The National Democratic Alliance’s sweeping victory, securing 202 of the 243 Assembly seats must have come as a pleasant surprise even for the ruling leadership in Delhi. For the opposition, however, it is a sobering jolt, exposing yet again their inability to decode the democratic winning mantra that continues to elude the Congress with each successive election. Such lopsided outcomes, though electorally legitimate, raise deeper questions about the health of Indian democracy. A politically divided national psyche becomes even more fractured when victory turns triumphalist and defeat becomes an occasion for conspiratorial lament. The winning side, especially in Bihar, has not always tempered its euphoria with humility, while the losing camp has too often sought refuge in imagined conspiracies rather than confronting hard political truths.

This moment in Bihar’s political history, however, cannot be read in isolation. Critics argue that it reflects a broader shift in the global political imagination. Despite unprecedented digital interconnections and the free flow of information, nations today appear more estranged from one another than at any time in recent decades. Identity may travel across borders, but trust does not. The nation-state remains the fundamental unit of political life. The early dreams of globalization regarding the promise of seamless cooperation, cosmopolitan solidarities, and borderless opportunity have steadily dimmed. Instead, political communities have grown inward-looking, guarded, and deeply anxious.

Modern states, including India, increasingly operate as powerful security structures fortified by surveillance capacities and organized military and paramilitary forces. This shift reshapes political participation itself. In such an environment, individuals discover that aligning themselves functionally with the system out of conviction, pragmatism, or compulsion becomes one of the few stable pathways to dignity and security. This internalisation of system-loyalty, coupled with a new narrative of patriotic duty, has become a significant force shaping electoral behaviour. Across India, ruling dispensations have successfully........

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