In Bihar’s political theatre, irony has always been the opening act, and Nitish Kumar, the master of reinvention, once again turned contradiction into victory. With the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) sweeping the assembly elections by surging past the half-way mark, one wonders what could have been the X-factor that made the people of one of the poorest states vote in favour of the incumbent government. Not long ago, Kumar had mocked the politics of freebies, declaring that “electricity will not be given for free” — a thinly veiled jibe at Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi model. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, had warned against the “revadi culture,” accusing rival parties of trying to “buy out people” with giveaways instead of building lasting infrastructure. Yet, a year later, th

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