Bihar's longest-serving chief minister, running India's poorest state for all but nine months of the past 20 years. He leads the Janata Dal (United) party and governs in coalition with the BJP. Born to an ayurvedic doctor, he exhibited a desire for order from an early age—according to Sankarshan Thakur's biography "Single Man", he insisted that household helps should bathe each day and splashed antiseptic on those who did not.
Kumar made a pact with the BJP, which commanded an upper-caste vote base, and won power in 2005. He succeeded Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose 15 years of boorish rule had brought Bihar to its knees: kidnappings, extortion and murder were the norm. When Yadav was charged with corruption he installed his illiterate wife as chief minister and ruled from prison, still winning elections with canny caste calculus. Average annual growth in Yadav's last term was 3.2%, half the national rate. Incomes were 60% of those in the next poorest state and a mere fifth of those in India's richest big one.
Known as Sushashan Babu ("Mr Good Governance"), Kumar tackled crime, which dropped by 68% in his first term. He built roads and bridges and launched welfare schemes directed at minorities, oppressed castes, and women and girls. School enrolment soared. Grain yields doubled. The economy grew by more than 10% a year on average throughout his first term, a fifth faster than India as a whole. In many ways he was a mirror image of Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat: both from humble backgrounds, both micromanagers who turned elections into referendums on themselves. The difference was that Gujarat was already prosperous.
Kumar broke with the BJP in 2013, halfway through his second term, over Hindu-nationalism. Bihar's political realism then forced him back into the arms of Yadav, the man who had destroyed the state. He spent the following decade switching between parties to retain power, his attention distracted from governance. He is now back in bed with the BJP in Bihar and helps hold up Modi's government in Delhi. His voters have largely followed him through each switch; they cite his record of road construction, electrification and schemes that aim to help women, such as free bicycles for girls.
In November 2025 Kumar's coalition was elected for a record fifth time, winning four-fifths of the seats. In March 2026 Kumar, now 75 and in what observers describe as "Bidenesque decline", announced he would step down as chief minister and move to the upper house of India's parliament.
Bihar, home to some 130m people, remains India's poorest state. GDP per person, at under $800, is still no more than a fifth of the richest big state's and on a par with that of Congo. Millions of Biharis migrate to other states for work. Corruption remains endemic. Yet as Thakur put it, "the real change" has been "within the minds and psychologies of Biharis"—its people are no longer embarrassed to say where they are from.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.