Elections are often read through the familiar lenses of identity, alliances, or last-minute campaign drama. This analysis sees it through an economic lens. If voters overwhelmingly endorsed the NDA coalition, it is not because they expect the state to suddenly conjure up lakhs of government jobs or industrial parks overnight. It is because they read their reality through a pragmatic economic filter. Bihar remains one of India’s poorest and youngest states, with per capita income hovering at just 33 per cent of the national average, the lowest in the country, and a work participation rate of 53.2 per cent versus the national 62.1 per cent. In such a case, voters behave like rational economic agents: they reward lower risk, greater certainty, and steady improvements in the economic conditions of daily life.

Over the last two decades, Bihar has seen a transformation in the “public goods baseline." Roads, once synonymous with potholes, have expanded dramatically; rural roads alone have grown from a mere 1,000 km to nearly 100,000 km. Electrification has reached almost every village. Piped water supply is now near universal. Complaints continue, but law and order, compared to the volatile 1990s, has sharply stabilised.

These shifts are not glamorous, but they matter more to household economics than any industrial policy promise. A street vendor who no longer loses daylight hours due to power cuts, or a farmer who can move goods to a mandi without fearing banditry, experiences a reduction in daily economic friction. This reduction compounds. It improves productivity, encourages micro-entrepreneurship, raises time efficiency, and reduces “transactional vulnerability". Voters intuitively sense this. They vote for continuity because discontinuity brings economic risk.

At the same time, Bihar’s political economy........

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