‘Power is the ability to shape the future without being trapped by the past.’

— Hannah Arendt

Bihar has once again rewritten its political story. The 2025 Assembly verdict, returning the NDA government with a sweeping majority, is not merely an electoral decision. It is a profound civic gesture, a conscious resetting of historical memory. It marks a moment when the electorate decides not only who will govern but how Bihar wants to imagine itself in the years ahead.

Nitish Kumar, taking oath for the tenth time, stands not as a routine incumbent but as a long-distance runner in a state where politics has often been a relay of ruptures. His rivals in the INDIA bloc, Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, energised pockets, introduced emotional cadence, and tried to script a generational argument. Yet their efforts were fragmented, their message uneven, their administrative readiness unconvincing. Against this, the NDA appeared more than a political alliance; it appeared anchored, familiar, and structurally coherent.

This verdict is not a snapshot. It is the culmination of a long journey: from the politics of raw social justice to the politics of governance; from the Mandal-era assertion to the aspiration-driven imagination of a new Bihar. The story of this moment begins three decades earlier.

The Long Arc of Social Justice

To understand the sociology of the present mandate, one must return to the early 1990s, when Bihar began rewriting itself through the lens of social justice. The rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav, shaped alongside Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar Modi in the JP Movement, marked a rupture in the state’s social order. Lalu’s politics did something unprecedented: it gave the backward classes, Dalits, and the most marginalised communities the vocabulary of dignity. A psychological revolution unfolded in tea shops and haats, at bus stands and university campuses. Hierarchies loosened; posture changed; the unheard spoke.

But the empowerment of identity collided with the breakdown of administrative machinery. By the end of the 1990s, Bihar was facing a governance crisis: failing schools, eroding roads, collapsing revenue, and hollow institutions. The contradiction—dignity without development—left an opening that would later become Nitish Kumar’s political stage.

The Nitish Kumar Model

Nitish Kumar’s politics has always been distinct. He approaches power not as a spectacle but as a system; governance not as performance but as practice. Scholars often remark that while Lalu democratised Bihar’s social psyche, Nitish democratised its administrative........

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