Is Bihar casting its vote or voting back its castes?

livemint.com:

Also read: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar predicts ‘more than 4,000 seats’ for NDA The reason behind such loyalty to Nitish is that after becoming CM for the second time in 2005, he took several revolutionary initiatives. His government gave away bicycles to girls in every town and village. This brought girls out of homes to pursue education, and ushered in a shift in society’s lowest classes.

He also envisioned schemes for providing water and electricity to every household. Furthermore, through liquor prohibition in 2016, he won the hearts of underprivileged women in villages. The experiment has also been criticized, though, owing to the loss of lives caused by illicit liquor.

Liquor smuggling is also commonplace now. The law was so harsh that people started calling it “devilish". It was softened to some extent as opposition mounted, but is still as hard as tortoiseshell.

The opponents of Nitish argue that his recent shift has done irreparable damage to his reputation. Some of his recent utterances have also drawn great outcry. The current election will be the most significant test of people’s attitudes towards him.

It is necessary to mention Tejashwi Yadav here. He fought the 2020 elections with the Congress and the Left. In due course, his Rashtriya Janata Dal became the largest party in the Bihar Assembly.

But five of his MLAs switched sides and the BJP is again the largest party in the assembly with 85 MLAs. Needless to say, BJP plays political games carefully. The party understands when to be friendly and when to abandon someone.

The Paswans are an example of this. Ram Vilas Paswan died while campaigning for the 2020 elections, sparking a power struggle between his sons Chirag and younger brother Pashupati Kumar Paras. The