Bihar: PM Modi blames RJD-Congress, ignores NDA report card from 2005-25

“People in Bihar know that investors get scared when they hear names of RJD and Congress,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Begusarai, apparently as an explanation for investors’ preferring Gujarat to Bihar. At the receiving end of mounting criticism in the run-up to the Assembly election in the state for discriminating against Bihar, and conversely being partial to Gujarat, the PM announced that Begusarai will get a "new petrochemical plant and a textile hub".

The prime minister has come in for quite a lot of criticism for his alleged partiality to Gujarat. Scathing comments on social media highlighted the PM commending youth in Bihar for making shorts and reels to make money.

In his election rallies in Samastipur and Begisarai, the PM called upon the gathering to switch on the torches in their mobile phones in broad daylight, pointing out that they obviously did not need the lalten (lantern) in a reference to the RJD's election symbol. He also exhorted the youth in Bihar to run for at least 15 minutes in honour of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on his birth anniversary on 31 October.

“In Bihar it is 'reel banao, torch jalao and daur lagao’ while in Gujarat it is Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games, World Cup cricket, Gift City, Bullet train, semiconductor units and expressways,” read a bitter social media comment.

The bitterness has grown among educated youth in the state at least, who seem to be critical of how Bihar has been neglected during the last 11 years of the ‘double-engine government’. Union home minister Amit Shah queered the pitch by asserting this week that it was not possible for Bihar to attract large industries owing to a shortage of land. The excuse has failed to cut much ice with the youth.

PM Modi’s speech was ironical because Indian Oil Corporation's Barauni refinery in Begusarai was set up in 1964 when there was a Congress government in the state as well as the Centre. PM Modi, however, accused Congress governments of not giving any project to Bihar when the UPA government was in power ‘under pressure of the RJD’.

In a rambling speech, the prime minister also alleged that both RJD and the Congress are ‘against women’ and that “they tore documents related to Bills for their empowerment”. While it was not clear what the PM was referring to, he was clearly signalling that women are better off with the NDA.

Questions are being increasingly asked about the dismal poverty in Bihar and the poor report card of the NDA governments. As much as 74 per cent of the state government’s revenue in 2025-26 is expected to come from the Centre. Only 26 per cent of the expected expenditure of Rs 2.95 lakh crore is expected to be raised by the state’s own resources.

While neither the PM nor the home minister nor BJP leaders are being asked tough questions about the NDA’s poor governance record since 2005, that has been remedied in an op-ed written jointly by former Congress MP from Jamshedpur Dr Ajoy Kumar, a former IPS officer who was the city SP in Patna, and Akash Satyawali, joint secretary, INC in the party’s research wing, exposing the present plight of Bihar.

They highlighted the following instances of glaring misgovernance:

• In 2014, construction began on the Rs 1,700 crore Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge. Ten years later, it remains under construction after multiple structural collapses

• According to NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index 2023–24, Bihar remains the country’s worst-performing state on several indices: poverty, hunger, quality of education, and work and economic growth

• The NITI Aayog survey estimates that 94 lakh families in Bihar earn less than Rs 200 per day. Poverty is way higher among scheduled castes (43 per cent), scheduled tribes (43 per cent), and extremely backward classes (34 per cent) compared to the general category (25 per cent)

• Fewer than 10 per cent of Bihar's people have completed their 12th standard education

• 95 per cent of households in Bihar do not own a vehicle, not even a two-wheeler

• Nearly 2.2 crore people in Bihar work as manual labourers

• Bihar’s per capita income (PCI) remains the lowest in India — one-third of Odisha’s and half of Jharkhand’s

• A CAG report in 2025 flagged significant financial irregularities in several government departments amounting to over Rs 70,000 crore

• Outstanding liabilities increased from Rs 43,000 crore in 2005, when RJD lost power, to Rs 3,19,000 crore in 2024

• Over 20,000 schools lack proper electricity, 76,000 have no computers, and fewer than 2 per cent have digital libraries

• School dropout rates are the highest in India

• Most health centres function without adequate doctors or specialists

• In rural community health centres, shortages of medical personnel have reached a high of 90 per cent

• 80 per cent of households avoid government health facilities citing poor quality of care

• Two out of three women are anaemic

• Less than 11 per cent of infants receive an adequate diet and over 40 per cent of children under five are stunted

• Bihar has the lowest industrial employment among major states, with only 1.3 lakh workers employed in the sector, of whom just 36,135 are permanent employees

• Since 2018–19, employment in factories has increased by only 5,460 workers

• Over the past decade, Bihar has added only 13 cold storages, while Gujarat built 459 and Uttar Pradesh 299

• Bihar has just 899 food processing units employing around 34,700 people, a paltry figure when compared to Punjab’s 3,300 units and 1.5 lakh jobs in the same sector.