party win. In the Bihar assembly elections held that year, the Janata Party won more than two-thirds of the seats. 

Karpori Thakur, a leader of the most backward classes from the Janata Party, became the Chief Minister. The next year, he started implementing the recommendations of the Mungerilal Commission. It was decided to classify the backward and most backward castes and also provide reservations for women and the poor from the upper castes.

The elites used all their power to thwart this effort. As a result, the Congress came to power again in the 1980 assembly elections with the support of the elites. However, this time too, the Congress ignored the social structure of Bihar. Although it appointed Jagannath Mishra, an upper-caste leader, as the Chief Minister, he could not complete his term due to internal turmoil. In 1985, the Congress came to power again under the leadership of Bidyeshwari Dubey. Lalu Yadav's Lok Dal came in second place in this election, winning 46 seats. The BJP won 16 seats. The Janata Party affiliated with Nitish Kumar came in fourth with 13 seats, and various other communist components were in opposition. 

However, Dubey could not serve a full term as Chief Minister. Bhagwat Azad and Satyendra Narayan Sinha, who came after him, were also from the upper caste. In 1989, after the names of Congress leaders were implicated in the Bofors scam, the party's power weakened nationwide. At this time, the BJP was raising the slogan of Hindu nationalism. The minority Muslim community began to be targeted by extremist Hindus.

800 Muslims and 200 Hindus were killed in the Hindu-Muslim riots in Bhagalpur. The Congress's Muslim voters were disappointed that it had not taken enough steps to stop the riots. At a time when Mandal (caste) and Kamandal (religious) tensions were causing a major division in Bihar, opposition leader Lalu Yadav was the biggest confidant of Muslims in Bihar. He had a clear stance that oppression and violence against any community should not be allowed in a secular India.

Lalu, who demanded rights for the backward castes, now became popular among Muslims as well. At this time, Nitish Kumar was the Lok Sabha MP from Barahara and he led all the opposition parties except the BJP in the assembly to form a front under Lalu Yadav. Nitish called Lalu his brother and Lalu listened to his brother in every decision. 

In 1990, the Janata Dal, formed by Lalu Yadav and Nitish and the opposition, became the first party in the assembly with 122 seats. Nitish played a major role in garnering the support of parties including the BJP to form Lalu's government. 

On September 25, 1990, BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani's Rath Yatra, which was moving from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya, was stopped after it reached Samastipur in Bihar on October 23. Advani was arrested on the instructions of Chief Minister Lalu Yadav. This rein in the extremist Hindus at a time when the Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid disputes were spreading religious communalism, made Lalu a hero among the Muslim community.

He did all these things by putting his Chief Ministerial post at stake. After the BJP withdrew support, he united other small parties and formed the government. He implemented the Mandal Commission report to ensure reservation for backward classes in the state. Similarly, he paid special attention to the empowerment of Muslims and Yadav communities. Development plans were brought targeting the areas where these communities were in majority, and they were given priority in politics. This again weakened the non-Yadav, OBC, EBC and Dalit sections.

Since Yadavs constitute 14 percent of Bihar's population and Muslims 17 percent, this vote bank made Lalu the undisputed leader of the state. Shocked by his cleverness, Nitish organized a 'Kurmi Chetna Maharalaya' on February 12, 1994. With this, he started creating his new caste vote bank by combining the Koiri and Kurmi communities. He got 14 MPs from the Janata Dal to rebel against Lalu.

Over time, this group was formed into the Samata Party. However, when Lalu's Janata Dal won a majority in the 1996 elections, Nitish's Samata Party won only 7 seats. After being arrested in the fodder scam case in 1996, Lalu's popularity plummeted. He resigned from the Chief Minister and the Janata Dal. Then, at Lalu's behest, the MPs rebelled from the Janata Dal and formed the RJD. Lalu's wife Rabri Devi was elected the new Chief Minister. Shortly after he took oath, the Patna High Court, while delivering a verdict on a case related to poor drainage, said, ‘The situation in Patna is worse than jungle raj.’

Taking hold of this phrase, the opposition including Nitish dubbed Lalu’s entire governance system as ‘jungle raj.’ In ‘Broken Promises: Caste, Crime and Politics in Bihar’, author Mrityunjay Sharma has mentioned, ‘The state institutions were systematically weakened under the guise of social justice. In 1992, 144 out of 384 IS officers demanded central deputation. This reflects the frustration of that time. The police had become an instrument of political domination, it was very difficult for honest people to survive.’

Nitish Kumar allied with the BJP in the 2000 elections to oppose corruption, nepotism and misrule. While Lalu's RJD won 122 seats in this election, the two components of the NDA alliance, BJP and Nitish Kumar's Samata Party, came second and third with 63 and 34 seats respectively. Nitish Kumar was appointed the Chief Minister of Bihar immediately after the election. However, he resigned within 7 days after not being able to get a vote of confidence. When the opposition could not come to an agreement, Rabri Devi was elected Chief Minister again. 

The number of kidnappings in Bihar increased further during Rabri's time. From 2001 to 2004, 1,527 cases of kidnapping for ransom were registered with the police in Bihar. From 1995 to 2000, 58 massacres took place, in which 566 people died. Of these, 343 were Scheduled Castes/OBCs, farm workers and 128 were upper caste landlords. 

This situation played a role in Nitish's rise to power. After the elections held in February 2005, no party was able to form the government in Bihar. Then, in October, the assembly elections were held again. In this election, the NDA alliance comprising Nitish's JD(U) and BJP won a clear majority. Out of 243 constituencies, the JD(U) emerged as the leading party with 88 seats, while the BJP won 55 seats. The RJD came in third place with 54 seats. 

This was the first election after the separation of Jharkhand from Bihar. The separation of Jharkhand, which is rich in important natural resources including coal, iron ore, and precious metals, had been negatively affecting Bihar's economy since 2000. Even after the division, most of the cultivable land and a large part of the population remained in Bihar, but large industries and mines were in Jharkhand. Bihar lost about 60 percent of its revenue because industrial and mining places like Dhanbad, Bokaro, Jhamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Ranchi and Dumka were in Jharkhand. After this, Bihar became highly dependent on agriculture. It had to depend heavily on central assistance. 

Nitish Kumar, who took over the responsibility of the Chief Minister in such a challenging time of misgovernance, corruption and economic despair, gradually started doing promising things. In particular, he focused on agriculture, service sector and infrastructure construction. He has been the Chief Minister of Bihar continuously for the last two decades. Within a short time after he came to power, Bihar's image had started improving. In the years (2006-2009), the number of kidnappings and ransom demands had come down to 429.

In this process, he is popular through reforms in governance, public welfare work, construction of physical infrastructure and other works. Big buildings, road infrastructure development, stricter laws and regulations, construction of educational institution buildings, increase in employment, skill-based and income-generating programs targeting women, allowances given to senior citizens, disabled and widows are some of the achievements that Bihar has achieved in this process. 

Despite this, Bihar is still considered a backward state economically and socially compared to other states in India. The per capita income here is 62 thousand 365 rupees. Which is almost a third less than India's gross national income of Rs 1 lakh 8 thousand. At present, industry contributes 21 percent to the economy, which is slightly more than the agriculture sector, which contributes 20 percent. However, most of this is taken up by infrastructure construction, not manufacturing.

Bihar is one of the states in India that is highly dependent on the central government. Here, only 27.7 percent of the total budget revenue is raised at the local level. Bihar comes second after Uttar Pradesh in terms of the highest number of people migrating in India. By 2025, 30 million Biharis will have gone to work in other states or abroad. Access to clean drinking water, sanitation and health is also less in Bihar compared to other states. However, to divert people's attention from all these conditions, Nitish keeps reminding people of 'jungle raj'. 

Why is Nitish being praised in Bihar despite slow development? On this question, senior journalist Amarnath Tiwari from Patna said in a telephone conversation with Kantipur, ‘People have not forgotten the jungle raj. They have not forgotten the killings, kidnappings and looting that happened in the past. Sporadic incidents still happen. But compared to the past, this is very less.’

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar are both good governance leaders, Tiwari says that this time they will have a heavy burden in the elections. ‘Both these leaders are popular. The grand alliance has made more promises than them. But the locals think that this alliance only makes speeches, and the NDA will fulfill even if it makes few promises,’ he added, ‘Nitish Kumar has not been involved in any corruption case so far.’

Political analyst and writer Nalin Verma said that Nitish is not as influential in Bihar as he used to be. ‘Now the BJP is dominant in the NDA. The opposition is also raising questions about Nitish’s mental health. Sometimes he forgets files. He is not able to work properly physically. Now the expectations of the youth of Bihar have increased. They want good governance and rapid development. Along with the two major alliances, Prashant Kishor's (PK) party is in the race this time,' Burma told Kantipur, 'Educated youth, women and those who have gone to work in other states can influence the vote. They have observed the development of other states. They can put pressure on their families to elect a new candidate.'

The grand alliance had campaigned for RJD's Tejashwi as the Chief Minister in the 2020 elections as well. But then, there was a problem with seat sharing until the last stage. This time, there has been no problem in seat sharing. RJD has been given 125 seats and Congress 61 seats. The rest have been allocated to other alliance partners. Former Congress I central president Rahul Gandhi is actively campaigning. 

Tejashwi, who has not been able to run the government despite making his party the first party in Bihar, is asking to see himself once. He has been the deputy chief minister twice, in 2015 and 2022, during the Nitish and grand alliance governments. He has come up with a plan to attract young voters. However, the stigma of 'jungle raj' during his parents' rule has always followed his dynasty politics. On top of that, his elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav is in competition with his brother by launching the Janshakti Janata Dal. Tej Pratap was suspended for 6 years by RJD patron Lalu at the end of last May on charges of indiscipline. 

Prashant Kumar, a one-time political strategist, is now in active politics himself. The Jan Suraj Party led by him is now gaining popularity among the youth by raising issues of good governance. Kishor has worked on strategy for the BJP, Congress I, Aam Aadmi Party, Trinamool Congress in Bengal, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, and JD(U) in Bihar in past elections. It is estimated that he can influence those who do not trust both the NDA and the grand alliance. This could bring a new twist to Bihar politics. He is advocating for accountable governance. His party has fielded candidates in all the assembly constituencies of Bihar in this election. However, he himself is not a candidate. 

Journalist Tiwari says that this time too, the election will be a contest between the traditional two forces. He said that although Prashant Kishor is famous on social media, his presence on the political ground in Bihar is weak. 

'Bihar's prosperity is also important for Nepal' 

Seven districts of Bihar and 21 assembly constituencies share a border with Nepal. Political analyst journalist Chandra Kishore Jha says that Nepalis are also watching it with interest as the political culture of Bihar crosses the border and reaches Nepal.

'The impact of political activities there is also felt here,' he says, 'In the last few years, it seems that parties have spent a lot in Bihar elections. The abuse is low-level. Its impact has also been seen in Nepal. Before 046, when the leaders and workers went for election campaigning, locals used to feed them at home. They did not take money. Now, programs are being held in the party palace and extravagant spending is going on.'