India, Oct. 26 -- This column is on the Bihar assembly elections, but it is more of a collage of the massive changes taking place in the state and the painful impact of the upheaval.

First, let's go back in time to the last decade of the 20th century. I, along with two colleagues, was travelling to Dhanbad from Patna. In the dim sunlight of high winter, we witnessed a disturbing scene near the road. In the bitter cold, a woman draped in a sari was about to step into a slush-filled pond to bathe. What held her back was that she didn't seem to have another sari to wear after bathing. People in vehicles passing by were leering at her. I was trying to understand her vacillation in a dignified way, but what followed further accentuated our un...