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Every
day, without fail, I go to few websites related
to Bihar at least once if not more times:
PatnaDaily.Com, bihartimes.com, and Bihar
government websites to know about the news
related to Bihar. Unfortunately, no national
newspapers provide e-paper of its Patna edition.
I do also glance through the list of approved
projects on Bihar quite often that has kept on
bulging, though it hardly provides the status of
the projects. I requested CMO also to include a
column for present status. But it has gone on
deaf ears.
Unfortunately, to my dismay, the good news
stories are very scarce. Either media is
hell-bent on publishing only the hot stories of
kidnappings, rapes, ghosts and witches from
Bihar, or Bihar is not doing any thing
publishable that brings hope and pleases the
people of Bihar origin.
Lalu, Rabri and his party man Raghubansh Prasad
Singh are very often in news as they keep on
instigating Nitish Kumar. Many a times, Nitish
gets into their trap. I feel bad after reading
these stories in media, though I try to skip.
Why should Nitish say ‘no’ to the center help,
be it about road building, rural
electrification, or other projects of Bharat
Nirman or Sarv Siksha Aviyan? The task of the
development of Bihar is enormous. It will
require the full participation not only of the
center and state government but also of all
parties that are ruling or are in opposition.
Rather this Yagya requires the participation of
all the sane people of Bihar. They must give up
some of the bad habits of asking “ka ashre hain”
(What is your caste?) and about ‘oopari aamdani’
of any stranger or known persons. They will have
to work hard even in Bihar as much as they do
when they are working outside the state.
Nitish left for Mauritius even when Bihar is
facing a bad flood. The visit was fixed long
back, necessary and beneficial for Bihar. But
Lalu’s men made an issue and shamefully blocked
the road demanding the Chief Minister to
postpone his trip. Can one feel happy about the
incident? Bihar must not lose any opportunity to
develop very close and mutually beneficial
social, cultural, and economic relations with
Mauritius at every level.
Nitish may be doing a fine job. Many in media
are having good opinion about him. However, as I
am a little more ambitious, I feel he is not
aggressive enough.
I do hardly appreciate his rigidity about the
SEZs. Why should he assume that every one else
is a fool? I would have appreciated if he would
have come out with some alternative innovative
plan to create employment and wealth for the
state and its people.
- It has been established by now that IT/ITeS such as BPO, LSO, KPO are
the sectors that can provide employment and
improve the prosperity level of the educated
young men and women of any state. This is the
only sector that can create the middle class and
consumers in large number. Every state is doing
its best to be IT-biased. Nitish would have
certainly used the services of some expert for
invigorating the sector in the state. Boys and
girls from Bihar have been graduating from
Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and
manning many IT companies in those states and
even abroad. Why can’t they do in Bihar itself?
Bihar must provide the human resources for the
IT sector right in the state. Bihar needs to
multiply the intake capacity of its engineering
colleges and to add at least one engineering
college in every district headquarters (48 in
number). And then Bihar must ensure the
infrastructure and work culture for the sector
with no rangdari and dadas’ interference. Nitish
has failed to appoint someone specially to work
closely with the IT biggies to meet their
requirements and to allure them to come to
Patna, Gaya and Muzaffarpur.
- Bihar is also not doing sufficient to attract construction companies
that surprisingly are providing employment to
its people in other state where they migrate. If
the construction companies and banks can be
induced to come out with some right products,
even rural Bihar can afford to have a boom in
construction and in turn employment creation.
I am not against the migration of Bihari labour
or youth to other states or even abroad, but I
do believe that it’s state’s responsibility to
train these men and women before they migrate so
that they get better engagement wherever they
get employed because of their better skill and
training. Bihar must get manufacturers such as
Maruti Udyog and Bajaj or Hero Honda to train
drivers and motor mechanics and institutes such
as NIIT and Apple that provide the facilities
for computer education in big way.
While the work must go on for creating PURAs,
Bihar must urbanise fast too. There must be a
study to find out why the farmers are not
changing from their traditional way of farming
to the farming as commercial business as being
done in other states; and ways to encourage the
transformation. One clear way of urbanization
will be to create some centers of excellence
along the GQ and East-West Corridor passing
through the state. If Kalyani, Siliguri,
Durgapur, Kharagpur and Haldia in West Bengal
can become the places most suitable for IT
investments, why can’t the towns of Bihar get a
similar investment? However, it requires inputs
from some reputed consultants. Nitish must go
for that. Nitish may be honest and hard working,
but people wish to see activities all over the
states that can provide confidence. One way will
be to make each minister declare the ten
projects that they wish to execute and monitor
them getting it executed. In similar manner,
each Panchayat must prepare a master plan of
actions in numbers and report about its progress
every quarter. Governance in the state may be
for the political gains too, but even then, it
needs some sound management practices to achieve
the goal.
Another potential certainly lies in the farm
produces where Bihar is fairly rich. The state
must look at farm exports too as a way out to
bring prosperity to the rural Bihar.
Unfortunately, while most of the prominent
politicians of Bihar take so much pain in
maintaining the common style of their beard,
they don’t get together to solve the problems of
the people by getting development projects
successfully executed.
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