Bihar Vikas Mission fails to live up to its promise

A year after the launch of Bihar Vikas Mission, it is falling apart

It was during the heat of the Bihar Assembly elections in October 2015. Nitish Kumar had returned home after bashing his then bête-noire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at rallies across the state. As he was preparing for the next round of campaigning, Kumar’s electoral strategist, Prashant Kishor, presented him with a set of polling numbers. The data brought a smile to Kumar’s campaign-weary face.

Encouraged by the pleasant numbers, Kishor broached an idea that he had been working on for a while to Kumar: a parallel model of governance to shake up the otherwise “lethargic bureaucracy”. Kishor had earlier suggested that