INSIGHT VORTEX

I'm a Bihari, and the whole damn country knows we Biharis stick to our caste like glue in politics—no matter how backward we stay, no matter how much they beat us down everywhere we go. We won't ditch caste. It's our bloody heritage! Society was built on caste lines, and we'll never abandon it. Let me kick this blog off with a brutal example. Picture a godforsaken area with just three people—each hogging 33.33% of the census pie. Then one bails for whatever reason, no replacement shows up, and now the two leftovers? Boom, 50% share. Can anyone with half a brain twist those numbers to scream "their dominance exploded"? Hell no! That's exactly how Bihar's government stats expose our rotten mess. Since the 1990s, Biharis have fled like rats—to every corner of India and the world. Anyone with a shot ditched this sinking ship. The so-called "drop" in upper castes? Pure migration math, idiots! And it's not just them—any upwardly mobile bastard,...

I firmly believe that a strong opposition and its stance on national issues form the first essential condition for democracy's success. Without a mature opposition, no democracy in the world can survive. India experienced this during Indira Gandhi's regime when she declared a national Emergency. It was the opposition of that time that resisted it, mobilized public opinion against it, and ultimately forced her out of power. However, that opposition's unity was short-lived. Lacking any long-term policy vision, it fell prey to the same flaws as Congress, making the non-Congress government experiment brief. The reason? Those who formed the first non-Congress government had emerged from Congress's own legacy, with no fundamental ideological differences beyond splitting off to create new parties. Whatever the cause, Congress regained power. Broadly speaking—barring a few intermittent years—Congress dominated from the mid-20th century through the first two decades of the 21st....