The history of caste in the Bihar assembly

The first story based on the database looked at the representation of Muslims in the Bihar assembly (https:/ bit.ly/BiharMus-limMLAs).

- Nishant Ranjan, Roshan Kishore and Abhishek Jha

From today, we begin a three-part series looking at overall caste dynamics in Bihar assembly from 1962.

The first part of the story will provide summary stats on the overall social composition of all MLAs in the database and compare this with the social breakup of the population to ascertain its social representation or lack of it.

The second part of the series will look at the change in social profile of Bihar’s MLAs over time and whether there are discernible patterns which can be seen along with the change in the state’s overall politics.

The third part of the series will look at the party-wise nature of caste-representation in the Bihar assembly.

Hindu backward classes have had the highest number of MLAs in Bihar