India, Sept. 2 -- The collective memory of modern Bihar is richly layered, shaped by the heroism of the freedom struggle, the defiance of the JP movement, and the dignity-assertions of the Mandal era. Memory, however, is never static. For the older, it is a ledger of struggle and scarcity. For the youth, it carries the weight of aspiration. The upcoming Bihar elections emerge as a crucible where memories contend with one another, suspended between the gravity of the past and the horizon of uncharted aspiration. At the core of this paradox is migration - Bihar's most enduring story. No other Indian state has woven migration so deeply into the warp and weft of its economy, identity, and politics as Bihar. Yet the state curiously remains indifferent to the condition of its migrants. This is remarkable given the scale. Nearly one in three Biharis is a migrant worker. The state records the highest out-migration rate in India in successive censuses. The 2011 census found that over 8.3 million people from Bihar lived outside the state, a figure that has only grown in the last decade-and-a-half. NSSO surveys estimate that close to 10% of Bihar's population resides elsewhere for work. In electoral discourse, however, migration is normalised as inevitable, even romanticised as proof of the hard-working Bihari. Migration from Bihar fractures into two departures. One is chosen, the other compelled. The first are those who "made it". They left decades ago for education or work, built new lives in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, even Dubai or New Jersey. For them, migration was reinvention - success at the cost of severance. Bihar survives in memory for these migrants - Chhath in balconies, donations to village schools, Bhojpuri lullabies for their children. But for them, return is unthinkable. Why abandon lives won through hardship and resilience despite ridicule for a home that offers zero opportunities? The others - farmhands, masons, maids in India's metropolises - leave because hunger leaves them no choice. Their migration is a compulsion and a weary cycle. They come back when paddy ripens, when Chhath calls, or when ballots beckon, only to leave again. They remain tethered to the land, though the land no longer feeds them. This exile-within-belonging is history sedimented in political choices. The 1990s, dominated by the Mandal moment, marked a watershed in dignity politics. The revolt of the backward classes against entrenched upper-caste dominance was both just and necessary, reshaping Bihar's democratic landscape. But the Mandal revolution prioritised representation over economic reimagination. At this very moment, India was taking its great leap through liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation - unshackling markets, attracting capital, and redrawing its economic destiny. While Gujarat, Maharashtra, and even Odisha embraced calibrated liberalisation, Bihar chose caution - treating private capital as antithetical to social justice. The result was stark. Between 1993 and 2005, Bihar's average annual per capita income growth was barely 2%, half the national rate. Even when the state registered a spurt in construction-led growth, its per capita GSDP in 2022-23 was only Rs.54,000 - just 36% of the national average and the lowest among all Indian states. Poverty remained structurally entrenched. While multidimensional poverty declined in Bihar between 2005 and 2020, over 34% of its population still lives below the poverty line, compared to 11% nationally. Migration became the state's largest export, with workers from the state forming the backbone of construction, transport, and low-skilled urban service economies in Delhi, Punjab, Maharashtra, and the Gulf. The remittances they send back - estimated at over Rs.60,000 crore annually - constitute a parallel welfare system sustaining rural households. But they also mask the state's structural incapacity to generate meaningful livelihoods at home. With more than 57% of Bihar's population under 25, the digitally connected and geographically mobile Bihari youth demand skills and jobs. Meeting this demand requires an economic reimagination rooted in Bihar's historical and geographic strengths. The state's fertile alluvial plains could power an agro-industrial revolution, turning sugarcane, maize and makhana into high-value exports. Its young population - 65% are under the age of 35 - become a workforce for IT-enabled services, manufacturing, and logistics if given skills and infrastructure. The Ganga could be revived as a logistics corridor integrating Bihar into eastern India's trade routes. Bihar cannot afford to linger in the shadows of politics that redistributes poverty instead of creating prosperity. The time has come to move beyond the rhetoric of scarcity and claim the dignity of abundance. The state that once gave India its moral compass through the Champaran satyagraha and the JP movement must now craft an economic compass for the 21st century....