Bihar polls could upend decades of status quo despite caste arithmetic

Bihar will be going into the Assembly polls in two phases, November 6 and 11, with results to be declared on November 14 – a battle with high stakes for everyone involved.

An in-depth look at the state of play in Bihar shows that each big player involved in fighting the polls in the State is grappling with its own issues, both internally and externally.

The field, so to speak, in terms of caste arithmetic has remained more or less static in Bihar over the past two decades, ever since the ascendancy of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Upper castes are largely said to be with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and non-Yadav OBCs, Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) and Mahadalits, along with a smattering of Pasmanda or lower caste Muslims with the Mr. Kumar-led Janata Dal (United). They largely