Bihar: Kings & Kingmakers

It’s likely to be another close poll. Neither NDA nor INDIA, partly because their playbooks are similar in some ways, has a winning formula yet. Smaller parties will look to cash in

Modi’s rally in Siwan yesterday showed that the build-up to the Bihar assembly polls is well and truly underway. It’s a truism that Biharis do not merely cast their vote, but vote their caste. The state has become synonymous with what the political scientist Edward Banfield termed ‘amoral familism’.
In an agrarian society defined by the Permanent Settlement, a narrow understanding of self-interest, limited to one’s nuclear family and its extensions, undermines any notion of the common good. Jockeying for power and privilege is largely a zero-sum game: the empowerment of some depends on the immiseration of others.