The union budget presented last week was not expected to steer clear of the allure of electoral politics, even if the next big state polls are as far away as autumn. And so, with Bihar set to vote in November, a slew of budgetary announcements were made for the state. 

With NDA allies – Bharatiya Janata Party, Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) – in the fray for the upcoming assembly polls, these announcements were read along the lines of political reasoning. But another factor is equally important, if not more so. 

The support of the JDU, headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is important for the BJP-led NDA at the centre. That implies more focus on Bihar in the centre’s allocations of financial resources and projects. So, in a way, besides the poll politics in Patna, the coalition politics in Delhi also offered political logic for allocations to the state. 

The question in Bihar, however, isn’t why but how much, and even a lot counts for little. Despite being a big state in the Hindi heartland, Bihar is severely cash-strapped and reels at the bottom of economic development indices. As a result, the state government always eyes central assistance to fuel a range of infrastructural work as well as welfare and development programmes. That’s how the use of “double-engine” governance got different currency in the political lexicon of Bihar since the late 1990s. 

That has also meant that what might seem as significant attention from the centre falls short of what political parties promise to get as Bihar’s rights from the centre. 

It isn’t clear whether the recent budget’s allocations will assuage or disappoint expectations in Patna. The establishment of a Makhana Board, for instance, is a long-standing demand. Bihar is home to 90 percent of production of makhana, so the agency for marketing, adding value, and monitoring quality is likely to benefit its farmers in north Bihar, especially districts like Madhubani, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi and Purnea. Many also argue that this region is the NDA’s stronghold and the move may help it in electoral consolidation. 

Other institutional moves include the setting up of a slew of national centres of excellence in the state such as the National Institute of Food Technology and the expansion of IIT Patna. 

The infrastructural push was evident in announcements regarding new airport projects, both greenfield and brownfield, in different parts of the state, along with expansion of Patna airport and a new airport in its close vicinity at Bihta. Another project which got a nod was the West Koshi Canal Project. 

Now, the question is, is that all from the centre for 2025? Or might we see other forms of assistance trickling in over the next few months? 

Going by past records of financial governance by the current government, the budget isn’t the only way we’ll see allocation of funds. The state government might be hopeful, especially in an election year. 

But all allocations fall short of expectations in Patna. Since 2000, the political discourse has revolved around the demand for “special status” when the state was divided and Jharkhand came into being. Even if both the UPA regime and the subsequent NDA regime looked away from fulfilling this demand, the alternative has been sought in big packages for the state. That’s another disappointment altogether, as many of these packages haven’t been realised beyond announcements.

At the same time, the state government has been ill-equipped to utilise some earmarked funds, and the constraints of state capacity has made it return unutilised funds. 

But even before “special status” became the benchmark for all other financial palliatives from the centre as “alternative help”, Bihar’s financial administrators and economists talked about a historical compensation to which the state was entitled. In some ways, the state’s economy was short-changed under the rubric of cooperative federalism. This was seen in the light of the fact that undivided Bihar felt the rough edge of the freight equalisation policy, which deprived Bihar of the huge competitive advantage of being home to enormous mineral resources that were used for industrial development across different parts of the country. Even if it was necessary in the national perspective, the Bihar economy felt short-changed for the resources it had. 

Amid these factors at play, a curious aspect has been a tinge of condescension in how a section of the commentariat in the national media viewed some projects announced for Bihar. One financial journalist, for instance, wondered which flights would land in Bihar. She obviously hasn’t seen the huge volume, also one of the fastest growing, of flyers to existing airports in Bihar, which can obviously do with far more airports.

As such, a mixture of state politics and the pulls of coalition politics at the centre might have made Bihar figure quite visibly in the recent budget. But that isn’t what pleases Patna anymore. The denial of special status, a demand that almost enjoys political consensus in the state, has set the benchmark too high for Delhi to meet. For all the noise about Bihar being the blue-eyed boy of Saturday’s budget, the state will not be so easily pleased. 

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