The NDA in Bihar: The Paradoxical Victory of Maldevelopment

On social media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi explained that in Bihar the victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was due to the state’s achievements under the stewardship of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal (United) (BJP-JD(U)) coalition in terms of development. This interpretation is not really supported by empirical evidence but the Bihari trajectory of maldevelopment still needs to be factored in for – partly – explaining the electoral performance of the NDA. 

Most of the social indicators of Bihar show that it almost systematically lags behind the other states of the Indian Union, even in the Hindi belt. 

As the method of calculating poverty in India has changed several times, for comparisons over time of the standard of living, the monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) is a more accurate instrument. From that point of view, Bihar comes last with Rs 4,768 in the cities and Rs 3,384 in the countryside, compared with Rs 5,040 and Rs 3,191 for Uttar Pradesh and Rs 5,913 and Rs 4,263 for Rajasthan. 

In contrast, the MPCE of Gujarat and Maharashtra were respectively at Rs 6,621 and Rs 6,657 in the urban milieu and Rs 3,798 and Rs 4,010 in the rural part of these states, far from what it was in Tamil Nadu (Rs 7,630 and Rs 5,310), Kerala (Rs 7,078 and Rs 5,924), Karnataka (Rs 7,666 and Rs 4,397), Andhra Pradesh (Rs 6,782 and Rs 4,870). Incidentally, among the Northern states, only Haryana (Rs 7, 911 and Rs 4, 859) could compete with the South. 

That was partially due to the fact that Bihar remains a rural state and that there are many poor people in villages. Here, poverty levels are partly a function of wage levels. In 2022-23, the average daily wage for men working in rural areas as agricultural labourers was only Rs 308 in Bihar. By contrast, these workers were paid Rs 764 per day in Kerala and Rs 470 in Tamil Nadu, Rs 309 in Uttar Pradesh, and a meagre Rs 241 in Gujarat – only Madhya Pradesh does worse, at Rs 229. 

The situation was very similar for non-agriculture rural labourers who earned Rs 313 in Bihar, against Rs 697 in Kerala and Rs 481 in Tamil Nadu, Rs 348 in Madhya Pradesh, Rs 336 in Karnataka, Rs 324 in Uttar Pradesh and Rs 273 in Gujarat, the state where this figure is the lowest in India. 

But development means also education, and the records of Bihar in this domain remain limited: its literacy rate, 74.3%, is the lowest among India’s large states – with the exception of Andhra Pradesh (72.6%). The gap with truly developed states is very significant as Kerala tops the list with 95.3%, followed by Tamil Nadu (85.5%) and Karnataka (82.7%). 

In the North, all the other states do better than Bihar: Haryana (84.8%), Himachal Pradesh (82.8%), Madhya Pradesh (75.2%), Rajasthan (75.8%), Jharkhand (76.7%), Chhattisgarh (78.5%) and Uttarakhand (78.82%). In the West, Gujarat and Maharashtra again fall between North and South, with 84.6% and 87.3% respectively albeit closer to the South than the North.

According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 2018 educational survey, the percentage of English medium schools teaching till class 12 is the lowest in Bihar: 6%, against 14% in Uttar Pradesh, 63% in Telangana, 60.7% in Kerala, 59% in Andhra Pradesh, 44% in Tamil Nadu and 35% in Karnataka. While in the South the proportion of English-medium schools is never less than 35 %, in the Hindi belt, it is never more than 15%. Note here that in Western India, Maharashtra goes in the Southern way of educating its children in English medium (29%), while Gujarat follows its northern counterpart (12.8%). 

As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE, 2020-21) the gross enrolment ratios (GER) in Bihar, at 16 %, is much lower than in Uttar Pradesh – 23% – and the rest of India. Tamil Nadu tops the list with 47%, followed by Kerala, 43% and Telangana, 39%. In contrast, none of the states below the Vindhyas stands below the GER Indian average – 27.3% – whereas all the Hindi belt states (except Haryana and Himachal) are below – along with Gujarat, once again, and the Eastern as well as North-eastern parts of the country.

These data alone, however, do not provide a complete picture of the level of education. It needs to be supplemented by data on the number of graduates, in order to determine which elite the states concerned have. In this respect, too, Bihar comes last with only 6.8% of graduates, less than half the proportion of Southern states like Tamil Nadu (13.4%) and Kerala (13%) and much less than Karnataka (11.2%) and Andhra Pradesh (9.8%), while in the North, only Haryana (13.2%), Uttarakhand (11.5%), Himachal Pradesh (10.3%) and Uttar Pradesh (10.4%) which reach double figures. The other states of the Hindi belt, Rajasthan (9.7%), Jharkhand (7.4%) and Chhattisgarh (7.1%) do not do as well. Interestingly, Gujarat once again stands out in Western India: while Maharashtra's rate is remarkable (13.5%), the rate in this wealthy state is rather low: 8.9%. 

Also read: Bihar Election Results: Bribery Working at a Grand Scale

In the higher education sector, in 2018-19, Bihar had India's lowest ratio, 14, whereas Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana posted GERs above 35: from 36 in Telangana to 49 in Tamil Nadu – a record – and 37 in Kerala. Other Hindi belt states stand well above Bihar: with 26 in Uttar Pradesh, 22 in Madhya Pradesh and 23 in Rajasthan. In the West, Maharashtra is in an intermediate position (at 32), while Gujarat does worse than most of the Northern states, with a GER of 20.

Another pillar of any development policy is health, and Bihar does not do as well as most of the other states of India there. The infant mortality rate ranges from six per 1,000 in Kerala – a record – and 24 in Andhra Pradesh, with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in between at 19 and 13 respectively. In Bihar, the risk of losing an infant is twice as high as in Tamil Nadu, with an infant mortality rate of 27 per 1000. It should be noted that Tamil Nadu divided its infant mortality rate by 3.1 between 2004 and 2020, compared with 2.2 for Bihar and 2.3 for Gujarat. Similarly, the proportion of women who die in childbirth is more than twice as high in Bihar (118 per 100,000), as in Tamil Nadu (54) and Gujarat (57).

These differences reflect contrasted health policies. In 2018, the number of public hospital beds per million inhabitants was just 98 in Bihar. By contrast, it was over 1,000 in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Even Hindi belt states did much better with 289 hospitals per million inhabitants in Jharkhand, 333 in Uttar Pradesh and 378 in Madhya Pradesh. 

Interestingly, Gujarat is below Madhya Pradesh with 316 public hospital beds per million inhabitants. Maharashtra – with 426 beds – is also a long way from the figures for the South – except for Andhra Pradesh (438). These figures go hand in hand with those concerning the number of doctors: while Tamil Nadu has 1,353 doctors per million inhabitants, Bihar has only 637 and Gujarat hardly more: 755.

Development can be analysed in many different ways, but how far can the trajectory of Bihar be seen as successful from the point of view of development if the state is not doing as well as almost all the other big states of India in terms of education, health, wealth and consumption? One may argue that things have improved. And Bihar has, indeed, consistently allocated a significantly higher share of its GSDP to social spending, reaching an impressive 22.25% in 2021-22. But another variable probably needs to be factored in to make sense of the NDA’s electoral achievement, if the latest state elections have to be taken seriously: last minute cash transfers. 

In Maharashtra, last year, the government launched the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana just before the state elections. Women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds started to receive Rs 1,500 per month in their bank accounts. Last month, similarly, the BJP-JD(U) government initiated the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, just before the elections were announced, crediting Rs 10,000 each to over one crore poor women. This large-scale direct benefit, in which Rs 14,000 crore were immediately disbursed reflects the making of a new kind of state clientelism: in the past, poor voters were clients of individual patrons who protected them in exchange of their support at the time of elections. 

Also read: The True Meaning of Bihar's 'Women's Wave'

Today, all these intermediaries have been short circuited: the government relates directly to the poor and gives them something in order to get their vote. In this context, poverty helps and development doesn’t because the more vulnerable voters are, the more they need this financial support. Paradoxically, governments are not punished for policies resulting in greater inequalities because the poor need them more and appreciate the cash direct transfers they get before elections.

These transfers contradict the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) code of conduct, but this is not the only malpractice the ECI has indulged in, lately – the Special Intensive Revision is a case in point. And this is why elections are not business as usual any more in India and experts need to look more at all kinds of irregularities to explain election results. 

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