Narcotics trade, state apathy and 'coolie trains' fuel a deceptive prosperity while governance and ethics steadily erode under Nitish: Last of a 2-part series
The state of governance does usually have a bearing on voting patterns in an election, though there may sometimes be countervailing forces.
In the recent Bihar Assembly election, the countervailing factors — the introduction of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and the open voter bribery on view of posting Rs 10,000 to the bank accounts of lakhs of women while the polling was on — appear to have prevailed. But there were also other reasons at work which reinforced the countervailing elements.
Read part 1: Why Bihar election verdict sends out alarming signals
In the first part, we saw why the 2025 election result in Bihar sends out an alarming signal. In the second and concluding part, we will look into the moral decay seen in the past decade of Nitish Kumar’s governance.
Unaccounted-for cash
Possibly the most prominent but not written about at all, though spoken of widely in Bihar, is the spread of large sums of unaccounted-for cash across the state, traceable to the Nitish government’s policy of prohibition. This evidently took the sting of impoverishment away for many, preventing outrage from building against the JD(U)-BJP government by giving ordinary people a cushion against harsh times.
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Introduced by the CM in 2016, Prohibition has the ring of virtue. Over time, it built for the chief minister a loyal political constituency. It was for long music to the ears of women, it is said, as it kept the menfolk away from the drink and wasteful expenditure.
But the financial benefits of Prohibition began to be apparent in due course, doubtless letting womenfolk drop their vigil against alcohol. In the 2020 Assembly election, the spread of money on account of the no-booze sale policy was not so evident.
Now it is an entirely different story.
It’s impossible to make an informed guess about how much the illicit trade in alcohol is worth. The figure of Rs 50,000 crore per year has been bandied about in some circles in Bihar, and that would make it higher than any state government outlay on social or welfare measures.
With liquor of all varieties arriving illegally in lorries from other states, and bootlegged pretty openly, and hand-delivered with ease to customers since all concerned are said to be on the take, money is being made all round — from those on high to humble folk. With so many to be appeased and given a cut along the gravy chain, the price of the prohibited commodity is several times its normal market value. But nobody is complaining in Bihar.
Graph of morality heads south
Everybody loves Prohibition. Regular money flows are ensured for a wide variety of people. The only entity that loses out is the state treasury. It earns not a penny. A popular, very high-priced, luxury good yields no tax earnings for the state. Thus, in Nitish-Modi Raj, the graph of morality has dropped precipitously.
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Since the state is being denied legitimate revenue owed to it through economic activity, public morality can be said to have plumbed to zero.
A friend (formerly a journalist, now a lawyer), who visited his home in Chhapra during election time and visited a dozen North Bihar districts, has interesting stories to narrate. Among these is a noteworthy phenomenon: Unaccounted-for money from bootlegging has, in many places, given people, including many women, the opportunity to go legit.
They have used the money to start proper businesses, like the contract business or trucking. They have earned enough not to be satisfied with renovating their homes or buying land. The surpluses over and above meeting essential needs are not to be sniffed at.
Fascinatingly, in Purnea district, he saw shops selling the fancy fruit avocado, which only the affluent tend to buy even in the big cities. It appears now that avocado has also begun to be grown locally as a business activity and trading commodity for other states. Fruit shops stocking the best variety of expensive fruits normally sold in metropolises are not uncommon, suggesting there is no dearth of purchasing power.
So, prosperity of a kind — which has nothing to do with any welfare measures taken by the government — is in evidence.
'Sookha nasha' trade is on
And what of those who cannot afford to pay for Prohibition-driven, super-expensive alcohol? No worries. A flourishing sookha nasha (a dry ‘high’) trade is also on — of ganja, opium and the like. Small and big towns are in the grip of it, not just villages.
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It is said schoolgirls are regular carriers of the stuff in their satchels since they are likely to draw the least suspicion. In North Bihar towns such as Muzaffarpur, the state’s second most important city, purchases may be made outside certain girls’ schools at designated timings. Spot cash is paid, with mothers/parents waiting at home for such earnings. Family labour has acquired an altogether new meaning.
Probably these ‘small’ people, leading ordinary lives, are just last-mile carriers for fat cats, but it’s clear there is a lot of money being made, fuelling the market for goods and services of every kind. This is hardly a reason to complain against the government.
Money, and more money
It’s impossible to make an informed guess about how much the illicit trade in alcohol, flowing from Prohibition and narcotics, is worth. The figure of Rs 50,000 crore per year has been bandied about in some circles in Bihar — and that would make it higher than any state government outlay on social or welfare measures.
But it’s best to be cautious about such guesswork. Only the findings of an impartial commission of inquiry, with terms of reference meant to unearth policy distortions and their social consequences, are capable of offering a clear picture.
Prohibition and sookha nasha are probably not the only sources augmenting spending power in Bihar, while the per capita state GDP hovers around 35-40 per cent of the national average. In effect, ordinary folk would ordinarily be leading desperate lives, and many do, but illegality keeps the system artificially buoyed and a mismatch is established between per capita GDP in the state and spending power in the hands of many.
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There is speculation that added to the source of earnings deriving from the elevated ‘consciousness’ of many — the phenomenon Aldous Huxley famously elaborated in Doors of Perception — is an election-time bonanza, not a round-the-year source of earnings by any means — but the bacon is said to be attractive enough.
Migrant labour force
Some 25 per cent of the Bihar population is estimated to be ‘out in the field’ — meaning the other states of India — to eke out a living and remit paltry sums home so that others in the family may live.
At election time in Bihar, the adults among the Bihar toilers in distant lands are collared by agents of resource-rich flag-bearers of a certain brand of politics, packed like sardines in unreserved train coaches from places like Gurgaon, and suitably incentivised to return home to vote.
The incentives can be attractive non-returnable assistance paid out in hot cash to build a modest house, to put a concrete slab on a leaking roof, or start a scratchy shop in the village that the wife or older child may run.
Help of this nature can go a long way on the electoral chessboard — and probably has. And the number of people we are speaking about is not small.
Bihar's 'coolie trains'
According to a 2024 report of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, cited in a Patna-datelined Times of India story, published a day after the Bihar poll result was declared (not before!), India’s four busiest routes for trains with non-reserved coaches originated in Bihar.
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If the niceties are dispensed with, the word for them is “coolie trains”, no matter how much we may squirm at that stark and demeaning description. It is people like those on board such long-distance locomotives who are made into vote banks.
If that weren’t so, polling day back home might be just another day of hard labour in Kolkata, Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Jalandhar, Srinagar, Baramulla, or Leh — not to forget the small and big towns of Kerala.
Mired in debt
The same TOI report says that as many as 65 per cent of the households in Bihar have at least one member working outside the state and on average send back Rs 4,600 home every month, which accounts for half of that family’s monthly income. If the state as a whole is considered, then remittances make up 28 per cent of the monthly income.
Effectively speaking, this would mean running a household on something like a mere Rs 10,000 a month.
If such are the circumstances, is it any surprise that a large number of women in Bihar should be mired in indebtedness, owing sums of money to micro-finance extortionate lenders which, in the ordinary course, would be hard put to pay back. (See this writer's Do Bihar Women Really Have Nitish’s Back? Their ‘Empowerment’ is Just Hype, The Federal, November 12, 2025).
Bribing Bihar's women voters
The massive bribery of women voters in Bihar — with Rs 10,000 being paid directly into the bank accounts of lakhs of women as the voting process was on and Rs 1,90,000 to follow later, with certain conditions, as the Election Commission looked on — is unlikely to have been warranted even as a dirty trick if the dirt poor women of Bihar had been empowered.
In the BJP’s company, Nitish Kumar has presided over the acceleration of ruin in Bihar and given the state the worst government since the end of “jungle raj” brought him to power 20 years ago. He is truly Bihar’s “short-cut Dorai” — the high gent who always looks for shortcuts for self- advancement.
Alas, in the handy-man media of today (honourable exceptions apart), for which Modi appeasement is one of life’s necessities, the story of Bihar is the story of women’s empowerment under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. If ever there was a travesty of truth, this is one.
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If women, even in the recent election, have voted for JD(U) in a larger way than previously, as the post-poll EC data purportedly shows, then a large part of the explanation is likely to be the Prohibition fallout and the last-minute incentivising of voters through other means, as discussed above.
A fair and deep probe of the Bihar voting is needed, going well beyond dry statistical analysis fitted to certain parameters.
In the Assembly election of 2020, the winning NDA and the losing Mahagathbandhan each had 37 per cent of the vote, with the former tallying around 12,000 votes more than its rival. Then we didn’t hear much about women's empowerment or about the JD(U) and BJP — the NDA parties — having a larger share of social coalitions rooting for them.
All these attributes becoming suddenly available to the winner as if by magic now, when the conditions of life for the ordinary, above-board Bihari is an everyday life-and-death struggle, can only be put down to bias.
Worst since 'jungle-raj'
The state is in shambles in whatever way one looks. In the BJP’s company, Chief Minister Nitish has presided over the acceleration of ruin in Bihar and given the state the worst government since the end of “jungle raj” brought him to power 20 years ago.
Twenty years on, inveterate NDA enthusiasts are still promising a “Viksit Bihar” in 20 years’ time. Promises, broken promises. Even optimism should have an expiry date.
Nitish has enjoyed goodwill for historical reasons and yet has taken not the first step to alter poor people’s lives in the positive direction, propaganda aside. He is truly Bihar’s “short-cut Dorai”, to put it in catchy Tamil — the high gent who always looks for shortcuts for self-advancement.
Bihar's 'shortcut babu'
In the lingo of Bihar, he may be called “shortcut babu”, rather than “sushasan babu” or good governance leader, for he will take any shortcut to stay in power, even if this means dancing to the tune of crypto-fascist tendencies.
Taking the normal path to take his state forward is hard work. The astonishing and “unnatural” Assembly poll results may in part be ascribed to the sea of amorality over which the scum floats in the state, linked to mal-governance. And this is not a secret known only to the discerning.
The expectation of a close race by knowledgeable observers and other close watchers of the scene rested on the degree of support the contenders — the JD(U)-BJP ruling coalition and the RJD-Congress-Left Opposition alliance, with both sides mustering the backing of smaller caste-related groups — appeared to enjoy.
The relevant factors, such as organisational hold, leadership, mobilisation abilities, and the relevance of the slogans of the two sides, were all kept in view, and it was hard to judge if either side had the clear edge — leaving aside SIR and the bribery schemes.
A former journalist and scholar, and a "pucca" Bihari, Arvind Narayan Das, wrote a slim volume called The Republic of Bihar. It was a contemporary analysis, but the title doubtless alluded to the ancient Magadh Empire. Today we may well and truly speak of the Broken Republic, brought to heel by the power-crazy.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas, or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
