FROM MANDAL TO METADATA: THE EVOLUTION OF BIHAR'S ELECTIONS AND THE ANXIETIES

What makes Bihar's election so gripping? JP's "Total Revolution” turned the street into a classroom where citizens learned to challenge power; Mandal translated that lesson into the ballot, reorganising parties around new social majorities; the 1990s stitched in strongman politics and booth-capture lore, reminding everyone that procedure without trust is brittle; the 2005–2015 “sushasan” turn tried to reboot faith with roads, schools, and coalition arithmetic; and today's data age-micro-targeting, metadata, and SIR—asks the same old question in a new script: who counts, and who gets to do the counting?

- TDG NETWORK

Voters patiently standing in line at Samudayak Bhawan, Nathpur, Bhagalpur, during the third phase of the 2009 general election.

Since Independence, Bihar's elections have been a crucible of India’s social and political forces.

For the first two decades Congress ruled unchallenged, but by the 1960s caste and class tensions erupted. In 1967, a coalition of socialists and forward castes dislodged Congress in Patna, foreshadowing the anti-Indira Janata wave of 1977. In the mid-1970s Jayaprakash Narayan’s anti-corruption movement was born in Bihar, later sweeping India. In the 1980s leaders like Karpoori Thakur championed quotas for backward castes, further breaking old hierarchies. By 1989-90 the scene was set for Mandal-era politics: Bihar’s own Lalu Prasad Yadav, an OBC leader, replaced Congress at the top of state government amid nationwide reservation debates.