Broken Promises: Caste, Crime and Politics in Bihar
Author: Mrityunjay Sharma
Publisher: Westland Books
Pages: 333
Price: Rs 699
The research is meticulous and extensive. The analysis of how Bihar slid into a development morass and then tried to climb out of it is penetrating and perceptive. Caste rules everything, ranging from intellectual pursuit to crime in Bihar, and in this book, too, a caste slant creeps in almost unseen and possibly inadvertently.
The book is organised as a political history of the state. So Pataliputra, the centre of the all-India empire of the Maurya dynasty, the establishment of universities such as Nalanda and