ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: How Bihar election has become a remarkable case study

The jury is out. The Bihar elections announce—don’t take us for granted – because if you do, we will show you your place by voting for a party that we may or may not have considered otherwise, writes Editor-in-chief Jyoti Malhotra in her weekly column The Great Game Tiraskar is the voter’s terse message.

Voters were, so filled with contempt for the Congress — read, Rahul Gandhi — that they have reduced the grand old party to six seats in Bihar. Both at Tarn Taran in Punjab as well as Budgam in J&K, the people have given a fair warning to the ruling parties—AAP and NC respectively. The BJP’s hunger to win, as Bihar showed and has been clear in election after election, has never been in any doubt, she writes.

The Mahagathbandhan (MGB) has plenty to reflect on, writes senior journalist Radhika Ramaseshan in her Edit-Oped NDA sweep leaves Opposition searching for answers. The Congress was curiously reluctant to own up Tejashwi as its leader; the MGB pulled in different directions, she avers. As far as Prashank Kishor is concerned, he faltered on two counts — one, announcement to contest from Tejashwi’ s seat Raghopur; second, his targets were not clear, she writes.

The ten percentage difference in the vote share between the two alliances, the NDA at 47.2% and the MGB at 37.3 %, gave a massive advantage to the NDA, writes Monash University prof Manisha Priyam in her article What drove NDA to landslide victory. How to we make sense of this mandate? The answer lies in a range of electoral maneuvrings, she writes. In the end, it was the NDA’s allies that were scoring a perfect 10. Critical to BJP courting Nitish Kumar was his carefully cultivated image of delivering on pro-women development schemes, she writes, with the Rs 10,000 bonanza to women acting as the top-up.

Bihar tells us what exactly women voters are looking for and why Nitish presents the perfect case study. They build a relationship with leaders who address them, writes senior journalist Ruhi Tiwari in her article Why Bihar’s women voter is the real winner of 2025. Women across states have used cash transfers to start small businesses to earn a livelihood with dignity, she explains.

The spectre of terrorism was once again at Delhi’s doorstep, after more than a decade. The Delhi car blast incident marks a visible shift in Pakistan’s approach to cross-border terrorism against India, writes former Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen SK Saini (retd) in his Op-Ed piece White-collar terror is now an inescapable reality. Pakistan’s deep state now seeks to orchestrate attacks by leveraging home-grown, white-collar professionals — doctors, students, seemingly respectable citizens. These groups find new ways to evade detection, sow confusion during investigations and forestall leads.

A Delhi University professor reportedly got his name deleted from Delhi’s electoral roll and got himself enrolled in Bihar to vote.  India’s electoral law draws a bright, simple line: you may register only where you are ‘ordinarily resident’; Ordinary residence is about where you actually live your life, says former Chief Election Commissioner of India SY Quraishi in his Edit piece Let’s shut the door on poll-time ‘tourism’ . You vote where you live. Not where your ancestral house stands locked, not where your party wants you for a week, not where it is convenient on polling day. The law of ordinary residence should not be stretched for the sake of electoral convenience, he adds, while enumerating practical steps to  separate bona fide movers from tactical shifters.

The increasingly protectionist stance being taken by the US in its trade policies, in its new visa policies for professionals and students, and its stance on illegal immigrants, gives one clear message from the West — ‘go home’, writes Gurbachan Jagat, former Manipur Governor and ex-DGP, J&K in his Edit piece Nuggets in the dust. Sehjaldeep Kaur, a girl from a village in Hoshiarpur, having secured the 13^th rank in the National Defence Academy merit list, and young women cricketers from villages and towns across India have shown the way of sheer grit and hard work.

Single-minded devotion to excellence has enabled our girls to overcome constraints . This is what  young students should learn from their example, poor farmers should learn to support children’s activities, the government and the industry should recognise talent and find ways to keep this talent here and growing, he writes. History will not recount how many elections or byelections we won — it will judge us on how we developed our human resources.

A Major Defence Framework Agreement was signed between the US and India on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in Kuala Lumpur. Renewal of the bilateral framework is a gambit shrouded in ambiguity, writes Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari in his Edit piece What lies beneath India-US defence pact. America’s complete estrangement from India would be a geopolitical gift to Beijing and Moscow of incalculable value. If this renewal is a sign of strategy or weakness, of wisdom or folly is an avoidable binary. It is a continuum born out of shared strategic imperatives, he thinks.

Coming to Delhi’s persistent air pollution, curbing local burning represents one of Delhi’s most direct and achievable pathways to cleaner air, write Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water, and Priyanka Singh in their Op-Ed piece Why Delhi must tackle its own fires first. They have given solutions — Delhi government should first map and manage ward-level hotspots. enforce responsibility among bulk waste generators, scale up clean waste processing and bioremediation and finally  eliminate solid fuel use for cooking and heating.

A debate has sparked after a national science academy, which had famously refused to make APJ Abdul Kalam its Fellow, bestowed upon industrialist Mukesh Ambani its Fellowship — an honour till now reserved only for scientists having stellar academic and research achievements. ISRO is autonomous on paper, but it has no courage left to correct a minister when he disrespects its founder publicly, writes science commentator Dinesh C Sharma in his edit piece Academic autonomy under siege.  The Indian Statistical Institute, established nearly a century ago, is on the radar of the Central government, he writes.