India, Oct. 28 -- In an interview with this newspaper, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and the chief ministerial face of Mahagathbandhan, Tejashwi Yadav, spoke at length about a new agenda of development for Bihar, jobs, financial empowerment of women, schemes, and law and order. Conspicuous by its absence was any talk about caste empowerment, which was the foundational idea of the RJD under Yadav's father, Lalu Prasad. This shift - evident in the Mahagathbandhan manifesto released on Tuesday - is not merely a tactical manoeuvre but an acknowledgement of a new political reality in Bihar, which is no longer circumscribed exclusively by caste.

Since the advent of Mandal politics in the 1990s, caste identity has been the fulcrum of Bi...