The sorrow of Bihar

Bihar has been known for floods. Every year the government has a daunting task of evacuating people from the flooded area. But, neither the state government nor the central government had ever taken appropriate tasks to tackle this situation. Many lose their families, many their lives. Crops worth many crores are lost. Yet, the government either at the state level or at the central level fails to deliver. So, who is responsible for the floods? Who should be held accountable for lost lives and damaged crops?

The river Kosi is also known as the “Sorrow of Bihar” as it has caused widespread human suffering in the past. This year it has created a record as it picked up an old channel that it had abandoned over a few centuries ago near the border with Nepal and India. More than 25 lakh people have been reported affected as the river broke its embankment at Kusaha in Nepal thus, submerging several districts of Nepal and Bihar (Bihar was worst affected). The worst affected districts of Bihar included Supaul, Araria, Saharasa, Madhepura, Purnia, Kathiar and parts of Khagaria and Bhagalpur.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared Bihar floods as “national calamity” and announced immediate assistance of Rs.1,000 crore for rescue and relief operations and 1.25 lakh tonnes of food grains. Many individuals came forward to help apart from organisations and institutions. This has been a repetitive task every year. Is there no solution to end this? Will people of Bihar have to be dependent on others forever and face floods every year. Why don’t persons who are responsible for horrendous mistake held guilty and punished?

A blame game starts every year after such incidents. According to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, 2004 satellite image shows that the Kosi embankment had come under pressure four years ago at the same place where it breached the barrier on August 18 this year. The western channel of the Kosi was blocked and the eastern channel was under pressure. In 2004, Bihar was under RJD rule. So, did Laloo Prasad Yadav miss something during his tenure? The river embankment upkeep was either poor or did not receive the attention it should have from the then RJD government.
The Bihar CM had also urged External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to take up the matter with Kathmandu, a day before the embankment breached 12.9 km upstream of the Kosi barrage on the Nepalese side. But, Mr. Mukherjee got back to him saying that Nepal was preparing for the swearing-in of Prachanda as Prime Minister and there was no authority who could deliver immediately,

The maintenance of the Kosi embankment is the job of the Ganga Flood Control Commission (GFCC), set up in 1972, under the Ministry of Water Resources at the Centre. Bihar is only the implementing agency because the Kosi water is a subject of the Indo-Nepal treaty. So, can Bihar government blame the Centre for the failure. No. It is the duty of the state government to implement such policies that are beneficial for their public. If the Centre had refused to help, it should have taken the help of media to force the Centre to have a talk with the Nepal government (it is irony that media reported about the Bihar floods when the destruction had been done}. It should be noted that earlier, engineers from Bihar who had gone there to do maintenance work were not allowed to do so by the local Nepalese. At least, the blame game would have not started, as the true facts would have been there in front of everyone.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Water Resources Ganga Flood Control Commission Director Co-ordination S S Chaudhary says that he had written to the engineer-in-chief (North) Water Resource Department of Bihar on April 1, asking about flood protection works on the Kosi. He had also requested a copy of the estimate/scheme duly approved by competent authority together with relevant drawings for the work to be done on river Kosi in Nepal portion on the recommendation of Kosi High-Level Committee (KHLC) for the protection works before the flood of 2008. But, the Commission got no reply from the state government. Moreover, on August 15, the Union Ministry received a report stating that all the embankments in Bihar were safe for Water Resources.

Kosi is not the only sorrow of Bihar. The real culprits for the floods are our politicians. We are the people who often send them to legislative assemblies to represent us by giving them votes. The sorrow of Bihar therefore should be the politicians (and we ourselves) and not the river, which had given livelihood to many generations. Therefore, time has come for some hard decisions. Ministers and bureaucrats should come above politics.. But first, relief and rescue operations should be accorded top priority for two to three months and mega camps with a capacity to accommodate over 10 lakh people needs to be set up in each of the affected districts.

Improving water systems in India

Jaideep Mishra has a very good article in The Economic Times dated 1st September 2008 on improving the water systems in India after the turbulence caused by the river Kosi in Bihar.

The battlefield of Singur

The problem with India developing with such a pace is that these developments are contained within the city. Poverty has been rising with a much faster pace then ever. The recent report by World Bank shows that poverty has increased more. The natural question is what’s government doing? Well, the answer lies in Singur! The government is busy with finalizing various land deals for various corporate to make their investments. In doing so, the government is forgetting one thing that it is taking fertile land from the farmers. Government has an option to give infertile lands or those lands, which are hardly tilled by farmers to these corporate. But, government pays no heed to poor farmers woe.

In an article in The Hindu Business Line, Ranabir Ray Choudhary rightly describes the present situation of Singur. He says that if the Tata pant meant for Nano production comes up, the entire farm culture in the area will die a slow death and if the greenery spreads across the horizon, the State’s industrial prospects will suffer a near fatal blow.

Mr. Choudhary rightly describes the agony of poor farmers by stating that the babus of Kolkata know that their children will get a computer job after college. But, the fathers of Singur do not know what will happen to their sons once they grow up because there is no land to till anymore. They see no future for their sons. Why would then they think about the future of the children of the Kolkata babus?

What will a farmer do with the money he received? Invest somewhere. He may fail. What after that? With land in hand at least he has a fixed capital. So, the solution lies not in giving monetary support to these farmers. Giving back land would not help. It will have a far larger negative affect on the investments not only in West Bengal but also in other states. There is a mixed feeling about the disputed land if it is returned. Many feel that the land may have become non arable. The solution does not lie in returning the land. The solution lies in rehabilitation. But, past experiences of several governments prove that it is not so easy to rehabilitate about several thousand farmers. Now, the situation seems so tensed that other investors who had any future plans to invest in the state are doing a rethink.

Going by the attitude of Mamta Banerjee it seems that she is not interested in talks but raising voices. Had she been ready to talk with the government, the Singur fiasco would not have crossed the danger line. The Telegraph reports that the government of West Bengal had a proposal to build a market complex to rehabilitate farmers who are unwilling to hand over land in Singur. According to the proposal, finalised and approved by the government, half of the 40 acres of the vested land that is part of the Tata Motors project could be utilised for the market. It would house around 1,500 shops, each measuring 436 sqft. With a township expected to come up, the shops could sell grocery and other commodities for household use.

Change is necessary for development. So, the farmers of Singur will have to live with the fact that they have no option but to give their lands to the government, provided government promises to rehabilitate them.

Why Mumbai can’t be Shanghai?

Pollution, encroachments, traffic congestion, unplanned urbanization - that’s amchi Mumbai. Let me ask my readers a very simple question. Can Mumbai be Shanghai? Mumbai has always been compared to other cities in the past. As it is a financial city of India, the city developers need to come out with a better plan to redevelop it into a good city where people can do business as well as reside. But, do we need comparison for that. Why do people compare? They may compare to set a benchmark or a target. If someone has achieved it then, why not us, is the first thought. The other reason may be to not repeat the mistakes that others had faced while achieving those set targets or benchmark.

So, what are the hurdles before Mumbai to be a Shanghai like city? The most important is that India is a democratic country unlike China where even the press is not free to express their views. When India is faced with a problem, our media tries to make aware of the situation not only to our people but also to the whole world. But, Chinese response is to problems is to hide them. SARS and bird flu epidemics are examples. The second is the objective. The object of economic development should be welfare of the people. It shouldn’t be to just build nice looking infrastructure for showing to foreigners.

There are many other issues which need to be taken care of before taking any steps as many previous steps had been a failure. Let us try to examine the Mumbai city. Mumbai is home to more than 15 million people and also to Asia’s largest slum. The city had been ever expanding with no concept of development. So, a few years ago when the government in Maharashtra realised that the Mumbai city is on the brink of collapse it asked McKinsey & Co. to come out with their studies on how to develop Mumbai into a world class city. Then, a year later Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, too echoed that Mumbai should be developed into a better city.

The report had set the estimated cost to be around Rs.2, 00,000 crores. The report focuses on six key areas- economic growth, transportation, housing, other infrastructure, financing and governance. Each area is crucial and also linked with each other area.

Transport and housing are the two crucial areas in terms of transforming the city. Except for railways, transport system is shaky. Railways are the lifeline of Mumbai. The civic authorities had never paid attention towards other transportation. So, when you can travel to a place say in half an hour by a train, the same distance by a bus will take about more than an hour. The traffic on roads is terrifying. Same is the situation in trains in terms of crowd. If we look at New Delhi, there the developers already had a plan for the next ten years and they started building not only metro but also many number of flyovers to ease traffic. At the same time it also widened the road to smoothen the traffic. But, Mumbai waked up late. The city needs mass rapid transport system like metro and many numbers of flyovers and broader roads. By the time metro will be ready, population in Mumbai would have exploded. Roads are hardly expanded. They are just rebuilt with path holes everywhere.

Housing is a problem in Mumbai. There had been many causes of building collapsing. There are many old buildings that either need to be repaired or need to be demolished. But, the corrupt civic authorities let these buildings be there to cause casualties in future. Mumbai is a city of slums. More than half of the city lives in slums. One can find slums at every corner of the city. These slum dwellers have been coddled by political parties because they are a rich source of votes. So, developing these sites become extremely difficult. Everywhere one can find illegal construction and encroachments. The settlement and rehabilitation of such families is a Herculean task as land availability is a problem in Mumbai. The bottom line is that urban planning decisions are not driven by city planners but the builders and developers for profits. Therefore, the cost of doing business in Mumbai is just too high because of extortionist land prices and a deteriorating and over-stretched infrastructure.

Then there is a problem of floods in Mumbai. A mild shower and we hear news of water logging. Drainage system needs a special maintenance. Most of the water logging is due to clog drainage.

The McKinsey report had also suggested a corporate like pattern of government with a CEO and a centralized decision-making structure. Presently, this city is divided between the desires of the State Government and the Municipal Corporation. Each of them has different politics and compulsions. Apart from those two, there is a municipality of authorities in the form of other autonomous bodies such as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

If we look at corporate governance, it resolves around boards that are accountable to shareholders. Their executives do not have permanent tenure and they are judged by their performance. But, in the government it is reverse. They have a permanent structure of the bureaucracy whose performance does not count and impermanent structure of politicians where consistency does not count. This has resulted in a situation where anything like long-term plan for a city like Mumbai is simply a pipedream as the people who are asked to make decisions worry about the next elections and the people who are assigned the task of implementing any plan await the will of their impermanent bosses. So, there is no way to transform this system of governance.

Financing is not an issue today. The problem is proper planning and implementation. But funds alone can’t do any thing. Mumbai can’t take any more population. Migration of people from other states needs to be checked. This can be done only when the government makes equal efforts to transform other cities also into a world class city. I don’t think we are doing that. Ultimately, after a few years we will see people traveling in metro and mono rails as we them traveling today in local trains. If anyone thinks that this will reduce the burden on other transportation then, they are day dreaming. Mumbai need wider roads but no civic authority has ever thought to expand the roads as these will require demolishing road side structures (their other source of pay). It needs more gardens for people to relax and breathe easy. But lack of space is a constraint. It needs more hospitals but we often hear that patients have been turned off due to unavailability of beds. There are more cars and lesser parking space. The problems are countless.

I am not saying that these cannot be solved. But, by the time they are a new set of problems will be ahead of us to solve. The solution lies not in solving the problems but finding the root cause and treating it. We need to have a long term vision.

Can Bihar be developed?

Bihar today is synonymous with crime. People fear traveling to this part of India because they have been continuously hearing about crimes. Laloo Prasad Yadav, Shadhu Yadav, Pappu Yadav to name a few have become a household name. These politicians represent Bihar today (am I talking about hell). So, I ask who will dare to travel or invest in this place where criminals rule. Was Bihar like this since it inception? No. Let me share some facts with my readers which will throw some lights on why Bihar is so backward. Can Bihar be developed again? Did I say developed again? Yes, Bihar was a developed state centuries ago. So, what happened which turned the table around.

Bihar was once the seat of the greatest university of the world. The university was at Nalanda where the proposed new university is being developed. This is the place where the concept of republic was conceptualized and concreted (Lichvi dynasty in Vaishali district adopted the world’s first republic government). Great people like Gautam Buddha, Mahavira Jain, Chanakya, Guru Govind Singh and the great emperor Ashoka belonged to this place. If we look at the modern times, the place was considered as the treasure of mineral reserves of the country. Yet, the country is known as one of the poorest state where there is no law and order. Development is at a meager pace. No new investments are taking place.

Fall of Bihar

There are various reasons that led to the fall of this great state. One was the zamindari system. According to Saibal Gupta who is a member secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna (capital city of Bihar), during the British rule Bihar was placed under the Permanent Settlement of 1973 by the British. According to this act, the land was not held by farmers but by the zamindars, who had the right to collect revenues and pay a percentage of that to the British. This resulted in the exploitation of the farmers as zamindars themselves did nothing to develop the land’s productivity. At the same time, the other parts of India had ryotwari system where the land belonged to the farmers, who used to pay the taxes directly to their respective states. Hence, the states were therefore interested in keeping the productivity high.

Bihar is part of the Gangetic belt. After the 1857 Independence war, people around the Gangetic belt (places like Varanasi, Patna, etc) started denouncing the Western culture. Hindi began to grow in opposition to English and in this opposition they failed to modernize and accept new ideas that were sweeping across the country. Thus, people from this part of India embraced the past and traditionalism and all odd ideas that kept Bihar backwards.

Bihar is an agrarian state. Therefore, the most important thing required to push development in this state was reforming the land act. But, land reforms failed in Bihar as politicians and bureaucrats who were to implement such reforms came from the landlord class and they ensured that such reforms should never be implemented. So, the present situation in Bihar is such that millions of farmers do not have their own land; they plough others land for their livelihood. Some have too much. Rests of the people of Bihar possess land in tiny pieces which makes it difficult to achieve good crops. Therefore, poverty continues.

The other thing that hurts Bihar is sub nationalism. When a Punjabi goes to any part of India he/she proudly says that he/she is a Punjabi. Same is true for Bengalis, Marathis, Gujaratis and rest of the Indian states. But, people in Bihar try to avoid such things. In fact, I remember how a man fought in New Delhi with a bus conductor who called him Bihari (tone was different); the word was used as a slang. Traditionally, in this part of India there have been two forms of nationalism. First is Indian and the second is his caste. A Bihari was always an Indian first and then of his caste. But, if we look at Maharashtra, a person was an Indian first, a Maharashtrian and then lastly of his caste. Does this imply something? Yes, this means there is no one to speak up for Bihar. When Bihar was partitioned during the British rule, there were hardly any voices that opposed the decision.

The most important thing that deprived Bihar from taking the path of development was the freight equalization policy. When the government of India announced the freight equalization policy, there were hardly any protests from Bihar. Even when Jharkhand was made a separate state, no compensation was demanded. Politicians in Bihar are more concerned about their developments rather than developing the state. Every politician is concerned about his caste only. The most striking part is that each caste people want their leaders to work for their caste only and not for the state. So, how can one expect this state to develop?

What does freight equalization mean? This policy implied that transport was not to be considered an input cost. This meant that a factory could be set up anywhere in India and the transportation of minerals would be subsidized by the central government. Thus, factories were set up all along the ports or around big cities except Bihar. The policy simply destroyed Bihar’s huge competitive advantage of holding minerals. Though, the policy has been removed now but, presently Bihar lacks the infrastructure to compete with other states.

As mentioned earlier, in Bihar politicians are synonymous with criminals. People fear the politicians there. How does on become a politician in Bihar? According to the Constitution of India, a person age of not less than 25 years can file his papers for fighting election to either become an MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) or an MP (Member of Parliament). This is in books. Just by filing papers will not make you win election. So, to win you adopt crime to induce people to vote for you. The connection between crime and politics can be traced back to the JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) Movement in the earlier decade of 70’s. He urged people to participate in politics without any ideology. Socialists were very strong in Bihar at that time. So, there was a wave such that people started joining politics even if they did not believe in the party’s ideology. The aim was to bring people for a common goal. But, this step destroyed the very structure of the party and therefore, after the end of JP Movement, the parties found hard to mobilize people to support them. This led them to turn to criminals who used their own organization and money and muscle power to mobilize support. From there onwards, criminal became a very part of Bihar politics. At present, politics has become a family affair.

With the introduction of Mandal Commision, people of Bihar today are more interested in fighting for reservation. They don’t care whether developments take place in Bihar or not. This attitude had been there even after Independence. Bihar was ruled by Congress for about 30 to 40 year just like it ruled at the centre. But that did not help. They too were just interested in exploiting the natural resources of Bihar for the benefits of other states. The present situation is that Congress finds it very difficult to find its presence today in Bihar. They hardly manage to secure votes because of their attitude towards Bihar. Not a single central university or a centre for scientific research was established in Bihar even though every year thousands of students from Bihar make it to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) or Delhi University. This step brotherly treatment by the central government forced Bihar more towards backwardness.


The future ahead

There are things that can be done to bring Bihar back to the development path. Almost every renowned person has spoken about ways to do this. Last year, when the former President of India, Abdul Kalam visited Bihar, he laid some visions for the development of Bihar. If Bihar government truly follow these goals apart from other goals, it can change the way people perceive Bihar to be. Nonetheless it will take time but it is possible.

Agriculture is the core competence of the state. The sector is performing badly despite having very good soil, abundant supply of irrigation water and hardworking population. Irrigation needs more focus. Government should try to facilitate water supply by providing better irrigation facilities (by digging more tube wells and linking villages so that they can use water from a common source in a particular area) and electricity. The aim should be to increase cereal production in the state; rice production from 5.5 million tonnes to about 10 to 15 million tonnes and wheat production from 4 million tonnes to about 8 to 12 million tonnes. Bihar is already a major producer of maize and there has been an announcement to set up a commodity exchange for this. Therefore, Bihar government should ensure that no hindrances are placed on their way. This market will boost not only agriculture but also employments in this area.

The Hajipur-Muzaffarpur-Samastipur belt in Bihar is known for varieties of fruits. Hajipur is known for bananas, guavas and vegetables, similarly Muzaffarpur is known for its lichi. Not long ago this area had an agro-processing unit that used to export their products. Today, the unit is shut down. It can be revived again with proper planning and execution. Dairy cooperatives should be spread to almost all the districts of Bihar. Milk is a secondary source of earning for the farmers. By boosting this sector the government can not only improve the conditions of farmers but will also generate employment.

It was not long ago when Bihar was one of the major producers of sugar in the country. The government has taken some steps to revive the old mills. The focus should be to create sugar cooperatives on the lines of Maharashtra. This will boost this sector and bring employment to large masses that had to suffer due to closure of mills a decade ago. Apart from this, the government should ensure that the central government comes out with an ethanol policy; this will be a major thrust for other companies to look for investment in Bihar.

Every year floods destroy the crops to a tune of crores of rupees. The Bihar government and the central government should discuss this with the Nepal government. Proper dams should be built to check floods. A scientific body should be formed for water management. A solution needs to be worked out.

Healthcare is very important for the state to develop. The President in his ten visions for the state had mentioned that the state government should equip all the health centers and hospitals with mobile clinics. He had also urged the government to come out with a scheme under which every citizen would contribute three rupees per month and the government would also make an equal contribution. This will lead to a consolidated fund of Rs.576 crore per annum for the people of Bihar.

There should be no compromise on the infrastructure front. Just like the Golden Quadrilateral, Bihar government can work with neighbour states to work on such projects joining their main cities. Bihar government has been demanding such corridor that would run through Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Haldiya/Paradweep Economic corridor. The government can also have talks with the Nepal government to build a secure corridor through Bihar to the nearest port. These can be achieved only if all the stakeholders work collectively through a joint forum. The above route passes through some of the richest iron ore, coal belts and other minerals. Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Nepal and the Central Government should together form an SPV to execute this project.

Electricity is a constraint for any company to invest in Bihar. So, the government should invest more in power projects. It can join hands with the Nepal government to execute a project where the power would be generated in Nepal and transferred to cities in Bihar. The government should also ask the central government to allot a nuclear project in the state for power generation. All state highways should be properly connected to the national highways. All roads should be expanded. Road construction in rural areas should be fastened.

Education changes a person perspective. Therefore, state government should focus more on this sector. Demanding a central institute or IIT is ok but why keep on fighting over this issue forever. If the central government refuses to grant any of Bihar’s university a central university status then, that does not put the university to disadvantage. Why not open more colleges especially in the engineering and medical field and work towards making that a world class institutes. Nobody is stopping the state government from doing it. Why just blame central government for everything! Central government may take time to make primary education a right to education. But the state government may on its behalf can pass a bill in its legislative to make primary education compulsory within the state.

There are various NGO’s working in Bihar, Many are frauds who cheat people and the funds that they receive. Government should take steps to stop this. Good NGO’s should be strengthened. Micro finance is yet make inroads in Bihar villages. Steps should be taken to educate people about such financial schemes. Everyone knows that the banks are not eager to help poor farmers. The Credit-Deposit ratio in Bihar is one of the worst. Deposits are good but the credit by the commercial banks are poor showing their attitudes towards the poor. The government should ensure that farmers get credit on time.

Most of the people in Bihar are dependent on agriculture. Supply chain management and logistics should be strengthened to help these farmers to be able to sell their produce at better rates. Developments should be taken on all fields. This will not only build infrastructure for the future but will also generate employment. All religious places like Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Patna and other places should be made well connected either by road or rail or by air. This will boost tourism. Patna should be developed as an ideal state. Patna is situated on the banks of Ganga and it runs parallel to the river for about a few kilometers. There are various ghats along the river. These can be built by proper planning. Imagine marine drive in Mumbai.

Though, all these steps will look like a Herculean task but once implemented it will benefit not only the people of Bihar but also India to continue on its growth path. Therefore, not only the state government but also the people of Bihar should come forward to achieve this.