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Greetings
to all the worthy sons of the land of greatest
epic and heritage!
Yes, if Bihar can educate Siddhartha and make
him Gautam Buddha, if a simple worshiper can be
turned as Chanakya and make his policies famous
worldwide for diplomacy and politics, if the
land can produce and shelter the greatest Sufi
Saint Makhdoum Bihari after whom the town of
Biharsharif is named, how come in modern days we
have most illiteracy and highest crime graph!
This is an eye opener for we all Biharis and
others. A land like Kerala is dominant in all
over Indian and all over world just because of
the fact that it has education and literacy.
Kerala has the highest density of population in
India, nonetheless, the state has been much
prosperous and progressive. This does not mean
that we cannot be better than any other state in
India, but we must educate our people as the
Chinese philosopher Confucius famously said “if
you want to plan for one year, plant rice. If
you want to plan for ten years, plant a tree.
And if you want to plan for hundred years then
educate your people”. Perhaps all of us would be
agreeable on one point that the root cause of
every problem in our state Bihar is related to
lack of education and awareness. A place where
we have to bribe for every work done, even for
reporting some mishaps, due to lack of proper
awareness among majority of populace.
Corruption in absolute sense always flows in a
cascade fashion, we have unfortunately found
this more in Bihar than any other states of
India. Interestingly, we often need to pay under
table money sometimes too hefty to get our basic
rights being guaranteed by the constitution of
our country.
We want to eradicate the corruption completely
and we want to create an atmosphere of trust and
happiness but we do not want to work, we do want
to change the system, but we do not want to
change ourselves. This is simple utopian to
discuss and speak much vociferously and pointing
the finger on one another. If we really love our
land and want to make this a better place to
live in, let us work together in whatever means
possible, in whatever field we have expertise.
The only means to link all the daunting tasked
force to the main steam and productive line is
to educate them. A better informed society can
only perform better and information can only be
shared with there is a minimum level of
education among masses.
It is always nice to win, but it is more nicer
to be able to accept the defeat with grace,
Bihar has proved to be a failure state on
account of maintaining law and order, combating
Naxalism, communal riots and the list goes on,
however, this would not stop us to strive for
the betterment of our future, come what may, we
must work harder and together to clean our image
and make our state a better place to be in.
Many words can be written many assertions can be
put, many arguments can be made, many
suggestions can be made, as those are perhaps
easier tasks to undertake, but when it comes to
work in real ground level, we are timid and no
one dares to lit the torch of pioneering the way
and start constructive work. One couplet in Urdu
is worth quoting here “Akela hee chala tha
janeb-e-manzil magar, log milte gayeen karwaan
banta gaya”. May we request all youngsters and
courageous people to come forward and show a
directionless Bihar the way to tread and achieve
the dream of egalitarian society. Courage does
not mean shedding the blood and showing our
power to helpless and poor, but it essentially
means how strong we are in our belief. As the
bravest thing a man can do it to stay firm on
what he believes, and if we really believe in
ourselves to make our place the best in India,
then let us all unite and flight with all the
powers which are responsible for our
backwardness and the foremost is lack of
education, poverty, communalism, discriminations
on the basis on color cast and creed. And the
rest will follow in their own course.
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Comments: |
Very
nicely written article, Mr. Iqbal. I
thank you for writing such a nice
piece. I was unaware of some stuff
and only learned after reading here.
I always welcome some meaningful
piece from any intellectual. I am
sure what you have dreamed will not
be very far. I can see Biharis are
educating themselves and this is
evidenced in the way that Biharis
are responding to any article here
from all over the world. - S. M.
Khurshid Anwar - New York, USA -
Jan. 27, 2006
Thanks, Mr Iqbal, for writing this
article. It gives me pleasure to
read your thoughts. 'Each one, teach
one' and Bihar will be 100% literate
without actually each one teaching
one. Ok, no more mathematics.
We, the readers of PatnaDaily share
a dream. We'll make it! - Kumod
Jha - Jan. 28, 2005
Thank you very much, Mr Iqbal, for
writing this article and hope for
future also that you always write
this type of stuff. After reading
your article we have to take an oath
to educate at least five people. -
P. P. Jha - Jan. 28, 2005
Thanks Mr. Iqbal for such a
stimulating dose! As you can see,
after going through your article, I
got entirely compelled to provide my
comment. To the uninitiated, I am a
graduate from IIT Kharagpur sending
my first ever comment on this lovely
forum, which makes our bonding even
stronger!
I completely agree with you Mr.
Iqbal that illiteracy is the prime
root cause of all the ills our state
has been suffering from and it is
indeed ironical to encounter that
the state which has established it’s
domination in the professional
colleges from corner to corner in
the country is having such an
abysmal literacy rate!
However, I also notice that the
wheel has started spinning finally,
the societal churning is happening
and the action has begun…Now, more
and more people are contributing
towards the success of Mission Bihar
in whatever petty way they could.
The very fact that we discuss the
many problems pertaining to Bihar by
acquiring time from our busy
schedules is a semblance of this
fact, isn’t it?
Well. Bihar is all poised to regain
it’s glory and no one else but we
will make it happen! However, for us
to realize this gigantic goal of
getting our long lost glory in a
realistic timeframe, we have to have
killer instinct to attack on
obstacles holding off Bihar from
becoming an outstanding state. Out
of all the hurdles we keep
discussing about, illiteracy happens
to be the first and the most
challenging one.
To cut the long story short, let’s
go for an all out war against
illiteracy by taking a pledge to
ourselves that we will be a part of
this eradication process in
whichever way we can. - Samir
Ranjan, Saudi Arabia - Jan. 29, 2005 |
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