NO NARRATIVE OF THE POLITICS of modern Bihar can stand the socio-political test without naming the JP Movement and its key torchbearers in the state, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar. For 35 years, these two Mandal warriors have dominated the political discourse of the state. As Bihar, the third most populous and politically crucial state in the country after Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Maharashtra, stands at the threshold of a new era, witnessing these two power centres of the Mandal movement in their denouement, it is making space for new concerns about development, infrastructure, industry, investments, health and education, good governance, unemployment, and outmigration for work.