Fragmentation, not consolidation, will determine Bihar's fate

Phanishwar Nath Renu, an eminent novelist born in Bihar who used to write on social-political churning of Bihar, made two very important observations about society and developmental politics of Bihar, in his famous novel 'Maila Aachal'.

- BADRI NARAYAN

Firstly, he observed that in one society, multiple societies coexist. He mapped how various caste-based societies work and function under the umbrella of one society in Bihar. He documented how the people of the same caste describe themselves as 'baradari or samaj'.

Secondly, He observed how this 'caste bhav' (feeling) of the society of Bihar and other parts of India hamper developmental processes of the country.

These observations which Phanishwar Nath Renu made in the first decades of the post independent India seems still relevant. If someone travels to understand elections in Bihar and engages in long time conversation with people, they may hear a punch line in most of the conversation - that 'this candidate belongs to my samaj'.

Here Samaj denotes not a macro-samaj (sarv samaj) which is the usual meaning of samaj (society) but micro-samaj which is described as 'society of the same caste'.

So, in this ongoing Bihar assembly election, one may find within multiple developmental and Bihari identity-based discourses, caste is prevalent as threads in every structure of political mobilisation.

The relevance of the second observation made by Renu may be also realised when we see how election-based democracy which is committed to making modern society is shredded while confronting caste in our everyday life. It is true that in some cases casteness may help a few marginal communities to become upwardly mobile but in many cases it weakens the democratic fervour of society.

In this Bihar assembly election, however, the development of Bihar has appeared as the core of electoral discourse, but still caste works very significantly as a cementing factor for creating various mobilisations in the favour and against of contesting political parties like in earlier elections. Bihar is known for the dominance of other Backward castes in politics.