This book binds together essays that, in spite of adopting diverse methodologies and different perspectives, study Bihar’s development, cultural changes, violence, governance, etc., over a long durée and across a vast region with blurred or even absent boundaries. These keywords are reflective of the realities ‘in’, rather than ‘of’, this state as in many other regions across the world. The state’s profile on these parameters has undergone change several times in the last century. The essays in this collection present some of these changes in a vivid manner as well as set the agenda for new research.
Ethnographic, anthropological, and sociological analyses, as well as macroeconomic policy models have been used to analyse the changes in Bihar. Translated versions of vernacular manuscripts, unpublished letters/correspondence, and other archival accounts not exhibited so far, oral evidence, folktales, myths, and memoirs have also been used to demonstrate the dynamics of the region studied. Sacred places, shrines, films, rural capital, agricultural mechanization technologies, paintings, and literary traditions have been analysed to understand the character of the change. In these essays, authors cross not just geographical and temporal boundaries, but gender, class, ethnic, and cultural boundaries in different contexts to present a unique and syncretic collection of essays on Bihar.