Above the fold: Top stories of the day
1. Shashank Manohar to replace N. Srinivasan as head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
2. Maggi noodles is back on the racks after five months.
3. Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy allegedly interfered in the probe into a bar bribery case involving the state Finance Minister  KM Mani.

The Big Story: The more things change
A day after it found itself trounced in the Bihar elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party hit upon the reason for its defeat: caste arithmetic. The Grand Alliance had won because votes were easily transferred among various parties in the the coalition, the BJP concluded. The defeat had nothing to do with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's comments on reservation. None of the leaders who had made divisive remarks during the campaign would be taken to task. And there was no question of removing Amit Shah as party president, since his electoral formula works quite well in other states.  Plus ça change, the BJP seems to have decided.

The party high command has drowned out voices from within its ranks which speak of the need for deeper introspection. While lauding the strength of the opposition, it cannot find any fault in its own campaign: not in the well-worn politics of Hindutva and holy cow, which found few takers in the end, not in the party's decision to bank on Brand Modi instead of building up a regional leader and fielding a chief ministerial candidate, not in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's insistence on painting Bihar as a bleak, backward state when voters saw themselves as part of a dynamic story of hope and growth. A day after the results, it was business as usual, with the BJP directing party members not to attend celebrations of Tipu Sultan's birth anniversary and Shah paying an obsequious visit to Bhagwat. The message is clear: the Sangh still reigns supreme and we will persist in our favourite brand of mindless, chest thumping Hindutva, like it or not.

There is something familiar in the BJP's stubborn resistance to change in the face of pressing evidence. Is anyone thinking of the Congress in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections?

The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
The BJP's scare tactics proved costly in the Bihar election. Gilles Vernier has the data to prove it.
Dhirendra K. Jha observes that Bihar has robbed the BJP of its greatest asset, Narendra Modi's aura of invincibility.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta on why this electoral defeat will force the BJP to talk more like the Congress in terms of economic policy.
Anita Katyal predicts a new lease of life for Congress workers.

Politicking and policying
1. The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the Gujarat government on separate anganwadis for Dalit children.
2. In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy heads towards victory in the country's first proper general election.
3. Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah claims the current Pakistani dispensation would accept Atal Bihari Vajpayee's formula for resolving the Kashmir dispute: Pakistan could extend its sovereignty over PoK while Indians did the same on their side.

Punditry
1. In the Hindu, Nayanjot Lahiri points out how the BJP slipped up on its history of Bihar, especially the bit about Emperor Ashoka.
2. C. Rangarajan in the Indian Express recalls India's bold decision to devalue the rupee in 1991.
3.  The BCCI has taken the first step towards putting its house in order, says Boria Majumdar in the Economic Times.

Don't Miss...
Taran Khan writes about a group of young people in Afghanistan trying to rebuild a war-ravaged nation:
"This Afghan “brain drain” is a real problem for a country where over 60% of the population is below the age of 25 years. It is a generation that has grown up with war. Many came of age abroad, like Sadrey, who lived in Peshawar and Islamabad through the years of conflict. When he returned to Kabul with his family after the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001, he could not even speak proper Dari, the form of Persian spoken in parts of Afghanistan. “But we always knew we wanted to return home.”

Sadrey’s case is not uncommon. Decades of war and displacement have given Afghanistan the second largest refugee population in the world. The country was the top source country of refugees for more than 30 years until it was overtaken by the wave of Syrians fleeing their civil war. The bulk of Afghan refugee communities were based in the neighbouring states of Pakistan and Iran. After 2001, as the Karzai government was formed, there was a movement to return across the border. Many returnees were assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which estimates that more than 5.8 million Afghan refugees have returned home since 2002. These represent 20% of Afghanistan’s population. However, resurgent insurgency and the deteriorating law and order across the country has caused the flow of returnees to ebb over the past five years."