Political success in India, particularly in Bihar, comes from tribalism and caste. There is no research to show that Nitish Kumar, the chief minister, has won his elections for anything other than bringing together castes through his alliance of socialists with Hindutva.

There is zero evidence to show that the Congress lost because of Rahul’s message, but let us accept he is a failure in politics. In any case that isn’t what his speech was about. He was describing to us fundamental aspects of India. If we accept his interpretation, we have to look at the problem differently than in terms of broad solutions coming to us through politics and elections and governance. Read More

Jyothi Shankaran

    Jyothi’s last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi is a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.