Should caste politics come in the way of Bihar's Development

I read this article in Times of India three times between yesterday and today trying to make out how caste politics plays an important role in Bihar. Again and again the thought and fear about casteism playing a role in abruptly dismantling Bihar's growth and development has been worrying me. Thus I have decided to pen my thoughts down.

The caste system is strongly prevalent in Bihar with it playing a major role in Bihar's Politics. Major elections have been won and lost on the basis of caste votes. Political parties play the caste games at the times of elections to sway the votes in their favor. With illiteracy so high in Bihar and 40% people living under poverty (it is fair to assume that majority of these 40% are illiterate), voters can easily be swayed by charasmatic speaches of leaders who may or may not work for the progress in education, infrastructure, social awareness and equality, etc.

Some articles which caught my eye are Money, caste used to sway Bihar MLAs (older article dated18 Apr 2005, by Dipak Mishra) and Development on everyone's agenda (current article dated 16 Feb 2009, by Dipak Mishra)

This article shows how the people can be influenced not to support leaders who are working for the progress of Bihar. Can we afford this kind of politics to continue?

How do we then educate the people in Bihar against this daunting task so that the progress path does not get derailed? I am not in Bihar and I don't know if anything is being done about this by people, but sure would love to know. Has anyone got any idea whats happening in this front?

I definitely do not want Bihar to go back to the path of negative development, increased crime, delayed justice, no security for people, etc. I am worried because the people are not educated enough to take the right decisions in getting the right candidates to power who would work for the development of the state.

While the efforts of the current state government in developing the state has finally convinced the stalwarts of RJD and LJP to atleast start talking about development, I am not sure if the principles of development have got indoctrined into them. For all practical reasons I have not seen any of them ever focus for the development of the state while incharge of state government and machinery.

All I want is the development and progress of Bihar accelarates further. I would like to know if some work is going on for social awareness and uplifting of people which would ensure development continues happening in Bihar.

I am open to thoughts and suggestions on what can be done to contribute to the growth of Bihar