Opinion | Mandal 2.0 In Bihar: When Social Justice Moves From State To Market

The first Mandal moment transformed the grammar of the Indian state by democratising access to public institutions. This one may democratise the market

The Mandal revolution of the 1990s reshaped Indian democracy by challenging entrenched social monopolies and opening state institutions to historically excluded communities. However, its broader vision was gradually reduced to reservations in government jobs, even though the Mandal Commission had highlighted deeper structural inequalities in land ownership, education and economic opportunity. Thirty-five years later, after being tested in Bihar’s socialist politics, India may be approaching a second Mandal moment — once again emerging from Bihar’s political crucible.

The limits of reducing Mandal to state employment are evident. Bihar’s 2023 caste survey shows that OBCs and EBCs together constitute 63.1 per cent of the population, while only about 1.5 per cent of the state’s people hold government jobs. If nearly two-thirds of society belongs to the Mandal constituency but only a tiny fraction enters the bureaucracy, social justice cannot be confined to the state. The next frontier, then, lies in the market, and Bihar has begun testing this proposition within its socialist political framework.

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Through the Mukhyamantri Udyami Yojana, the state offers Rs 10 lakh to new entrepreneurs — Rs 5 lakh as a grant and Rs 5 lakh as an interest-free loan — with dedicated channels for SC/ST communities, Extremely Backward Classes and women. The 2025-26 application cycle, which closed in March 2026, witnessed a surge of applicants from EBC and SC/ST backgrounds. The Laghu Udyami Yojana provides Rs 2 lakh grants to poor families to establish micro-units such as flour mills, tailoring shops, repair workshops and small retail ventures. The Bihar IT Policy 2024 and the Textile and Leather Policy 2022 offer additional incentives to enterprises owned by SC/ST, EBC and women entrepreneurs, further tilting the market floor towards historically excluded communities.

Bihar’s economy has been expanding rapidly, recording 10.6 per cent growth in constant prices in 2022-23, with projections suggesting roughly 13.5 per cent nominal growth in 2024-25. The secondary sector has grown by about 15.5 per cent, signalling the gradual emergence of a modest industrial base.

The ambition is clear: to shift the imagination of mobility from waiting for government employment as job seekers to building ownership in the marketplace as enterprise builders.

To understand the significance of this shift, it is worth recalling that Indian markets have rarely been neutral arenas of exchange. Economic life historically evolved through caste-based occupational networks in which access to credit, capital and trade accumulated within particular communities over generations. What appear as open markets today often rest on layers of inherited advantage.

Bihar’s policy experiments attempt to widen entry into these economic arenas by extending the logic of affirmative action into entrepreneurship. The emergence of this “Market Mandal", as I call it, however, will not be without challenges. Translating social justice into entrepreneurship raises difficult questions about the relationship between the state, markets and mobility. Capital injections of Rs 2 lakh or Rs 10 lakh remain modest against the scale of competitive markets. Without mentorship, supply chains, working capital and stable demand, such initiatives risk remaining symbolic interventions rather than engines of structural change.

However, digital marketplaces are weakening traditional gatekeeping structures through technological democracy. Entrepreneurs in smaller towns can now access international platforms such as Amazon, competing less through inherited networks and more through price and product quality.

Earlier experiments have already hinted at this possibility. The rise of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry demonstrated both the promise and the difficulty of building new business classes without deep pools of credit and procurement access, for instance. Bihar’s policies extend this experiment by attempting to create thousands of first-generation entrepreneurs at scale.

For this effort to succeed, policy must move beyond capital provision. Building mentorship networks, supply chains and market linkages will be essential if new enterprises are to survive beyond their initial subsidy phase. The state’s role is therefore catalytic rather than permanent. Public policy can provide the initial push, but markets ultimately determine which enterprises endure.

Seen in this light, Bihar’s experiment is not merely about subsidies or representation. It is an attempt to widen the social base of ownership itself by creating thousands of proprietors who participate in markets as producers and risk-takers, and not merely as workers. If this transformation takes root, the meaning of Mandal may evolve in unexpected ways. Social justice will be measured not only by who occupies government offices but also by who owns shops, factories, digital storefronts and supply chains.

The first Mandal moment transformed the grammar of the Indian state by democratising access to public institutions. This one may democratise the market. And, as before, the laboratory for that transformation may once again be Bihar.

(Shubhrastha is co-author of The Last Battle of Saraighat: The Story of the BJP’s Rise in the North-east. She teaches psephology and communication at the School of Global Leadership. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.)

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