White and Black

We already know it’s dying, revive Bihar now

By Sankarshan Thakur

Did we require a White Paper laboured over by the Nitish Kumar government to learn the truth about what happened to Bihar’s economy in the Laloo Yadav years? Did we need a day’s shenanigan in the Bihar Assembly to be told development in the state headed deep south during that 15-year period? Things went terribly wrong with a lot of things in Laloo Yadav’s Bihar, the economy probably suffered most. So grievously that per capital debt in the state rose higher than the per capita income. Development funds, Central and local, were routinely diverted for ways and means expenditure, that is, to pay salaries to government employees. And even that wasn’t enough. Doctors, teachers, engineers, thousands of lesser workpeople employed by the state were not paid wages for months on end. Sometimes even for years. The Supreme Court had to intervene and order the state government to pay salaries to employees of official undertakings — in some cases, salaries had not been handed out for as many as 15 years and the Laloo Yadav dispensation took the technical and convenient plea that the government was not responsible for employees of loss-making undertakings. A fraudulent plea, so the Supreme Court told his government. For the better part of his term in power, Laloo Yadav wore his disdain for development like a badge of honour. “Development? That’s for city people, the urban upper castes who are against me. My people are not bothered about development, they want honour and empowerment,” he would say. Rabri Devi, hustled into the chief minister’s chair because the law forced Laloo Yadav to vacate it, was aware of the imperatives of development even less. Came a time when sustained omission caught up with Laloo Yadav. People were sick of stagnation, tired of sinking deeper and deeper into the mess that is Bihar, even more tired of the slogan of empowerment. Bereft of any tangible benefits, it had begun to ring hollow to Laloo Yadav’s own constituency. Isn’t it true, after all, that large sections of backwards, Yadavs included, voted against Laloo Yadav? The twin defeats of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — first in February 2005 and then in November — was proof that people wanted a change, a new lease. Both verdicts had essentially the same undertone — Laloo Hatao. Nitish Kumar and the bjp were collateral beneficiaries; they won because they were able to organise the anti-Laloo vote best. But all that’s known and past. Bihar needs to move ahead. Isn’t Naya Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s big new slogan? It would better serve him, and Bihar, to be done with post-mortems of the past and unveil his own blueprint for the future.

People Speaks , RANJAN RITURAJ SINH NEVER Speaks !!