Bihar’s long march of promise and why it matters

Bihar! It evokes images of deprivation, a people brimming with aspiration struggling en masse , the persistence of penury perpetuated by a politics that has left its people stranded in a dystopia defined by the divisive arithmetic of castes. It is the state where the long march of promise has been diverted into a wasteland of politics.

Why Bihar matters is because it is home to the youngest population with a median age under 25. It matters because it punches way below its young demography on the GDP scale. Bihar is home to over 130 million, roughly a tenth of India’s population. It contributes just around 3.2 percent or Rs 10.97 lakh crore (at current prices) of India’s Rs 331-lakh-crore economy. So how poor is Bihar? The distance between the top state, the national average and Bi