PATNA, Oct. 24 -- Political parties in Bihar have neither preferred balance of number of various social sections nor the age of majority of voters in distribution of Assembly tickets to candidates. They have been guided by only one winning formula -- the exact social engineering that can impress upon the electorate and fetch the winning margin for them. The parties have allocated tickets by judging the influence of certain castes and social groups in particular geographies. They didn't mind the much-talked about principle and slogan jitni jiski hissedari, utni uski bhagidaari (participation in proportion to population). This slogan is linked to calls for quotas, even within political parties. Following the caste census survey in the state, it had become more shrill. This election has however sedated it for a time being. What is significant is that most of the parties have gone in for electoral arithmetic and also bypassed the demographic realities of youth unemployment and large-scale migration in search of quality education and jobs, which have remained part of rhetoric only. As per 2011 Census, about 58% of Bihar's population was under 25 years old, a demographic indicator that is the highest in India. But in politics, no party has tried to look young, with only a few across all parties finding favour in the ticket distribution. Like women, youth also constituted the pre-poll buzz with sops and promises for them from all political parties, but when it came to giving tickets, there is no apparent seriousness in any party. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, however, seems aware that those in the 18-30 bracket may not be well aware of the era before the NDA government took charge of governance in Bihar in November 2005 and, therefore, unmistakably reminds them of the scenario in the RJD regime prior to him. "Did they do anything? When he (oblique reference to Lalu Prasad) was unfit to continue his wife, he made his wife the CM. They cannot think beyond family. Has anyone from my family contested the election? Whatever change or development has happened is our effort post 2005. Earlier, nobody dared venturing out of their houses after dusk, there were no roads and electricity," is Kumar's stock remark at every election meeting. Tejashwi, himself young, also retorts with a slogan that people want to change the 20-year-old scrap car, which pollutes, with a youth like him and makes promises to lure them. "You cannot sow the seed of the same brand on the same land for 20 years, as it spoils soil fertility," he says. But beyond poll rhetoric, no party has come forward to give youth the opportunity in electoral politics beyond a few influential politicians. BJP has dropped veterans to five tickets to relatively younger and newer candidates, but the number is not big, as most parties have stuck to old tactics and promises for the youth despite their strong show in 2020 to make the election closer due to RJD's strong push for their core issues like quality education and unemployment. According to an ADR report, Bihar has 30% - 40% candidates from politically well-known families contesting the polls this time, which is the usual scenario in the state. RJD has gone ahead with its strength, fielding a maximum 51 candidates from the Yadav community and 19 Muslims in its list of 143 candidates. It means half the seats have gone to the M-Y combination, its trusted vote bank for over three and half decades. On rest of the seats, it has eyed Kushwaha votes, which has traditionally backed Nitish Kumar's JD-U. There are 11 seats going to Kushwaha candidates, an experiment that worked with some success in the Lok Sabha election for the party and it has continued with it to broad base its vote share by targeting JD-U's strength. On the other hand, the NDA's two main constituents - the BJP and JD-U - have given just four seats to the Muslims and 14 to Yadav candidates, but banked heavily on the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), giving them 99 of the 202 seats they are contesting together. If the RJD has banked heavily on its trusted MY-combination, JD(U) has banked on its core Lav-Kush combo, giving 13 seats to Kushwaha and 12 to Kurmi candidates, besides eight from the Dhanuk caste. Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) of Prashant Kishor also struggled to walk the talk on EBC. Kishor also admitted that though he had not been able to give 70 seats to EBCs, as announced earlier, his party had still given the maximum 51 tickets to them. Women have been treated unfairly by both the alliances despite talks revolving around them due to their aggressive voting in the last three elections, with their proportion in ticket distribution not even reaching 15% in any of them, including wives and wards of political heavyweights and Bahubalis as proxies. Despite the din over caste survey data for commensurate quota in jobs, that does not reflect in ticket distribution in any political party, with the upper castes like Bhumihar and Rajput finding favour in all the three mainstream parties. While BJP has fielded 21 Rajput, 16 Bhumihar and 11 Brahmin candidates, JD(U) has given nine seats to Bhumihars, 10 to Rajputs and one each to Brahmin and Kayasth. It comes to 69 seats to the upper castes, while RJD has fielded just 14 of them and the Congress has given to 21 upper caste candidates out of the 61 symbols it distributed....