Nitish vs Nitish

SOME stories must be retold as an act of resistance. They must be remembered as sacred, as testimony to the suffering of the people who have learnt to give up, to not expect, to wait until eternity, to not complain and to let go. Of hope, expectations, dignity. There is a lot that's wrong in Bihar. Yet, we only spoke of the past and the distant future in the elections. The rhetoric was surreal, like a Magritte painting where the boundaries between reality and representation merged. But Bihar isn't a painting. It is a collage of many things. It is a patchwork of many stories.

- Chinki Sinha IS EDITOR, OUTLOOK MAGAZINE

Bihar's per capita income is Rs 70,000. It is a third of the national average, and nearly six times less than what a person in Telangana earns in a year. More than a third of its people, 33.8 per cent, live in multidimensional poverty, the highest in the country. If it were a country, Bihar would be the 12th poorest in the world. It also has the most illiterate people in India. Its literacy rate of 74.3 per cent is way below the national rate of 81 per cent. According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau figures, Bihar has the second-highest number of murder cases, after Uttar Pradesh. Bihar ranks last among all the states in the Human Development Index. A 2020 study found that 50 per cent of all households in Bihar had at least one migrant member. It has one of the highest unemployment rates. Bihar was ranked 18th out of 19 large states according to NITI Aayog's State Health Index 2019-20. It has the highest share of underweight children.

SOME stories must be retold as an act of resistance.