Caste Dynamics and Political Process in Bihar

Over last six decades, politics in Bihar has undergone a tremendous change. This change is often attributed to deeper structural cleavages along the axis of castes, although little, if any, attempt has been done to support or contest such oversimplified formulations with theoretical and empirical underpinnings. Even if some studies have tried to use empirical evidence, the analytical domain remains too narrow to understand larger socio-political reality in the state. This paper attempts to fill the gaps by going beyond overly generalised notions of caste induced politics. It is argued in this paper that the politics of Bihar has, indeed, been informed by dynamics of social relations chiefly manifested in assertion of caste identity, but it is not as simple as it appears to be, for the dynamics of caste and political preference operate in multiple layers of socio-political structures and get influenced by processes that are multi-dimensional