October 6, 2025 04:54 PM IST First published on: Oct 6, 2025 at 04:54 PM ISTIn 2012, travelling around villages in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, the inner roads were narrow, often non-existent; the nights were dark and quiet owing to the lack of electricity; kirana stores ran on generators and offered a phone-charging service for Rs 10 an hour. The houses were small, mostly kuccha and packed tightly together, with tap water absent. Travelling around Muzaffarpur last month, much had changed. The inner roads were often paved; the nights twinkled with the odd light from houses; music — devotional bhajans and raunchy pop in equal measure — blared from distant loudspeakers. The houses were more pucca than kuccha, some even rising to multiple storeys, and tap water now trickled into homes. Change had come to Bihar.Yet, this change hides a deeper paradox. Between 2012 and 2024, as per Bihar’s economic survey, its economy grew by roughly 90 per cent — slower than the national economy, which expanded by about 150 per cent over the same period. While Bihar’s economy nearly doubled, those of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Gujarat expanded by around 150 per cent. Even poorer states that once stood alongside Bihar — such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan — grew by more than 110 per cent. The state has thus fallen behind both the economically more developed states and its BIMAROU counterparts. It remains, by some distance, India’s poorest. Bihar has ramped up bijli, sadak and pani, but it has not quite yet built prosperity.AdvertisementNext month’s election will be Bihar’s most open contest in two decades. Nitish Kumar’s authority has weakened, the BJP has lost its most respected voice in the late Sushil Modi, the INDIA bloc has found new energy under Tejashwi Yadav, and Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj has entered the fray. But whoever wins, Bihar’s economic policies are unlikely to change dramatically. No party today is meaningfully pro-market, nor does any carry the ideological imprint of the old Left. All are pragmatic managers of welfare and infrastructure, not architects of new economic ideas.Also Read | Express View on SIR: Bihar shows the wayThis sameness has deep roots. Bihar’s geography and demography make development hard: It is landlocked, densely populated, and dominated by tiny landholdings that keep agriculture unproductive. Industry is thin, the elite and educated migrate, and the workforce that remains is too poorly trained to spark a services boom. The result is an economy that grows but never transforms. Bihar’s problem is not that it is doing nothing; it is that it is doing the same things as everyone else — only with fewer resources, deeper divisions and, therefore, lower returns.Where the state does differ from the rest of India is in the realm of social policy. Bihar’s politics has often been social before it is economic, and the contest this time is again over competing visions of society. On gender, Nitish Kumar’s record stands apart. Over two decades, Jeevika — the state’s network of women’s self-help groups (SHGs) — has reached more than 1.5 crore households, making it easily the most successful SHG model in the country. It has transformed gender dynamics and has given scores of women, often for the first time, a collective voice in finance, mobility, and local politics. The programme’s success has made women a visible political constituency. If the incumbent Chief Minister is no longer at the helm of government, Jeevika may lose its central place in Bihar’s policymaking, with consequences that extend far beyond economics.AdvertisementCaste, meanwhile, remains Bihar’s constant. Every election reshuffles which caste groups dominate, but this does not diminish the salience of caste as an organising force. Both the NDA and the INDIA bloc claim credit for Bihar’s 2023 caste census, yet it is unclear whether it is in the interest of either to implement policies faithful to what the data reveals: It is neither the upper backwards nor the forwards who dominate in numbers or poverty, but the Mahadalits and the lower backwards — groups most in need, yet not core voters for either alliance. For the Yadavs, this election may mark a return to assertive politics after two decades of restraint. The fears that a change in power will return Bihar to the “jungle raj” of the 1990s are overstated. Bihar’s politics is competitive, but, over the last two decades, has become institutionalised: The politics of caste is now rarely synonymous with political violence, but more likely signifies negotiated access.Religion forms the third axis of this social churn. For decades, Bihar’s electoral calculus and its Lohiaite tradition kept communalism at bay. Even Muslims who did not vote for Nitish Kumar saw him as a safety valve — someone who would not let the state’s communal temperature rise. That compact is now fraying. With his influence weakening and the BJP ascendant, the social balance that once held is shifting. Exhibitionist religiosity is on the rise: Festivals have multiplied, vegetarian rituals have grown in visibility, and communal remarks that were once whispered are now spoken aloud. If the NDA returns, this drift towards a more overtly Hindu public culture will likely accelerate. If there is one group whose fortunes will swing with the outcome of this election, it is Bihar’s Muslims.most readThese social transformations — women’s empowerment, the recalibration of caste, and the steady communalisation of everyday life — matter profoundly. Yet, while central to Bihar’s story, they do not by themselves build the foundations of prosperity. The state continues to suffer from what might be called a missing middle in policymaking: The absence of sustained investments in health and education, incomplete devolution of power, and a lack of systemic thinking — all of which are needed to translate social mobility into economic progress. Post-Covid, learning levels remain abysmally low. Colleges and universities struggle to attract top students and faculty. For most of the rural poor, the first point of medical contact is still the informal Bangali doctor, and out-of-pocket health expenses remain high as public facilities stay distant and overstretched. Village and municipal leaders continue to lack the funds, functions, and functionaries needed to govern effectively. In general, structural transformation of the sort Bihar aspires to requires a complex mix of policies and political nous. None of these problems are unique to Bihar — only more metastasised, as the state tries to grow without investing in the very things that make growth sustainable.The Bihar of 2012 was markedly poorer but, buoyed by the knowledge that lives had changed recently and that progress was possible, its people were far more hopeful. In Muzaffarpur in August 2025, the roads were smoother and the lights brighter, but the mood heavier. The promise of change had given way to a quiet recognition: That the roads were being built, but what was missing was a sense of where they led.The writer is assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park and author of Last Among Equals