Why Bihar Politics Still Revolves Around Nitish Kumar After Two Decades

 

In November 2025, the Bihar Assembly election produced one of the most lopsided results in the state's electoral history. The NDA, with Nitish Kumar leading the alliance, won 202 of 243 seats — a margin that surprised most pre-election analysts, several of whom had spent the preceding months writing about anti-incumbency, alliance fatigue, and the possibility that two decades in office had finally caught up with the state's longest-serving Chief Minister. Instead, Kumar was sworn in for a record tenth term, and his party, the Janata Dal (United), more than doubled its 2020 seat count.

What the result also revealed, less discussed in the immediate post-election coverage, is a meaningful shift in the internal balance of the alliance Kumar leads. The BJP won 89 to 92 seats to the JD(U)'s 84 to 85 — making the BJP the single largest party in the coalition for the first time in this particular configuration, even as Kumar himself retained the Chief Minister's chair. This detail matters for understanding what Bihar's politics around Nitish Kumar actually looks like in 2026: not simply the story of an indispensable leader who cannot be replaced, but a more layered situation in which Kumar remains central to Bihar's governance while his independent political weight, relative to his primary coalition partner, has visibly narrowed. Both things are true simultaneously, and an honest account of his two-decade hold on Bihar's politics needs to include both.

The Bihar That Existed Before 2005

To understand why Nitish Kumar's emergence in 2005 was treated as significant, it is necessary to recall the specific condition of Bihar in the years preceding it. The period of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi's rule, spanning 1990 to 2005, is remembered in both popular and academic accounts as a period of serious administrative breakdown — a time in which kidnapping for ransom had become a documented and economically significant criminal industry in parts of the state, in which basic infrastructure investment had stagnated, and in which the state's bureaucratic and law-enforcement machinery had, by most independent assessments, substantially ceased to function as a reliable instrument of governance. Bihar during this period became, in national political discourse, a shorthand for state failure — a comparison point invoked whenever discussions of governance collapse required an illustrative example.

When Kumar took office in November 2005, following a Janata Dal (United)–BJP alliance victory, the expectations against which his government would be measured were genuinely low. What followed in his initial years in office — improvements in policing metrics, the establishment of fast-track courts that processed a substantial backlog of pending criminal cases, and a visible reduction in the kind of organised crime that had defined the previous period — is documented across multiple independent assessments of the period and is not seriously contested even by his political critics. This early record forms the genuine foundation of Kumar's reputation, and it is worth stating plainly rather than treating it as background noise to a more cynical contemporary analysis: the specific, measurable improvement in basic law and order during Kumar's first term was real, and it mattered enormously to ordinary residents of the state in ways that abstract governance discourse sometimes underweights.

Governance as a Political Strategy

Kumar's broader political identity, beyond the initial law-and-order improvements, was built substantially around infrastructure and education delivery — a strategy that distinguished him from a significant proportion of his political contemporaries, for whom mobilisation and rhetoric played a larger relative role. Road construction expanded considerably during his early terms, connecting villages to district markets and healthcare facilities that had previously been functionally isolated during parts of the year. Rural electrification, while still incomplete by the end of his various terms, expanded from a genuinely low base.

The education initiatives associated with his government, particularly the cycle distribution scheme for girls enrolled in secondary school, are among his most cited policy achievements, and the underlying logic — that a free bicycle meaningfully reduces the practical barrier to a rural girl's continued schooling once the nearest secondary school is several kilometres from home — has been examined in several independent academic studies of the scheme's effects on enrollment, with research generally finding a measurable positive association between the scheme and increased secondary school enrollment among girls in the districts where it was implemented, though researchers studying the scheme have also noted that enrollment gains did not uniformly translate into equivalent improvements in learning outcomes or long-term retention, a distinction worth preserving rather than treating enrollment alone as a complete measure of educational success.

The Persistent Economic Reality Behind the Governance Narrative

Any complete account of Kumar's two decades in office has to sit alongside a specific and stubborn economic fact: Bihar remains, by a considerable margin, India's poorest state by per capita income, a ranking it has held continuously across virtually the entirety of his tenure. According to Reserve Bank of India and state government data, Bihar's per capita income for FY 2025-26 stands at approximately ₹1.3 to 1.4 lakh annually — roughly one-third of the national average, and according to Business Standard's analysis of FY24 figures, only about one-tenth of Sikkim's per capita income, the country's highest-ranking state on this measure. Bihar's per capita income was also found to be just 64 percent of Uttar Pradesh's, a state that itself ranks near the bottom of the national table.

Outward migration, one of the most politically salient issues in Bihar's contemporary discourse, remains a defining feature of the state's economy. Reporting around the 2025 election cited figures suggesting approximately 75 lakh people from Bihar were working outside the state, and migration featured as a significant point of attack from opposition parties during the election campaign, with leaders on both sides invoking it as evidence of the other's failure to generate local employment. Bihar's literacy rate, at 74.3 percent according to recent data, remains below the national average of 80.9 percent, with a particularly pronounced gap between male literacy (82.3 percent) and female literacy (66.1 percent). A 2025 analysis published by the Indian National Congress's research wing additionally noted that Bihar's outstanding state liabilities had grown from approximately ₹43,183 crore in 2005 to ₹3,19,618 crore by 2024 — a roughly 640 percent increase — while per capita social sector and health expenditure in the state has, according to NITI Aayog data for FY2021-22, remained meaningfully below the national average across the same period.

These figures do not erase the genuine improvements in law and order or infrastructure connectivity documented earlier in this article. But they complicate any account of Kumar's tenure that treats "transformation" as a settled and complete description of what occurred. A more accurate framing, supported by the available economic data, is that Bihar moved from a condition of acute administrative collapse to a condition of basic functional governance — a genuinely significant shift — without that shift translating into a comparable improvement in the state's relative economic standing against the rest of the country, which has remained essentially constant at the bottom of the national table across the entire period.

Caste Politics: Reorganised, Not Eliminated

Bihar's politics has never operated outside caste arithmetic, and Kumar's relationship to caste politics is more accurately described as a specific reorganisation of its terms rather than a transcendence of caste as an organising political logic. His political coalition has rested substantially on extremely backward classes (EBCs) and Mahadalit communities — groupings that, before his tenure, had limited independent political representation relative to the dominant Yadav-Muslim coalition that anchored Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD, and relative to the upper-caste constituencies that anchored the BJP. The 2025 election results, in which the JD(U) significantly outperformed pre-election expectations, were attributed by several analysts substantially to continued strong support among these EBC constituencies, which have been the primary beneficiaries of welfare schemes, reservation provisions, and political representation channels that expanded under Kumar's government.

This is a genuine political achievement in terms of broadening representation, and it is also, by the assessment of several political scientists who study Bihar specifically, a strategy that has not fundamentally dissolved caste as the primary axis of Bihar's electoral politics so much as redistributed which caste coalitions hold political leverage at a given moment. The RJD's continued strength, even in a substantially diminished form after the 2025 result (the party's seat count fell from 75 in 2020 to 24-25 in 2025), still rests on a Muslim-Yadav coalition that Kumar's strategy has worked to counterbalance rather than eliminate. Bihar's politics in 2026, in other words, remains substantially caste-organised politics — Kumar's specific contribution has been to build and sustain a different caste coalition than the one that preceded his rise, not to remove caste from the state's political calculus.

The Alliance-Switching That Defines and Divides His Reputation

Kumar's record of shifting political alliances is among the most consistently discussed features of his career, and it is genuinely possible to read this record in two quite different ways, both of which have substantial support among serious political observers. The first reading treats the alliance shifts as evidence of a leader whose primary loyalty is to administrative stability and continuity in office, exiting partnerships when they threaten governance and entering new ones when they offer it — a framing Kumar's supporters have consistently advanced, and one with some genuine explanatory power given the specific pattern of his shifts, which have generally coincided with moments of acute political instability rather than occurring at arbitrary intervals.

The second reading, advanced consistently by his political opponents across multiple parties and echoed by a meaningful proportion of Bihar's political commentariat, treats the same pattern as evidence of a leader whose primary and overriding loyalty is to remaining in power, with ideological and coalition commitments functioning as instrumentally adjustable rather than genuinely held. Both readings draw on the same underlying set of facts — a documented record of multiple alliance reversals between the NDA and various configurations involving the RJD and Congress across his career — and the disagreement between them is less about what happened and more about how to interpret the motivation behind it, which is, by the nature of the question, not something that can be definitively settled through external observation alone. What can be said with more confidence is that this pattern has measurably cost Kumar credibility among a segment of voters who experienced his shifts as a specific kind of political betrayal, even as it has not prevented him from retaining sufficient core support, particularly among EBC constituencies, to remain electorally viable across every subsequent cycle.

The 2025 Result and What It Actually Establishes

The scale of the NDA's 2025 victory genuinely surprised most pre-election analysis, and it is worth taking seriously rather than retrofitting into a narrative that assumed it in advance. Several factors beyond Kumar's individual standing appear to have contributed to the result: continued strong performance among EBC voters specifically tied to welfare scheme delivery, effective seat-sharing arrangements within the NDA coalition that avoided the kind of vote-splitting that hurt the alliance in the 2020 election, the comparatively weaker campaign performance of the Mahagathbandhan opposition coalition, and the broader national political environment in which the BJP-led coalition was operating from a position of strength following its performance in other recent state elections.

What the result does not straightforwardly establish is a simple referendum on Kumar's individual governance record, given that the BJP's vote share and seat count within the alliance exceeded the JD(U)'s for the first time in this electoral configuration — a development that several analysts read as evidence that a meaningful share of the coalition's support is now flowing through BJP's organisational and ideological appeal independent of Kumar's specific standing, even though Kumar retained the Chief Minister's position as part of the post-election alliance arrangement. The honest reading of the 2025 result is therefore more layered than either "Nitish Kumar's continued indispensability has been confirmed" or "Nitish Kumar has become a junior partner in his own coalition." Both Kumar's continued centrality to the government and the BJP's growing relative weight within the alliance are simultaneously true, and Bihar's politics over the coming years will likely be substantially shaped by how that internal balance continues to evolve.

The Succession Question That Remains Genuinely Unresolved

A specific and recurring feature of Bihar's political discourse, intensified by Kumar's age — he is in his mid-seventies — and persistent public speculation about his health, is the question of what happens to the JD(U) and to the broader NDA coalition in Bihar once Kumar is no longer the central figure holding it together. This question has been a fixture of Bihar political commentary for at least the past decade, and it has not, to date, produced a clear or widely accepted answer.

Kumar has not, across his two decades in office, built a designated successor within the JD(U) with comparable stature or an independently established electoral base — a deliberate pattern, by most accounts, rather than an oversight, and one that distinguishes him from a number of his contemporaries who have built explicitly dynastic political structures. Whether this reflects genuine institutional restraint, as his supporters tend to frame it, or a specific and somewhat precarious concentration of political authority in a single ageing figure without a clear succession plan, as his critics tend to frame it, is itself one of the more consequential open questions in Bihar's current politics. What can be said with more confidence is that the BJP's strengthened position within the 2025-formed government gives the party considerably more leverage over how any future transition is managed than it has held at any previous point in this specific coalition's history, which materially changes the succession calculus relative to how it would have looked a decade earlier, when Kumar's independent political weight within any coalition he led was considerably larger.

What the Available Evidence Actually Supports

Taken together, the record examined throughout this article supports a more layered conclusion than either an uncritical celebration of Kumar's tenure or a dismissal of his significance would allow. His early-tenure improvements in law and order represent a genuine and well-documented administrative achievement, addressing conditions that had become a serious and tangible burden on ordinary life in the state. His education and infrastructure initiatives produced measurable, if uneven, improvements that are reflected in independent research on outcomes like school enrollment. His specific strategy of building political representation for previously underrepresented caste communities reorganised, in a genuinely significant way, who holds political leverage in Bihar.

Alongside this record, Bihar remains the poorest state in India by per capita income, with that relative ranking essentially unchanged across the entirety of Kumar's tenure; outward migration remains a defining and politically charged feature of the state's economy; the state's debt burden has expanded substantially faster than its social sector investment; and Kumar's record of alliance-switching has produced a body of legitimate, unresolved disagreement about what actually motivates his political decision-making. The 2025 election delivered Kumar a historic mandate while simultaneously confirming a meaningful shift in the internal balance of power within his own governing coalition. None of these facts cancel each other out. A complete account of why Bihar's politics continues to revolve around Nitish Kumar after two decades has to hold all of them together, rather than selecting the subset that produces the most flattering or the most critical conclusion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How many times has Nitish Kumar served as Bihar's Chief Minister?

Kumar took the oath as Bihar's Chief Minister for a record tenth time in November 2025, following the NDA's landslide victory in that year's assembly elections. He has held the position with one notable interruption — a roughly nine-month period in 2014 when Jitan Ram Manjhi served as Chief Minister after Kumar stepped down following the JD(U)'s poor performance in that year's Lok Sabha elections, before Kumar returned to the position.

Q2. What were the actual results of the 2025 Bihar Assembly election?

The NDA, led by Nitish Kumar, won 202 of 243 seats — a three-fourths majority that significantly exceeded most pre-election projections. Within the alliance, the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 89 to 92 seats, while the JD(U) won 84 to 85 seats, more than doubling its 2020 tally. The opposition Mahagathbandhan, led by the RJD, saw its seat count fall sharply from 75 in 2020 to around 24-25, while Congress won only 6 seats, marking one of its weakest showings in the state's electoral history.

Q3. Is Bihar still India's poorest state despite two decades of Nitish Kumar's governance?

Yes. According to Reserve Bank of India and state government data, Bihar's per capita income for FY 2025-26 is estimated at approximately ₹1.3 to 1.4 lakh annually, the lowest of any Indian state and roughly one-third of the national average. Bihar has held this ranking continuously across virtually the entirety of Kumar's tenure since 2005, despite the genuine improvements in law and order and infrastructure connectivity documented over the same period. This is not a contradiction so much as evidence that administrative stabilisation and relative economic catch-up with the rest of the country are distinct outcomes that have not moved together in Bihar's case.

Q4. Why has Nitish Kumar switched political alliances so many times during his career?

There are two genuinely competing interpretations among serious political observers, and the available evidence does not definitively settle between them. Kumar's supporters argue his alliance shifts reflect a consistent prioritisation of administrative stability over coalition loyalty — exiting partnerships when they threaten governance and entering new ones when they support it. His critics argue the same pattern reflects a primary commitment to remaining in power, with ideological alignment functioning as secondary and adjustable. Both readings draw on the same documented record of multiple alliance reversals between the NDA and RJD-Congress configurations across his career; they differ in how they interpret the underlying motivation rather than in what factually occurred.

Q5. Has the BJP become more powerful than Nitish Kumar's JD(U) within their alliance?

In terms of seat count within the 2025-elected assembly, yes — the BJP's 89 to 92 seats exceed the JD(U)'s 84 to 85, making the BJP the single largest party in the coalition for the first time in this specific alliance configuration. However, Kumar retained the Chief Minister's position as part of the post-election arrangement, meaning he continues to hold the state's top executive office despite his party's reduced relative weight within the coalition. This combination — Kumar remaining central to the government while the BJP's organisational leverage within the alliance grows — is one of the more significant and underexamined developments in Bihar's current political landscape.

Q6. What happens to Bihar's politics after Nitish Kumar eventually leaves office?

This remains a genuinely open and unresolved question. Kumar has not built a clearly designated successor within the JD(U) with comparable political stature or an independently established electoral base across his two decades in office. Whether this reflects deliberate institutional restraint or a precarious concentration of political authority in a single figure without a clear transition plan is itself a matter of ongoing debate among political observers. What can be said with more confidence is that the BJP's strengthened position within the current coalition gives it considerably more influence over how any eventual transition unfolds than it would have held a decade earlier, which materially changes the succession landscape relative to how it might have looked at an earlier point in Kumar's career.

This article is a factual and analytical account of Bihar's political developments and Nitish Kumar's governance record, drawing on publicly available election data, government statistics, and independent reporting. It does not endorse any political party, individual, or position, and readers are encouraged to consult primary sources and a range of perspectives when forming their own views on contested political questions.