What a huge fuss has been kicked up over Bihar’s 2025 assembly elections! This, when there was no new candidate, no major new party contesting the elections and so any big surprise or wild card was ruled out. Some might argue that Prashant Kishore’s Jan Suraj party was the big surprise element in this election, but more about this later. The fight was mainly between the two big alliances, NDA and the MGB – between national parties such as BJP and INC with regional parties, JDU and RJD respectively, that enjoy strong grassroot support in the state.
What a rout it was as well, with the NDA winning a landslide election with over 200 seats in a 243-member legislative assembly! None of the exit polls predicted this extent of a sweep for the BJP-led NDA, though they did forecast that it was set to win a majority of seats. The record voter turnout too was said to be a sign that there might be anti-incumbency, though it could have been on account of around 4.5 million voters being struck off Bihar’s voter list, in the SIR exercise. Instead, Nitish Kumar returns for his fifth term as Chief Minister of Bihar, with his party JDU also winning a higher number of seats than in the previous assembly election.
Most of the fuss, in fact, emanated from the major electoral rolls revision or SIR as it is called before the assembly elections, which many suspected was a way to keep voters – especially Muslims and even Dalits – out of the voters’ list. The excuse provided was that Bihar has a large number of migrants who work elsewhere in India and therefore, there was a need to clean or ‘purify’ the voters’ list. Just a load of unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses’ meddling with the government if you ask me, what with their ‘migrant labour’ nonsense! Now the SIR exercise has been rolled out across 12 states in India, from November 4 onwards, including in Goa, where I now live with my aged father.
Anyway, this Bihar election once again brought into focus the growing importance of freebies and sops being offered to various constituencies in exchange for votes. This has become common practice, it seems, in all elections across India. And one main reason for it is that political parties have discovered the value of the “woman voter” in all states. As a result, the big hoax of “women empowerment” is being bandied about, to justify many of these social schemes and freebies. The latest one from this election that made the news was Rs 10,000/- being deposited in every woman’s bank account in Bihar. When the opposition and other critics said this was revdi (freebies) culture, the NDA bosses were quick to retort that this was not a freebie, but ‘seed money’ to help women start something of their own. The Election Commission, which has recently come under a lot of flak, said that this was an ‘ongoing scheme’ and so it posed no problem.
My concern is not merely the possible violation of the model code of conduct – though I don’t know if there is a model code of conduct on announcement of new policies ahead of elections – but the way women are being wooed and fooled across the country by politicians. From free bicycles for young girls to free bus rides for women, in addition to cash benefit transfer schemes, politicians are pulling no stops in attracting and buying women’s votes. Worse, is the way that these populist schemes and sops have become part of a state’s economic policies. I have written before on my blog about election promises and sops becoming policy, as the newly elected government just goes about fulfilling election promises through most of its term. You could argue that this is indeed what it is meant to do, but I think there is something to be said for well-deliberated and long-term economic policies that go beyond political expediency and ‘winning elections’ at any cost.
The MGB alliance between INC and the RJD was no better. It promised one government job in every household in Bihar and made this the centre-piece of its election campaign. This works out to over 20 million government jobs in Bihar, and one wonders how the state government can afford this, and whether government should be so bloated at all. This might have been targeted at Bihar’s youth which was yet another big constituency in this election and their biggest demand is for jobs.
Those of us who follow the Indian economy closely know that Bihar was one of the BIMARU states (sick states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP), growing primarily on the back of agriculture and mining, with not much industrial development at all, for decades. Many of the other states have surged ahead and done better for themselves in recent years, but not Bihar. To Bihar, I think we can now add Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, along with some parts of Eastern UP and Orissa, as still backward and undeveloped economically. I was surprised to see how industrially backward the state of Assam is. Jharkhand at least has industry in the form of Tata Steel which helped develop Jamshedpur into a bustling city, and has taken economic growth to nearby towns and villages as well. No doubt, this was Bihar’s loss and Jharkhand’s gain.
When good quality education and employment are the key to economic growth and progress, why is it that our political leaders still wish to keep the electorate poor, gullible and unfit for employment? And if states like Bihar cannot provide adequate employment to its people what else are they to do but up sticks and leave. Bihar’s state real GDP has grown from Rs 2.7 trillion in 2013-14 to Rs 4.64 trillion in 2023-24 in the past decade at 2011-12 prices, amounting to an average annual growth rate of around 7.1%. Bihar lacks industrial investment especially in manufacturing, with the number of factories in the state actually declining since 2015-16. Since Bihar comprises mainly an informal economy and lacks adequate industry, the state also raised only Rs 497 billion as own taxes – direct and indirect – in 2023-24, when states such as UP raised Rs 2.62 trillion as own tax revenue in the same year. In fact, UP now raises the second highest own tax revenue in the country – second only to Maharashtra. To then promise 20 million government jobs to people, is not only unreasonable it is irresponsible policymaking.
In the past, Bihar’s lack of investment in industry was attributed to lack of law and order and problems of security. “Jungle-raj” that was being discussed even in this election is now widely accepted as having gone, under JDU’s rule of Nitish Kumar. Why then, is Indian industry still not investing in the state? And how is it that the same government gets voted back again and again for decades – this is said to be Nitish Kumar’s fifth consecutive term – when there is still no investment and there are no jobs to be had?
Freebies and election sops are not only populist measures they make for bad economics. And in a state which suffers from serious lack of investment, it is bound to lead to further outward migration and atrophying of the economy left behind. Populist economic policies also weaken state finances without adding to its revenue earning capacity. As it is many states in India have huge debts, even if their fiscal deficits are within reasonable limits.
True women empowerment and jobs for the youth – men and women – must come from investment in good primary and higher education as well as expansion into the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy, namely industry and services. There is no sense in doling out freebies to keep women in school, when they only get married later and do not take up employment of some kind. We have to get more women into work and into good quality jobs.
I watched a TV panel discussion on an English news channel about Bihar’s elections, where one of the participants said that women in Bihar were already quite empowered, having to manage their farms and their families in the absence of their husbands and menfolk who were away working elsewhere in India. While this may be true, real women empowerment comes from women being educated, taking up jobs, careers or a vocation and being financially and economically independent.
In a country like India, unfortunately, politics of a patriarchal kind is further entrenching itself, where women are expected to live on the dole of male political patronage. It is not that the caste factor doesn’t matter in Indian elections; they count as much as they have always done, but the so-called X-factor now is the women’s vote. And in the case of Bihar, it combined with the youth vote to form the M-Y factors according to our political leaders and the media – mahila (woman) and youth – to create an unprecedented sweep. Prashant Kishore of Jan Suraj Party didn’t win a seat, but I think his candidacy might have enthused young voters to come out in larger numbers and cast their vote. One wonders if the same government returning to power for five consecutive terms augurs well for democracy in India. When economic policies are not formulated in consultation with economists but are conceived on the fly during an election campaign trail, and votes are bought, this is what you get. Revdi (freebie) and caste politics lives on in India.
The animated owl gif that forms the featured image and title of the Owleye column is by animatedimages.org and I am thankful to them.
Post script:
I must mention in the context of the SIR exercise that is being conducted in 12 states, including Goa where I have been living for the better part of the past couple of decades with my aged parents, that somebody visited our flat in Airport Road, Chicalim, Goa about a fortnight ago and gave my aged father two forms for him to fill, saying that he would return that very weekend to collect them.
When I told him about my voter registration and that I had submitted my form along with a copy of my old voter card from Delhi, over 10 years ago to the Vasco Municipality office, and I have yet to receive my new voter card with the new address, he said that with this SIR exercise it will not happen as the list has been frozen. He also said that a new window will open in February, 2026 and that I should go online and apply then! He said not to submit or depend on a hard copy form, better to do it online!
Strangely, the person has not returned to collect my aged father’s forms as yet. Besides, I was wondering what about deleting my aged mother, Shantha Sundaram’s name from the voter list as she passed away in October, 2021 in Goa. My aged father and I discussed it, and we both thought it strange that he didn’t even mention or ask about my aged mother, as her name would also definitely be on the Goa electoral rolls.
The even stranger aspect to my new voter card in Goa is that when I visited the Vasco Municipality office in January 2019, I was asked only to fill Form 6, when I now discovered through a recent discussion on TV news that one is also supposed to fill Form 7, which is to have one’s name deleted from the electoral rolls of one’s previous place of residence, which would have been Delhi in my case.
Nobody at the Vasco Municipality Office told me about Form 7 at all, and I still have the acknowledgement of their receipt of my Form 6, along with which I attached a photocopy of my old voter card from Delhi. All this tells me that unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses have been meddling here as well, since they are known to meddle with every government department, as I have been sharing on LinkedIn. This is probably to try and make me Sarada or my younger sister, Bhavani Sundaram, or someone in their PR circus in Delhi, when I am certainly not going to become someone else.
Peripatetic Perch 