Bihar’s economic balance sheet offers a sobering picture of growth without transformation. Behind the electoral fervour and populist promises lies a state struggling to reconcile ambition with capacity, trapped in a fiscal cycle where debt sustains expenditure but rarely builds assets. For every hundred rupees the state produces, nearly forty are owed in debt, a burden that points not just to financial weakness but to structural stagnation. The state’s fiscal numbers tell a consistent story of imbalance.

Revenue receipts, dominated by central transfers, far outweigh Bihar’s own tax and non-tax revenues, which together account for barely a third of total income. Its fiscal deficit, at more than double the prudential benchmark, and its mounting liabilities underscore how little autonomy Bihar enjoys over its economic destiny. Borrowing is not funding new infrastructure or productive investments; it is paying salaries, pensions, and interest. This........

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