Examining the roadblocks to Bihar’s development trajectory
What drives progress and development in a region? Does it stem from the equal rights granted by the state to citizens, ensuring dignity? Does it
What drives progress and development in a region? Does it stem from the equal rights granted by the state to citizens, ensuring dignity? Does it arise from equal opportunities fostering economic growth? Is it rooted in ownership and a sense of security within the region? Or is it an amalgamation of all these — social justice, ownership, equality, opportunities, and infrastructure — that leads to progress? Can true development materialise when symbolic changes occur without the backing of material changes? These are some of the critical questions examined by Sandipan Baksi and Mrityunjay Pandey in their article “Limitations of the Politics of Social Justice in Transforming Rural Bihar”. Their analysis of Bihar reveals a stark contradiction. While the State is well known for its progressive political stance that covers social justice, dignity, and equality; in terms of socio-economic indicators, it remains ranked the lowest in the country. Bihar’s per capita income at current prices for 2024–25 was around ₹70,000, while for India it was approximately ₹2.05 lakh. In terms of the Human Development Index (HDI) as well, Bihar ranked the lowest, at 0.650 compared to India’s 0.685 (2023). Such a paradox requires an in-depth study to understand whether symbolic gains in dignity suffice in the absence of material redistribution. Drawing on quantitative data from a village survey conducted in 2012 and a resurvey in 2018 across two villages in Bihar — Katkuian in West Champaran district and Nayanagar in Samastipur district — the authors of the paper attempt to demonstrate how limited the politics of social justice remains without effective implementation. The paper underscores that in a country like India, as long as social justice movements and their leadership remain linked to the asset-owning elite and upper classes and castes who seek to preserve the agrarian class-caste status quo, socio-economic changes that help improve the lives of the people in the region are not possible.
Socio-economic conditions Bihar remains mostly rural, with the bulk of the population in rural regions. Agriculture engages the majority of the rural workforce and directly shapes lives, livelihoods, and social status. The lives of the majority are characterised by extreme poverty, lack of employment, meagre agricultural wages, and absent healthcare facilities. The situation is worse for women and backward castes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. A striking feature of Bihar’s economy is extreme inequality in land ownership, a primary means of production, with many households lacking even house-site ownership, leading to insecurity. Two-thirds of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households remain landless. Despite all this, Bihar is known for a strong sense of political awareness rooted in identity politics, the leaders demanding representation, often fueling vibrant electoral participation in the State. The political evolution Bihar’s political evolution centred on the slogan “roti aur izzat” (bread and dignity), driven by pre-independence movements that blended peasant struggles through the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha, socialist reforms for land redistribution and caste equality, and backwards-caste assertions by Yadavs, Kurmis, and Koeris against upper-caste dominance. The abolition of Zamindari tenures post-independence empowered these groups, resulting in the Backward Classes Federation’s push for reservations. With this, leaders such as Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan started focusing on ensuring that backward castes and classes were represented in the political sphere. Through a persistent fight for reservation and inclusion, a strong political identity emerged among these communities. From the 1970s through the 1990s, under the leadership of figures like Lalu Prasad Yadav, a “silent revolution” took place that broke upper-caste dominance in politics, effectively paving the way for backward communities to secure their place through the implementation of reservations.
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