Bihar: Beyond Caste

It is an ironical coincidence. One day the massacre in Bihar of at least 34 persons, including women and children, of backward and low castes, and only the day before that newspapers report the conclusions of a World Bank study, based on analysis of civil strife in some 47 developing countries between 1960 and 1999, that looting is the prime motive for civil strife in developing countries and that therefore countries producing lootable export commodities are more prone to civil strife.

The massacre in Bihar has been reported to be the work of gunmen of the Ranvir Sena, a private army of upper caste bhumihars. It is common to attribute these frequent outrages in Bihar to inter-caste hostility. Although the World Bank study claims to have found that "cut-throat competition for diamonds, coffee and other lootable commodities is a prime cause for civil wars in developing countries", it does include among the other factors that raise the risk of civil wars not only low average income and low educational level but also "ethnic splits between a dominant group and a sizeable minority". The authors of the study would possibly be tempted to explain the Bihar massacres, present and past, in terms of ethnic splits.