January 4, 1986 BIHAR Landowners' Armies Take Over 'Law and Order' Arvind N Das IN Bihar, agrarian tension, which earlier had a sporadic, spontaneous and largely unorganised manifestation, has now achieved the status of an organised sector activity, systematic, regulated, even regimented. Where peasant discontent had earlier found expression through informal articulations of unrest and short-lived, transitory movements, the characterising feature of much of present-day rural Bihar seems to be the existence of well-organised, drilled and armed 'senas', most of which, of course, operate on behalf of the landowners. These machines of 'order,' if not always of 'law', represent a new feature of the organisation of repression, of the privatisation of the coercive functions of the state.