Bihar at an Inflection Point

by Naveen Kumar Sharma

Aug 13, 2007

In last ten days two events happened:

1. Nitish Kumar went to Mauritius with a 30 member high powered delegation from Bihar and it was very well received in Mauritius.

2.Unprecedented floods came to North-Bihar something which was, the worst of its kind in last 30 years.

When the delegation was going to Mauritius - they had some inkling but was not sure of the enormity of upcoming floods and they made a call to move forward with their plan. I understand how the bureaucracy plays with information that 'things are/will be in control'.

Now in modern days why does he have to go out for 7 days, 2-3 days would have been more than sufficient. Also, if he got the details of enormity of floods, he should have come back after 2-3 days leaving rest of his team there. But this did not happen and we all can be wiser in hindsight. Also he has gone through a personal tragedy just two months back and psychologists say it takes 9-12 months to really get over personal tragedies. So his decision making may not have been as good as in normal times. I think it was an honest error of judgment. If there were no flood, Mauritius trip would have worked really in favor of developing Bihari sub-nationalism. However, time was not on his side.

On the other side, opposition was waiting for an opportunity and they got one. They are so desperate that they went overboard with this. Lalu in his own style was only concerned about putting down Nitish Kumar but was not honest about actual rehabilitation.

All of a sudden, crimes have gone up, government is on defensive, all the people who were not able to loot and rape Bihar for the last 20 months have started collaborating and making mess of the already precarious Bihar. Center is doing lip service to actual development of Bihar. All the MLAs of ruling and opposition parties who were not allowed to make money have started showing signs of taking advantage of the situation. George Fernandes is singing his own tune in Muzaffarpur.

We have reached an inflection point. Either we will go down the drain from this point or go up. Battle has reached the decisive phase.

Now in this situation what does the silent majority do? All the good people must learn one thing from bad people which is to collaborate. We are living in a networked (flat) world thanks to the Internet and cell-phones, time and distance barrier has been completely removed. We must move forward with our enterprises and support the positives in Bihar. If we miss this opportunity, the coming generations will not forgive us for sitting on the fence and not doing anything. Because they will always be ridiculed for being called a 'Bihari' in a negative sense and we elders will sulk forever for sitting on the fence. Choice is ours.
 

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