Theatre of debt

Bihar’s economic balance sheet offers a sobering picture of growth without transformation. Behind the electoral fervour and populist promises lies a state struggling to reconcile ambition with capacity, trapped in a fiscal cycle where debt sustains expenditure but rarely builds assets. For every hundred rupees the state produces, nearly forty are owed in debt, a burden that points not just to financial weakness but to structural stagnation. The state’s fiscal numbers tell a consistent story of imbalance.

Revenue receipts, dominated by central transfers, far outweigh Bihar’s own tax and non-tax revenues, which together account for barely a third of total income. Its fiscal deficit, at more than double the prudential benchmark, and its mounting liabilities underscore how little autonomy Bih