India, Nov. 8 -- The Bihar elections have been pitched by the ruling dispensation, the NDA, as a battle between its "susashan" (good governance) and "jungle raj" (lawlessness), the phrase used by political opponents to refer to the RJD's 15-year rule in the state. However, American anthropologist Jeffrey Witsoe, in his 2013 book Democracy Against Development, problematises this dismissal of the RJD rule as merely a period of governance failure. He offers a nuanced reading of how democratisation occurred with the rising to power of "bottom up" backward-caste politics, against a milieu of a governance envisioned and implemented by a largely upper caste bureaucracy. Lalu Prasad disrupted State functioning as an extension of his politics to end upper caste hegemony. This led to a chaotic phase where the State was captured by a new (backward) caste elite that was more focussed on accumulation of assets, rather than any radical redistribution....