July 17, 2021

What happened to Bihar?

When one talks about Bihar in a metropolitan city, one thing that comes to people's minds is Bhojpuri music, corruption, lawlessness, poverty, poor quality of life.

What exactly happened with the state who is the cradle of India's Ancient Civilisation?

What exactly made people think about Bihar as a "BIMARU STATE"? No one is bothered about its long ancient glory, even 90% of citizens of Bihar are not aware of their past.

Historical Glory

The modern-day society must lift the weight of Bihar's bright ancient past, but we are still living with the apathy of vulnerabilities of the state.

After the end of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Ganga valley has emerged as the center of new civilizations, as agriculture used to play a prominent role in human development and empires.

One such major empire was of Nand Dynasty, whose power feared Alexander to attack India.

Then comes the mighty Maurya which resulted in the birth of Ashok: The Great, whose empire ranged from Afghanistan to Karnataka. After then, the Gupt dynasty also located its capital at Patliputra.

Apart from that,

Kautilya Chanakya - Ancient India's tallest strategist and economist, whose economy and foreign policies are still relevant.

Aryabhatta - The mathematician who has determined the value of pie and invented 0. Also, one of the first astrophysicists.

Panini - The great grammarian, a revert scholar of Vedic culture. He has given grammar long before Europeans. His values have been used during the invention of Computers.

Mahavir - The last Thirthankar in Jainism

Gautam Buddha - Who attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya.

There were many major and world-class universities in Bihar like Nalanda University, Vikramshila University, where people from all over the world used to come to understand the wealthy secrets of Bharat.

In the modern-day, Ara played a major role in 1857's freedom fight by Veer Kunwar Singh. It has also been the initial point of Gandhiji's freedom struggle from Champaran Satyagraha.

But what events led Bihar to such instability in development in modern and democratic India.

What happened to Bihar?

British exploitatory policies are still relevant in 2021. The zamindari system, in which poor farmers and peasants were compelled to pay huge taxes to zamindars despite poor harvests. Bihar was under the Bengal province which has the least funding among all provinces of British India. All this British policy led to the rise of Caste-based politics post-independence.

The rise of politicians like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan invoked the idea of socialism which indeed turned into a caste divide. The social engineering of leaders like Lalu Prasad helped in creating an environment of social war. These also lead to problems like political instability, Naxalism. In 70 years, Bihar has seen 40 governments and 23 CMs, the average tenure of 1 CM is just 1.5 years, this discontinued the policies.

Despite being a mineral-rich state, Bihar didn't get the industries and investment it should get, all credit goes to petty politics by local politicians and the Freight Equalization Policy of 1952. Lawlessness, corruption, and fake socialism took Bihar towards inequality in comparison to other states. According to Mohan Guruswamy, Bihar has been deprived of central funds of Rs.80,000 crore. This is called economic strangulation.

All these issues and over politicization of matters like governance, development, and bureaucracy caused the situation of Migration. People leave their birthplace and went to modern cities for employment, this impacted the agricultural sector and badly impacted the base of the young working-class.

Turnaround

After the bifurcation of Bihar, all the rich resources went to Jharkhand. Bihar became the synonym of "Jungle Raj". But the last 15 years have been good for Bihar, it achieved several milestones during this tenure but concerns are also there.

In 2016-17, Bihar's GDP growth was 10.3%, while India was developing at the rate of 7%. Poverty and malnourishment are still not improving.

During 2001-11, the literacy rate has improved by 17% from 35%. Poor education infrastructure, lack of eminent institutes are still deficient.

During 2004-08, incidents like robbery, dacoity, and kidnapping have come down to 66 from 400. Corruption is a big problem.

According to N.K.Singh(Head of 15th Finance Commission), The good governance policy of Nitish Kumar improved Bihar's fiscal spending from 39% to 52%. The fiscal deficit has reached 3% from 6%, which is far better than the whole of India.

Per capita electricity improved from 112 kWh to 360 kWh. Agri growth is 7%.

The network of highways, roads, and flyovers has been a key point of development.

Bihar has a long way to go, despite all these facts, Bihar is quite behind in areas like employment, industries, health, education. Bihar has majorly failed in promoting its ancient culture for tourism. These should be the focal point of the governments. We must be optimistic about our state.

According to Amartya Sen,

"In Patliputra, there were world-class education institutions, cutting-edge mathematicians, rule of law, a remarkable system of free public healthcare, and good governance which was an inspiration."