Vaishali/Patna/Bihar Sharif (Bihar): Among her friends in Shahmaiyan Rohua village in Bihar’s Vaishali district, 18-year-old Moni Kumari is a bit of a role model.With a glint of mischief in her eyes, Moni recounts each instance she broke societal boundaries: when she refused to marry at 16 and instead, chose to continue studying to be a police officer. Or when she doubled down on her choice and cycled 18 kilometres each day to college.On November 6, when Moni gets ready to cast her first-ever vote, she is preparing to break another unwritten rule: to vote by choice, not by caste, like most of Bihar does.As a member of the Kushwaha community, falling under the Other Backward Caste (OBC) bracket, generally known to back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in these regions, she should have voted for the BJP candidate in her Lalganj constituency.Moni Kumari. Photo: Kunal PurohitGen Z voters like Moni are at the heart of this election campaign in Bihar: the state has India’s largest proportion of youth population. Nearly 58% of Bihar’s population is under 25 years of age, and hence belong to the Generation Z cohort. In terms of voters, one in every four voters is a Gen Z. Of them, 1.47 million are first-time voters.In an election where everyone from the prime minister to the home minister warns of a return to jungle raj, how does that rhetoric land with voters born in the Nitish era – those with no living memory of the chaos being invoked?The question might decide the fate of both alliances. After all, if Moni is an indicator, it’s a tough task at hand, and one that could possibly swing the elections decisively.Moni is a beneficiary of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s well-cultivated welfare agenda for women voters. Moni got a bicycle as well as a Rs 25,000 cash transfer as part of the Nitish government’s schemes for school going girls.Yet, this isn’t enough to earn her vote, she insists.“The cost of education is skyrocketing and most families don’t want to spend money on girls’ education to begin with,” she complains. The Nitish government will pay her 50,000 after she finishes her graduation. “But educational costs are so high that it would have been more helpful to pay instalments each semester,” she says.Which is why she was all set to defy her family and vote for the Mahagatbandhan (MGB) this time, to usher in a government led by Tejashwi Yadav.That is, until she told her parents about it.That’s when she heard the two words that threaten to unravel the MGB’s campaign: jungle raj.Moni’s mother told her of the crime the period saw, of the frequent theft, of commuters being waylaid, of women being attacked. It would have been impossible for Moni to cycle nine kilometres in those days, her mother reminded her.That’s what sealed the deal for Moni: her vote is now going to the NDA.Learning about jungle raj on YouTubeWith such a large chunk of young voters, every political party is aggressively courting young Biharis. Poll-time announcements and manifestos eagerly display party plans for this cohort: Naukri and palayan, jobs and migration, are two issues that come up in nearly every political conversation. Gen Z voters have, on their part, shown a willingness to break past traditional caste alignments that have dictated traditional voting patterns in Bihar.Yet, the repeated echoes of jungle rajin this campaign – pushed by the NDA and refuted by the MGB – have forced many Gen Z voters to seek a better understanding of what the term really means.Like Moni turned to her mother, many others are turning to YouTube for explainers on what the period meant, and if they should really care now.Pratham Kumar was born in 2005, the year Nitish came to power.Not far from his village in Jehanabad district, one of the most gruesome reminders of the jungle raj had occurred: 58 members of the Dalit community Dusadh were gunned down by the upper-caste militia Ranveer Sena on November 30, 1997.Yet, Pratham had never been told about this by his family. He learnt about it accidentally, when he came across a video while casually scrolling through YouTube, sitting in his Patna University hostel room. Pratham was shocked by the cold-blooded killings and the impunity the criminals seemed to enjoy in those Lalu times.But that isn’t taking him away from backing the Tejashwi-led MGB. As a 20 year old pursuing an undergraduate degree, he is frustrated by the lack of opportunities Bihar offers for those like him.He is angry with Nitish for not doing enough for students like him and instead, focusing on cultivating women voters as a vote bank. “The youth are suffering: the state of education is the pits, and there are barely any jobs here. But Nitish babu is also focussed on bringing out schemes for his vote bank of women voters,” Pratham said.The return of jungle raj, he says, is no longer possible. “Forward and backward, all communities have lost so much in the bloodshed that nobody wants jungle raj,” he said.But he admits that some of his friends don’t agree and are, in fact, being radicalised on caste lines by their new-found knowledge of the Lalu years. “Many young people are only now discovering the injustice that their caste has suffered and want to avenge it,” he says.That list includes Shubham Kumar, 22.Shubham belongs to the upper-caste Bhumihar community in Bihar, which has traditionally clashed with Yadavs in the state and is widely-known to back the BJP. Shubham wants to move beyond caste lines.He is angry that Biharis look for caste, not the educational qualifications of their candidate.Patna University students at the Jackson Hostel in Patna. Photo: Kunal PurohitSitting in a lecture hall inside Patna Science College, Shubham admonishes his classmates for encouraging casteism in their family’s voting choices. “Can we all not call up our family and tell them to move beyond caste and vote for the best candidate, instead?” he strongly asks.Yet, Shubham’s own attempt to do so has been a bumpy one.A few weeks ago, walking past hostel campuses at Patna university, Shubham’s ears caught some Yadav students chant supremacist slogans and play Bhojpuri songs that warned of consequences against rivals of the Yadav community once the Rashtriya Janata Dal came to power.The chants and songs took him back to the memories of Lalu’s time his family had harboured. “My grandfather used to tell me that Bhumihars had stopped wearing bright clothes in that period, since they would be targeted by the Yadavs otherwise,” he said.That Yadav students were already discussing reprisal for rivals was worrying enough for him, he said. “What do they want? Do they want to bring back jungle raj?” he asks.That’s where Shubham’s idealism hit a wall. He wants to vote for the best candidate, yes, but he wants more than his family, and his Bhumihar community stay safe.Shubham and his family will vote for the BJP this time too.The pervasive fear of jungle rajIt’s not just those from targeted caste groups but among other religious communities like Muslims.Akhtari Begum, who runs the non-government organisation (NGO) Izad in Patna, remembers the curbs that the period had for ordinary citizens.“There have been times when we have spent nights at Patna railway station if our train has reached Patna after 10:30 pm, because it was so unsafe to be out on the streets,” Begum recalls.Nineteen-year-old Afifa Parveen has heard similar stories from her own family. Those memories came alive this election, especially after the anointing of Tejashwi as the chief ministerial candidate of the MGB.Parveen, an undergraduate student in Arts living in Patna, says her family has been telling her about the “scary” times they witnessed. “My mother told me how one couldn’t leave home after 5 pm, and how women, especially, had to be very careful,” she says.The stories seem unfathomable for Parveen, who now moves around freely in Patna as she wills.Which is why, Parveen can’t bring herself to back the RJD directly.She will, though, like her family, continue to vote for the Congress and hope that the party can keep the RJD on a leash.‘History is history’ Yet, these fears are often punctuated by grim lived realities of a large part of the population: Bihar remains India’s poorest state, with nearly 35% of Bihari households making less than Rs 6,000 a month, according to the 2022 state caste census.How much can those, in such distress, hold on to past memories?In Bihar Sharif town, the narrow by-lanes of Mansoor Nagar reveal some answers.A group of young men in the Kushwaha community in their late 20s, taking in the mild sun on a Sunday morning, want the conversation in the polls to be about their present.“Mehengai, inflation, is killing us,” said Prakash Kumar, 28, who works as a painter in Bihar Sharif. “What is the point of giving our women more money when you are raising prices constantly?”Prakash’s anger is targeted towards the BJP MLA from the area, Sunil Kumar, for his neglect and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for not being able to rein in inflation.Prakash is clear about what he is seeking this election: badlaav, change – both, at the local level, and in Patna. He isn’t going to let his community’s traditional backing of the BJP get in his way of voting them out. He is firm: he wants to offer Tejashwi a chance.It’s in this distress that Jan Suraaj has an opportunity, in the minds of many young people like Ishant Kumar, 20, pursuing his Arts undergraduate degree from Patna University.Kumar is also restless for change and is angry at the falling education levels even within the university, but he is also not very enthused by Tejashwi’s agenda.“The youth believe that history is history. This talk of caste has not got us anywhere,” he says. “Vikaas kahaan hua?”But the lack of choices between the two alliances is disappointing. “We are caught between the devil and the deep sea,” he says.“Many of us young people want to talk about common interest issues, like jobs and education and nobody is really addressing them,” before quickly revealing where he tilts, without much persuasion. “Nobody really, except Jan Suraaj.”