We ought to be surprised by the electoral outcome in Bihar. Not because exit polls had framed our expectations otherwise.? Not because media ground reports suggested reversals for the ruling coalition. Not because many of us would have liked very different results.

We ought to be surprised because yet another victory for the incumbent in this state and at this juncture in nati-onal life flies in the face of the logic of democratic politics. Students of politics must be surprised by this outcome. When we cover up our surprise, we close the doors of learning.

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Just think of a state that houses some of the poorest people in India, and the world. Its per capita income, as a proportion of the national figure, has consistently declined over the last five decades. It has a relatively younger population and higher contribution to the lab-our pool. Yet it has the lowest labour participation ratio in India and among the highest rates of unemployment. It does not prepare its young population for jobs, as it has the lowest gross enrolment ratio in higher education. It has the worst health infrastructure in the country. Its law and order is in a shambles. If someone tells you the ruler of the last 15 years was re-elected in free and fair elections, you should be surprised.

More so, if you were told that this year the state had witnessed a badly handled pandemic and flood, that the state government was indifferent, if not hostile to millions of workers who were forced to walk back, that Bihar was among the worst sufferers of the economic shock due to the steepest-ever shrinkage in India’s GDP, that most of the soldiers whose lives were lost needlessly on the China border were from Bihar…if the ruling party wins an election in such a year, you should be surprised.

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This defies the logic of political competition on which dem-ocracy rests. A future historian of democracy might turn to this election to understand why democracies failed.

Firstly, she would discover that political choices were not as freely available in Bihar as democratic theory imagined. Unlike other Hindi belt states like Rajasthan or MP, Bihar did not offer a straight two-party competition, or a stable two-coalition competition, like in Kerala. Coalitions were made and unmade in every election. At least half the battle was won or lost in the making and unmaking of the coalition. This year, the RJD was aiming at a Mahagathbandhan (MGB), a coalition of all principal oppositional players. Eventually, it had to make do with a much smaller coalition involving RJD, Congress and three main Left parties: the CPI(ML), the CPI and the CPI(M). The inclusion of the entire Left was a wise move as it gave the MGB a critical edge in Bhojpur and Magadh region. Two important small players (HAM and VIP) were left out. The NDA proved smarter by accommodating these two. She might conclude that the MGB would have gained an edge by cutting down the share of Congress to retain these two small players. But that was not the real slippage.

She would then go on to look at voters’ alignment to find that they were not free-floating consumers who looked at every shop to get the best bargain. They had pre-established loyalties, which in turn reflect the accident of their birth, taking the form of caste loyalty. These partisan voters tended to view the world of politics through the lens of caste. The information they trusted, the leaders they followed and the candidate they supported were all filtered through that lens. She would find that in the post-Mandal era, the RJD had evolved the Yadav-Muslim combine as an unbeatable coalition that put everyone else at permanent disadvantage. After many reverses, Nitish Kumar worked out the social coalition to match the RJD. By now, the NDA enjoyed partisan support of socially powerful, but numerically small, upper castes and Kurmis, besides soci-ally disadvantaged but numerically large Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs). These two social blocs are more or less evenly matched and did not offer anyone an unbeatable lead. The game was not decided by caste affiliations.

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Our future historian would then turn to the third factor: the campaign. Contrary to the popular impression that iss-ues don’t matter in Bihar elections, she would find that pol-itical actors understood the significance of issues well. Party and caste loyalty were the starting point. If a side managed to generate a hawa (perception) in its favour, it was able to cut votes away across caste and political divide. This is what enabled Nitish Kumar to dislodge Lalu Prasad Yadav in the first place; this is precisely what Tejashwi Yadav tried very hard this time. He tapped into the growing resentment against Nitish regime, had some success but came up against a wall: just too many people rem-embered the last regime of RJD, notorious for its lawlessness (more than ‘jungle raj’, it was ‘Yadav raj’ of a kind most people hated). A more successful strategy was to focus on unemployment. Tejashwi did generate some support from students and unemployed youth, cutting across caste lines. But he failed to offer a credible alternative. His promise of a million government jobs must have sounded like a fantasy. She might conclude that the real failure of the opposition was in offering a believable agenda.

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Our academic would notice that the NDA, too, had partial successes. Its ridiculous attempts to turn Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide into a political issue flopped. So did attempts to sell the abrogation of Article 370 or the martyrdom of Bihar soldiers at the LAC. Ram Temple may have helped a counter mobilisation of the Hindu majority in some regions. Being a woman, she would focus on one issue that did make a big difference: the prohibition policy which made this government popular among women. Exit poll evidence suggested that the NDA enjoyed a 5-point advantage among women voters, who voted in more numbers than men. She would conclude that this less noticed issue may have contributed 2 to 3 percentage points to the eventual winner in an election where the gap between the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan was just 0.1 percentage points.

The historian would conclude that in the absence of any clear hawa the election boiled down to the fourth factor—tactical manoeuvres, money, media and the election machine. The BJP enjoyed enormous advantage in this aspect. It overspent the opposition many times. Bihar media was notorious for its upper caste bias that fits in perfectly with deference to the ruling party. The entry of AIMIM was a special gift to the NDA, as it could only damage the MGB. Although it is not clear if its votes led to the defeat of many MGB candidates other than the five places where AIMIM won, its shrill presence must have contributed to counter-mobilisation of Hindus in the communally sensitive districts in the northeast.

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She would notice a twist in the tale. All this should have given the NDA a comfortable victory, but for a very risky and potentially fatal strategic move to encourage Chirag Paswan to rebel against Nitish and thus cut him to size. At the beginning of what looked like a one-horse race, this was a brilliant strategy but once Tejashwi brought some life into the campaign and Chirag overplayed his hand this appears like a too-clever-by-half move. But as they say, nothing succeeds like success.

When this future historian of Bihar narrates the story of how the people of Bihar shaped their own destiny, she might notice that this grand collective exercise was devoid of real choices, was disconnected with the real issues. Democracy might look like a funny game to her.

(Yogendra Yadav is president, Swaraj India. Views expressed are personal.)