Charting changing caste makeup of Bihar’s assembly over decades

The first of this three-part series — it is based on a complete caste database of Bihar MLAs prepared by the first author of this story - looked at the overall caste composition of all 3,629 MLAs Bihar has had since 1962. This part of the series will look at how the caste composition of Bihar’s MLA has changed over time. The third part of the series will look at the intersection of political parties and caste among Bihar’s MLAs.

- Nishant Ranjan, Roshan Kishore and Abhishek Jha

Bihar’s long-term caste representation story is of the rising share of BC MLAs at the cost of upper caste MLAs

If one were to look at the social group-wise cumulative share in the pool of MLAs in Bihar over the years, a clear pattern can be seen: a rise in the share of backward class (BC) MLAs at the cost of falling share of upper caste MLAs. The cumulative share of upper caste MLAs has fallen from 47.7% in 1962 to 34.3% by 2020, while that of BC MLAs has increased from 27.6% to 35.6% during this period. As can be seen from the chart given below, the change really began in the 1990s, which is when Mandal politics, under the leadership of Lalu Yaday, attained primacy in the state.