At first glance, the cream-coloured building in the village of Kalyan Bigha appeared too modest to be the ancestral home of Nitish Kumar, Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister. Tall trees lined one side of the road on which the two-storeyed house is located. The greenish water in the pond facing its entrance was completely still. Some freshly painted benches next to the pond bore banal messages on the importance of cleanliness.

Local officials keep Kalyan Bigha spruced up, villagers said, in anticipation of visitors such as this reporter, who come whenever the state is headed for polls. Though Kumar himself stopped contesting elections from this constituency decades ago, his popularity remains intact in his native village. Sitting under an old tree near the Janata Dal (United) supremo’s

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