In his trademark kurta pyjama and gray stubble, Nitish Kumar hardly looks the part he is playing these days — that of CEO, Bihar Inc. But the fact becomes obvious when the Bihar chief minister strides into a vast, well-lit hall at the back of his official residence in Patna. Converted from a cow shed built by Lalu Prasad and maintained by his wife and Nitish’s predecessor, Rabri Devi, the hall is packed with men and women waiting to meet the new chief minister at the bi-weekly jan adalat or people’s court.
The former socialist — now a votary of free enterprise and, of course, social justice — spots a woman sobbing in a corner and walks straight to her. With rapt attention, he listens to her ordeal of being beaten up by her drunken husband almost every night. The chief minister asks an aide to call the district police chief. “Make sure that the husband is behind bars without further delay,” he tells the police officer, an edge in his voice.
It went on like this for more than two hours. Nitish Kumar padded around the hall, meeting each of those who had gathered to air their grievances. And Nitish Kumar the CEO did nothing Nitish Kumar the politician might have. He shook no hands, spewed no sweet words and made no promises — he only got things done.
If “do it now” is the mantra of West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Kumar wants “tomorrow’s things done yesterday,” as Bihar’s additional advocate general Ajay Tripathi puts it. Like his Bengal counterpart, Kumar is, clearly, in a hurry. After all, Bihar will first have to make up for lost time before it catches up with other states. But it’s clearly in the race for development. “We want to be part of the globalisation process like other states in the country,” says Prem Kumar Mani, a Janata Dal (United) ideologue and a Kumar confidant.
People are increasingly confident that Nitish can deliver. “If we look at him from a corporate standpoint, he is a great manager and our best bet in the current political scenario in the state,” Bihar Industries Association president K.P.S. Keshri says.
Within six months of assuming office, Kumar — the leader of a coalition comprising his Janata Dal(U) party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which licked Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in October’s Assembly election — has taken unprecedented steps, such as recruiting ex-army men to go after armed gangs, to bring the rule of law back to the state. On the economic front, his government has taken several measures, rationalising the sales tax structure and introducing a single window system for investors.
Kumar is now going out of the way to attract investment to Bihar. Along with his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, he has become a permanent fixture at conferences such as the non-resident Indian meeting in Hyderabad and the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry conferences in Calcutta and Delhi. “We mean business and we want businesses in Bihar,” declares Modi, who is also finance minister.
The task is daunting. Bihar has faced an investment drought. According to central government figures, between 1992 and 2003, just six industrial entrepreneurs memorandum (IEM — a measure of new projects) worth a piffling Rs 65 crore were implemented in the state. But after that, till December 2005, Bihar attracted not a single new industrial project. After Kumar became chief minister, however, 16 proposals worth Rs 2,726 crore were received (up to February 2006).
The government’s new sugar policy, sprinkled with incentives, is yielding results, with the government receiving proposals to set up new mills or take over closed ones. But Kumar himself acknowledges that unless the crime rate, especially kidnappings and murders, goes down, few will invest in Bihar.
Also, Bihar’s other two obstacles to investment are its roads and power. The Bihar government has for the first time earmarked Rs 2,000 crore for building and repairing roads this year. On power, Modi says the 250MW Kanthi power plant, closed for some time, has been handed over to the Centre’s National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).
Another deal is being finalised with NTPC to hand over the Barauni thermal power station, which now produces only 30 MW at peak hours. Modi says Bihar is seeking private investment in power, but the response so far has been less than encouraging.
The government also is seeking private participation in education and has given the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) in Mesra near Ranchi free land and Rs 23 core to set up the state’s first private engineering college in Patna. The college is expected to function from the next academic session. According to an estimate by the Bihar Industries Association, the state loses nearly Rs 8,000 crore a year in revenue as students from Bihar go outside for higher education. “We want to bring that money back to our state,” Modi says.
Still, turning around Bihar is no cakewalk. With 39 per cent of the population below the poverty line and the rates of infant mortality and child malnutrition much worse than the national average, Bihar remains a metaphor for underdevelopment. It has one teacher for 122 students in primary and secondary schools against the national average of one teacher for 44 students.
Not surprisingly, many in Patna, both in and out of government, are sceptical about the new government’s ability to turn around the state. “The government has a long way to go and you don’t know how long all this good work will last,” a Patna University teacher says.
But such cynicism, in a way, is unavoidable in a state stuck in a rut for ages. “In any case, six months is too short a time to judge a government in Bihar even though it seems to be moving in the right direction,” Shaibal Gupta, member secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, says.
Opposition leaders are more critical. “Nitish Kumar is an opportunist and he will do anything to stay in power. Nothing is happening on the ground and the state under him will go to the dogs,” says RJD leader Jagadanand Singh, who was water resources minister in the Rabri Devi government. He calls the recent killings of villagers in the Panchayat polls a “sign of things to come,” while the state government blames the violence on the non-availability of paramilitary forces during the elections.
But, unmistakably, change is in the air and fear is fast receding from the streets of Patna. And the stress is not just on arresting the criminals but getting them convicted. According to additional director general of police Abhayanand, one of the officers handpicked by the chief minister, the job of the police earlier ended when they filed a chargesheet against a criminal. Then, the prosecution was largely left to the lawyers and courts. No longer, he says. Using the Arms Act to its advantage, the Bihar police are bearing down on criminals. The Act allows the police to stand as witnesses in court and so prevent attempts by criminals to scare away witnesses. “You also get a speedy trial under the Act,” Abhayanand says. No wonder the conviction rate has gone up, with some 500 cases disposed of over the last few months. “It’s a great success,” additional advocate general Tripathi exclaims.
Under CEO Nitish Kumar, the Bihar police are going high-tech. All criminals convicted for more than a year are being photographed and finger printed for an interactive website, to be launched next month, called the “convicted criminals of Bihar”. Anyone will be able to download the photos and fingerprints.
The business community, long a target of extortionists and abductors, is somewhat relieved. “The government-sponsored crime seems over even though the ruling NDA also has some criminal elements in it,” Keshri of the Bihar Industries Association says. Others agree. “Even women are now seen moving around Patna late in the evening,” says B.N.Choubey, managing director of the Patna-based Eclet Industries Ltd. “Earlier, it was unthinkable.”
Shailendra P. Sinha, managing director of Bihar Hotels Limited, which runs Hotel Maurya in Patna, says the law and order situation in the state had come to such a pass that he, like other businessmen, had armed guards and a back-up car whenever he went out of Patna. “Things can now only get better,” Sinha says.
True, Nitish Kumar has a clean image and, unlike Lalu Prasad, as Gupta of the Asian Development Research Institute puts it, is “not a symbol of social contradictions” in Bihar. And luckily for him, Lalu Prasad’s RJD, the main opposition party, has decided not to “oppose or obstruct” him in any way at the moment. “We don’t want Nitish Kumar to blame us for his failures. We also want people to realise who they have brought to power,” Jagadanand Singh says.
To be sure, Kumar is trying to cement his party’s “social base”. He reserved 50 per cent seats for women in the just-concluded Panchayat election in Bihar. To neutralise the Muslim factor in a ministry he shares with the BJP, he has ordered a judicial commission to probe the Bhagalpur riots and ordered the construction of new boundary walls around many graveyards.
But his political mettle is likely to be tested soon as he plans to traverse the minefield of land reforms in feudal Bihar. “We intend to carry out land reform and a commission will be set up soon,” the chief minister says. “But we will take experts’ advice on how to go about it.” Kumar, clearly, intends to tread cautiously. After all, as Gupta says, he is running “a coalition of extremes” or disparate social groups, from the Brahmins to the most backward castes. “No one knows how successful he will be in the long run,” the social scientist says.
Then, apart from his deputy Modi, he has few ministers of high calibre in his Cabinet. Worse, in the caste-ridden Bihar society, some accuse him of trying to establish not “suswashan” or good governance but “bhuswashan” or the rule by the Bhumihars. A number of top bureaucrats the chief minister has picked as well as his party president are from that powerful upper caste which completely turned against Lalu Prasad and are believed to have voted for Nitish Kumar en bloc.
But ultimately, the barometer of progress could, ironically, be the jan adalats at his residence. “People will stop coming to him in hordes the day they get justice in their own mohallas,” says Bhante Anand, a Buddhist monk waiting with a delegation at the jan adalat to protest the sacking of the only Buddhist office bearer on the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee.
The former socialist — now a votary of free enterprise and, of course, social justice — spots a woman sobbing in a corner and walks straight to her. With rapt attention, he listens to her ordeal of being beaten up by her drunken husband almost every night. The chief minister asks an aide to call the district police chief. “Make sure that the husband is behind bars without further delay,” he tells the police officer, an edge in his voice.
It went on like this for more than two hours. Nitish Kumar padded around the hall, meeting each of those who had gathered to air their grievances. And Nitish Kumar the CEO did nothing Nitish Kumar the politician might have. He shook no hands, spewed no sweet words and made no promises — he only got things done.
If “do it now” is the mantra of West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Kumar wants “tomorrow’s things done yesterday,” as Bihar’s additional advocate general Ajay Tripathi puts it. Like his Bengal counterpart, Kumar is, clearly, in a hurry. After all, Bihar will first have to make up for lost time before it catches up with other states. But it’s clearly in the race for development. “We want to be part of the globalisation process like other states in the country,” says Prem Kumar Mani, a Janata Dal (United) ideologue and a Kumar confidant.
People are increasingly confident that Nitish can deliver. “If we look at him from a corporate standpoint, he is a great manager and our best bet in the current political scenario in the state,” Bihar Industries Association president K.P.S. Keshri says.
Within six months of assuming office, Kumar — the leader of a coalition comprising his Janata Dal(U) party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which licked Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in October’s Assembly election — has taken unprecedented steps, such as recruiting ex-army men to go after armed gangs, to bring the rule of law back to the state. On the economic front, his government has taken several measures, rationalising the sales tax structure and introducing a single window system for investors.
Kumar is now going out of the way to attract investment to Bihar. Along with his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, he has become a permanent fixture at conferences such as the non-resident Indian meeting in Hyderabad and the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry conferences in Calcutta and Delhi. “We mean business and we want businesses in Bihar,” declares Modi, who is also finance minister.
The task is daunting. Bihar has faced an investment drought. According to central government figures, between 1992 and 2003, just six industrial entrepreneurs memorandum (IEM — a measure of new projects) worth a piffling Rs 65 crore were implemented in the state. But after that, till December 2005, Bihar attracted not a single new industrial project. After Kumar became chief minister, however, 16 proposals worth Rs 2,726 crore were received (up to February 2006).
The government’s new sugar policy, sprinkled with incentives, is yielding results, with the government receiving proposals to set up new mills or take over closed ones. But Kumar himself acknowledges that unless the crime rate, especially kidnappings and murders, goes down, few will invest in Bihar.
Also, Bihar’s other two obstacles to investment are its roads and power. The Bihar government has for the first time earmarked Rs 2,000 crore for building and repairing roads this year. On power, Modi says the 250MW Kanthi power plant, closed for some time, has been handed over to the Centre’s National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).
Another deal is being finalised with NTPC to hand over the Barauni thermal power station, which now produces only 30 MW at peak hours. Modi says Bihar is seeking private investment in power, but the response so far has been less than encouraging.
The government also is seeking private participation in education and has given the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) in Mesra near Ranchi free land and Rs 23 core to set up the state’s first private engineering college in Patna. The college is expected to function from the next academic session. According to an estimate by the Bihar Industries Association, the state loses nearly Rs 8,000 crore a year in revenue as students from Bihar go outside for higher education. “We want to bring that money back to our state,” Modi says.
Still, turning around Bihar is no cakewalk. With 39 per cent of the population below the poverty line and the rates of infant mortality and child malnutrition much worse than the national average, Bihar remains a metaphor for underdevelopment. It has one teacher for 122 students in primary and secondary schools against the national average of one teacher for 44 students.
Not surprisingly, many in Patna, both in and out of government, are sceptical about the new government’s ability to turn around the state. “The government has a long way to go and you don’t know how long all this good work will last,” a Patna University teacher says.
But such cynicism, in a way, is unavoidable in a state stuck in a rut for ages. “In any case, six months is too short a time to judge a government in Bihar even though it seems to be moving in the right direction,” Shaibal Gupta, member secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, says.
Opposition leaders are more critical. “Nitish Kumar is an opportunist and he will do anything to stay in power. Nothing is happening on the ground and the state under him will go to the dogs,” says RJD leader Jagadanand Singh, who was water resources minister in the Rabri Devi government. He calls the recent killings of villagers in the Panchayat polls a “sign of things to come,” while the state government blames the violence on the non-availability of paramilitary forces during the elections.
But, unmistakably, change is in the air and fear is fast receding from the streets of Patna. And the stress is not just on arresting the criminals but getting them convicted. According to additional director general of police Abhayanand, one of the officers handpicked by the chief minister, the job of the police earlier ended when they filed a chargesheet against a criminal. Then, the prosecution was largely left to the lawyers and courts. No longer, he says. Using the Arms Act to its advantage, the Bihar police are bearing down on criminals. The Act allows the police to stand as witnesses in court and so prevent attempts by criminals to scare away witnesses. “You also get a speedy trial under the Act,” Abhayanand says. No wonder the conviction rate has gone up, with some 500 cases disposed of over the last few months. “It’s a great success,” additional advocate general Tripathi exclaims.
Under CEO Nitish Kumar, the Bihar police are going high-tech. All criminals convicted for more than a year are being photographed and finger printed for an interactive website, to be launched next month, called the “convicted criminals of Bihar”. Anyone will be able to download the photos and fingerprints.
The business community, long a target of extortionists and abductors, is somewhat relieved. “The government-sponsored crime seems over even though the ruling NDA also has some criminal elements in it,” Keshri of the Bihar Industries Association says. Others agree. “Even women are now seen moving around Patna late in the evening,” says B.N.Choubey, managing director of the Patna-based Eclet Industries Ltd. “Earlier, it was unthinkable.”
Shailendra P. Sinha, managing director of Bihar Hotels Limited, which runs Hotel Maurya in Patna, says the law and order situation in the state had come to such a pass that he, like other businessmen, had armed guards and a back-up car whenever he went out of Patna. “Things can now only get better,” Sinha says.
True, Nitish Kumar has a clean image and, unlike Lalu Prasad, as Gupta of the Asian Development Research Institute puts it, is “not a symbol of social contradictions” in Bihar. And luckily for him, Lalu Prasad’s RJD, the main opposition party, has decided not to “oppose or obstruct” him in any way at the moment. “We don’t want Nitish Kumar to blame us for his failures. We also want people to realise who they have brought to power,” Jagadanand Singh says.
To be sure, Kumar is trying to cement his party’s “social base”. He reserved 50 per cent seats for women in the just-concluded Panchayat election in Bihar. To neutralise the Muslim factor in a ministry he shares with the BJP, he has ordered a judicial commission to probe the Bhagalpur riots and ordered the construction of new boundary walls around many graveyards.
But his political mettle is likely to be tested soon as he plans to traverse the minefield of land reforms in feudal Bihar. “We intend to carry out land reform and a commission will be set up soon,” the chief minister says. “But we will take experts’ advice on how to go about it.” Kumar, clearly, intends to tread cautiously. After all, as Gupta says, he is running “a coalition of extremes” or disparate social groups, from the Brahmins to the most backward castes. “No one knows how successful he will be in the long run,” the social scientist says.
Then, apart from his deputy Modi, he has few ministers of high calibre in his Cabinet. Worse, in the caste-ridden Bihar society, some accuse him of trying to establish not “suswashan” or good governance but “bhuswashan” or the rule by the Bhumihars. A number of top bureaucrats the chief minister has picked as well as his party president are from that powerful upper caste which completely turned against Lalu Prasad and are believed to have voted for Nitish Kumar en bloc.
But ultimately, the barometer of progress could, ironically, be the jan adalats at his residence. “People will stop coming to him in hordes the day they get justice in their own mohallas,” says Bhante Anand, a Buddhist monk waiting with a delegation at the jan adalat to protest the sacking of the only Buddhist office bearer on the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee.
--------------------------
RANJAN RITURAJ SINH
This news has been taken from THE TELEGRAPH and the reporter did not hesitate to mention the CASTE name , In fact some of IPS and officers in LALu raaj were given back seat on the CASTE basis and NITISH gave them the front row , but i rarely see any CASTE Factor here , NITISH jee has taken just GOOD PEOPLE irrespective of any caste or breed but GOOD officers . (this is totally my own personal views)
0 comments:
Post a Comment