The Churn in 2025: Making Sense of Bihar's Political Moment

Bihar's 2025 assembly elections present a masterclass in how political upheaval can masquerade as routine democratic competition.

The Special Intensive Revision has added to uncertainties. But what appears as electoral chaos is actually a profound moment of political churning, a samudra manthan, where traditional alliance structures are being fundamentally recalibrated by the revelations of the state's groundbreaking caste census.

This churning creates a uniquely deceptive political moment, where surface appearances belie deeper structural transformations. The Mahagathbandhan's visible discord and the NDA's apparent organisational superiority mask complex undercurrents that could reshape Bihar's political landscape.

The caste census catalyst

The release of Bihar's caste survey data has fundamentally altered the state's political calculus beyond simple vote-bank arithmetic. The revelation that Extremely Backward Classes constitute 36% of the population – encompassing 112 sub-castes totalling 130 million people – has created unprecedented political consciousness among previously invisible communities.​

This demographic awakening represents a critical juncture, when existing power structures become malleable and new coalitions emerge. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agreement to conduct a national caste census in 2027 was a surprise. Why would a party built on subsuming caste identities into Hindu unity agree to enumerate and thereby legitimise caste divisions?

The calculation was sophisticated. First, the 2024 Lok Sabha results in Uttar Pradesh – where the Samajwadi Party-Congress coalition defeated the BJP despite its organisational might – made resistance futile. The opposition had successfully pushed the caste census as an issue. Continued opposition would cost votes without preventing its eventual implementation.

Second, the BJP wagered on its systemic advantages: near-total media control, superior organisation, vast financial resources, and a decade of work promoting Sanskritisation – the aspiration of lower castes to adopt upper-caste practices and thereby rise in social hierarchy. They bet that revealing numbers wouldn't matter if they controlled the narrative around those numbers.

Third, and most cynically, they calculated that caste enumeration would fragment opposition unity. If 112 sub-castes each pursue separate interests, who benefits? The party with resources to negotiate 112 separate deals. The fragmentation itself becomes an asset. The India Today Mood of the Nation poll data supports this reading. In February 2024, 59% favoured caste census; by August 2024, this rose to 74%. The BJP couldn't fight this tide. Instead, they're trying to ride it. Initially viewed as strategic concession, it now appears as a calculated gamble that organisational machinery could somehow contain caste-based mobilisation's disruptive potential.​

However, Bihar's experience suggests this calculation may be fundamentally flawed.

The fragmentation into smaller parties and their assertion, like by Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, signals the census has unleashed forces transcending traditional party loyalties. Each EBC sub-caste now possesses precise knowledge of their demographic weight, transforming abstract representation concepts into concrete political demands.​

The implications extend nationally. Successful recalibration of caste-based politics in Bihar could trigger similar demands across India, potentially undermining the BJP's carefully constructed social coalition where caste consciousness can be contained within Hindutva's broader framework.

Mahagathbandhan's turbulent waters

The Opposition alliance’s failure to finalise seat-sharing arrangements reveals structural problems extending beyond organisational incompetence. The emergence of ‘friendly fights’ in a few constituencies – including Vaishali, Tarapur and Lalganj – represents fundamental tensions between coalition democracy and authoritarian regional leadership tendencies.​

Congress's new assertiveness under in-charge Krishna Allavaru, specially chosen by the party, directly challenges RJD's assumed natural leadership. This internal tension proves particularly damaging when the caste census should theoretically strengthen the Mahagathbandhan's backward caste appeal.​ The Congress's insistence on releasing an EBC document before seat finalisation, while frustrating to allies, signalled strategic thinking about Bihar's changed demographic reality. It was an attempt to thread together the newly visible beads of the OBC palette into a cohesive social justice narrative. The challenge lies in execution – can the party move from document to movement?

The psychological impact of visible disunity cannot be understated in Bihar's political culture, where strength and weakness perceptions often determine outcomes. The conduct of parties like Mukesh Sahni's Vikassheel Insaan Party, demanding substantial seat shares despite minimal electoral presence, reflects coalition politics' broader challenges in an era of heightened caste consciousness.​ Every community leader, emboldened by census data, now sees opportunities to extract maximum political concessions; the dynamics makes alliance building exponentially more complex.​

This turbulence, however messy, represents something healthy: political churning where suppressed ambitions surface and demand recognition. In such moments of political churning, ambitious leaders emerge, and parties reorient themselves for a bigger role. The question isn't whether they'll succeed; it's whether the alliance structure can accommodate these legitimate aspirations or will splinter under their weight.

BJP's Maharashtra model spectre 

The BJP's apparent organisational superiority masks significant underlying tensions in the NDA that could prove decisive.

The decision granting equal seat shares (101 each) to the BJP and JD(U) for the first time represents a profound power dynamic shift, signalling Nitish Kumar's diminishing leverage.​ The JD(U) leader is being kept in play but simultaneously cut to size.

This parity breaks the traditional ‘big brother-little brother’ formula that previously allowed the JD(U) symbolic seniority despite weaker electoral performance. The equal division prepares for potential post-election scenarios where the BJP could claim leadership based on superior performance.​ Amit Shah's explicit refusal to name Nitish as the next chief minister represents strategic ambiguity preceding similar moves elsewhere.​

The parallels with Maharashtra are impossible to ignore. There, the BJP split the Shiv Sena, used Eknath Shinde to win elections, then installed Devendra Fadnavis, an upper-caste Brahmin, as chief minister. Could Bihar see a similar post-poll surprise? The possibility hangs over the campaign like a sword, raising critical question within the JD(U) and its traditional supporters.

Nitish enjoys near-messianic status among the EBCs, earned through consistent policy focus, including EBC category creation, symbolic representation and targeted welfare schemes. At 74, facing health concerns and Shah's ambiguity about his chief ministerial continuation, Kumar's diminished stature could erode his traditional EBC appeal, particularly if communities perceive him as politically weakened.​

Enter Prashant Kishor, with deep pockets, a former member of Nitish’s party who refuses to criticise Modi even today. Kishor's prediction that JD(U) would win fewer than 25 seats – down from 43 in 2020 – reflects not just optimism but could also be a pointer to his role in the elections. His strategic positioning in EBC-dominated constituencies, combined with a sophisticated understanding of electoral vulnerabilities, suggests significant potential impact. Kishor doesn't need to win seats to matter. Even a 3-5% vote share, if drawn disproportionately from the JD(U), could flip close constituencies, repeating the kind of damage Chirag Paswan did to the JD(U) in the last assembly elections.

Paswan's elevation, securing 29 seats despite no current MLAs, represents another strategic realignment dimension. His 100% success rate in 2024 Lok Sabha elections and party's 6% statewide vote share have transformed him from peripheral player to potential kingmaker. His emergence could prove decisive in post-election arithmetic, much to Nitish's chagrin.​

The EBC question

The EBC vote bank's 36% population share represents the decisive 2025 factor, yet their political trajectory remains surprisingly fluid. Census revelations created expectations for proportional representation that existing parties struggle to fulfil.​ EBCs occupy only 12% of ministerial positions and lag in government employment.​

Karpoori Thakur, Bihar's chief minister in the late 1970s, created the EBC category within OBCs. Thakur, from the Nai (barber) community, faced vicious opposition from RSS-affiliated groups who couldn't stomach a “lower caste” holding the state's top post. The BJP's posthumous award of Bharat Ratna to Thakur before the 2024 elections revealed its anxiety. It recognises that the alternative narrative – of backward castes uniting as Bahujans to claim their democratic due – poses an existential threat to Hindutva politics. By appropriating Thakur's legacy, the BJP attempts to present itself as a champion of backward caste empowerment while avoiding the substantive redistributive politics he represented.

The BJP has calculated that 20 welfare schemes launched since July 2025, specifically targeting EBCs and women, could compensate for any Kumar appeal erosion and disenchantment among the EBCs. Programmes like Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana (providing Rs 10,000 to 21 lakh women) represent direct material interventions designed to influence voting behaviour, a practise once derided by Modi as "revdi culture".​

Beneath the surface chaos lies a fundamental ideological contest that the caste census has intensified. The BJP's project, refined over three decades, is samrasta – bringing all Hindu castes into harmonious unity under Hindutva. This requires acknowledging caste diversity while depoliticising it, offering symbolic representation and welfare benefits while avoiding structural power redistribution. The strategy worked remarkably well since 2014, particularly in UP, where parties like Apna Dal and NISHAD helped crack the OBC monolith.

But the Bihar census exposes samrasta's limitation. When communities know their exact strength, symbolic gestures feel insufficient. A 5% community receiving 2% representation in governance can do the math. The demand shifts from accommodation to proportional power.

Against this, the opposition supposedly offers social justice, an explicit acknowledgment of historical oppression and a commitment to proportional representation and empowerment. This is the Bahujan vision: India's backward castes, constituting the demographic majority, should wield commensurate political power. However, the challenge articulated since the Mandal Commission era remains: How do you unite India's fractured backward castes into a cohesive political force? The same diversity that makes them collectively powerful makes them individually competitive. Every gain by one OBC group is potentially a loss for another.

The bigger stakes

These elections test several broader Indian political trends. Traditional political certainties now face challenges from new demographic realities, generational change and evolving voter expectations. What appears as chaos – seat-sharing conflicts, alliance tensions, new party emergence – actually reflects deeper political recalibration triggered by caste census revelations.

Caste-based mobilisation's success or failure following the census could influence similar movements nationwide, potentially affecting national alignments. The BJP's ability to contain these forces within the Hindutva framework, advancing samrasta over samta, will be closely watched. The real Bihar 2025 story lies not in surface-level organisational competence but in deeper social and political transformation currents the caste census has unleashed. In this churning moment, appearances prove deeply deceptive.

For seven decades, India's backward castes have operated with incomplete information about their demographic reality. The Bihar census provided clarity, something the rest of the country expects in 2027. Now comes the harder work: translating this demographic majority into political power, individual caste interests into collective Bahujan solidarity, and constitutional promises into lived reality.

The churning will eventually settle, producing new alignments, new leaders and new possibilities. Whether these serve social justice or entrench existing hierarchies under new labels depends on choices made in this pivotal moment.

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