These pages, over the last couple of weeks, have carried detailed statistical analysis of political representation by caste in Bihar — both among all of Bihar’s 3,629 MLAs from 1962-2020 and among the candidates of the two major alliances, namely the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Mahagathbandhan (MGB) in these elections. The purpose of these was not to merely count caste or sub-caste among the state’s politicians, but lay the statistical ground for a deeper understanding of the state’s political
- Bihar’s bloody land struggles are now passé because of the fall in agriculture’s importance…Bihar, not until long ago, saw entrenched conflicts around land which kept large parts of the state on tenterhooks and claimed hundreds of lives across the social divide. This conflict and the associated tensions have dissipated over the past couple of decades. This is also the period Nitish Kumar has been the chief minister of the state. While it is difficult to establish a correlation between Kumar being in office and the easing of caste-based land conflicts in the state, there is at least one piece of hard economic data that can explain why this could have happened. Farm land, which was at the core of these conflicts in the state, is not as important as it used to be a couple of decades ago. Agriculture’s share, as a share of Bihar’s Gross Value Added (GVA), has fallen from one-third to less than 15% during this period.
- …And upper castes seem to have migrated the most to better salaried jobs, including those outside BiharOfficial data on employment in India does not distinguish within the larger Other Backward Class (OBC) category. In Bihar, the Backward Class (BC) versus Extremely Backward Class (EBC) category dynamic is very critical to politics. The Government of Bihar’s Caste Survey, which was released in 2023, does give occupational classification at both the broad-social-group level and sub-caste level. The data shows that the non-SC-ST-OBC population (the proverbial upper castes) have a much larger relative share in salaried jobs (both public and private) than other social groups. In fact, their relative share is the highest in organized sector private jobs. BCs, on the other hand, have the highest relative share in farming and SCs lead the ranking in blue-collar jobs such as workers and masons. The short point of these numbers is, upper castes have pivoted away from agriculture which is where they fought pitched battles with the socially oppressed to preserve their entrenched and exploitative dominance until the 1990s. The caste survey data also gives the number of people who have migrated outside Bihar for employment. Once again, upper castes have the highest relative share here, and they are the only broad social group which has a relative share less than one when it comes to those who were staying permanently at the place of enumeration. This means that upper castes have not just left Bihar’s troubled farmlands but also the state itself .
- But upper castes are still the most economically privileged in the stateWhile they are not necessarily invested in perpetuating feudal agrarian relations in Bihar – as is often argued in political rhetoric in the state – upper castes still enjoy significant economic dominance in the state. The best way to look at this is to compare income-wise relative shares of households from each major social group in the state. The 2023 caste survey has classified households into five reported monthly income categories along with a cohort which did not report incomes. Upper castes dominate the highest income category of more than ₹50,000 by a huge distance compared to other social groups. BCs are another remarkable social group on this count because they are equally divided across all income groups in the data.
- How does this overall economic alignment of caste manifest itself in Bihar’s larger political economy?This is what the second and third part of the series will weigh in on.
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.
Nishant Ranjan has been working as a data journalist with Hindustan Times since 2023. In this short period, he has established a niche for creating original datasets and utilising them to produce journalistic work that pushes the boundaries of journalism. The list of datasets and stories done by him include the following: a dataset of all 717 chief ministers India has had since 1952, a dataset of all 3,350 members of India’s council of ministers, a dataset of all 190 deputy chief ministers in India and a dataset of all 279 Supreme Court judges in India (1950-2025). He has also profiled each elected Muslim MLA/MP since 1952. He is a mining engineer by training who decided to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from TISS after working in a coal mine for 10 months. He also worked as a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, researching local governance in India. He also has a keen interest in analyzing electoral politics and political executives in India.
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.