E-Paper
What swung the vote in Bihar polls: ‘Jungle Raj’ fears
90% of Bihar’s 74.2 million-strong electorate has seen the 15-year-long rule of the Rashtriya Janata Dal between 1990 and 2005
Bihar is a young state. It has the highest share of 18-35 year olds in an already young country. It is an impoverished state. It has among the smallest share of salaried private jobs in the country and among the highest share of people in agricultural jobs.
It is also a caste-skewed state. Numerically small upper-caste groups, such as Rajputs and Bhumihars, are over-represented in government jobs and land ownership while scheduled castes dominate in marginal blue-collar jobs such as masonry.
This trifecta of issues should have created a political landscape yearning for change – especially in a state where an ageing chief minister is presiding over a 20-year-old administration and a 35-year-old challenger was promising a break from the past.
Yet, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Friday belied those expectations, as it smashed the Opposition’s traditional bastions on its way to a landslide victory. How did this happen?
Minati Devi might have some answers. A resident of Gopalganj district in western Bihar, the 45-year-old is a part-time government employee whose husband and son are manual labourers – one in the village and another in Hyderabad. Her hardscrabble life in one of the hundreds of riverine islands that dot the region is dictated by the tide of the Gandak and its seasonal floods. A permanent job – especially a sarkari one – could change her fortunes.
Yet, her vote is not cast on aspiration but on caution.
Hailing from a small backward community, Devi is only too aware of the devastation that a local bahubali (strongman) would inflict on the countryside in her parents’ village, where the rule of law would give way to the caprices of the caste strongman, who could dictate who’s allowed to vote in an election or get the benefit of a scheme or even step inside a settlement. “We’d live at the mercy of the bahubali. No police or MLA could help if you incited his wrath,” she said. “We are poor but at least we are safe.”
Devi is part of the 90% of Bihar’s 74.2 million-strong electorate that has seen the 15-year-long rule of the Rashtriya Janata Dal between 1990 and 2005, a period that was marked by other backward class assertion against the feudalism by upper-castes but also a breakdown of law and order and the proliferation of caste gangs that often targeted the most marginalised communities.
This period – first termed as Jungle Raj in the2000 assembly elections campaign (it backfired at the time as Lalu accused Nitish Kumar of calling his supporters animals) – was the central issue in the 2025 elections. The NDA – led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – successfully turned the 2025 polls into referendum on Lalu rule, pushing the burden of anti-incumbency off Kumar and onto the shoulders of Tejashwi Yadav. As the campaign progressed, NDA leaders spoke less about development and the immediate promises fulfilled by their government, and more about the alleged excesses during RJD rule, contrasting Kumar’s disciplined vote base with Yadav’s boisterous one.
Making this election about Jungle Raj achieved three things. One, it drowned Yadav’s promise of one million jobs, a potent pledge that had ignited support among the young for the RJD five years ago, and pushed him on the defensive on law and order. Two, it reminded many poor people disenchanted with Kumar and the NDA what the alternative could mean in terms of government schemes and grassroots dabangai (authority). And three, it hinted that the stranglehold of some dominant castes was not a matter of the past but a concern for the present, pointing especially to the numerically large and rambunctious Yadavs.
The result? Ordinary people such as Devi chose a safer option that might not promise them big-bang change but won’t threaten to disrupt their way of life.
