Nitish Kumar and Bihar
Posted : May 2, 2008 at 6:28 am [IST]
Nitish Kumar under the banyan tree where Lalu tied up a ghost to trouble Nitish.
Saba Naqvi Bhaumik in latest issue of ‘Outlook’ has written pretty highly about Nitish Kumar. Unfortunately, she has compared Nitish’s performance with one who damaged the total administration in Bihar by politicizing it. I wish the benchmark for the CM’s performance would have been some other high performing chief minister of one better performing state of the country. No one can doubt ‘from 10 am and till late evening’ hard working of Nitish Kumar. But then it must yield result visible through the development works all over the state.
It is good that Nitish ‘holds durbars where he himself scrutinizes public complaints and passes these on to the ministers and officials concerned’. But is it the best way of operating or can there be a better way? Can he use the gathering to pass on certain messages that relate to the responsibilities of the citizens of the state? Saba would have talked to more number of the intellectuals and elites as well as some people’s representatives to firm up the conclusions.
I feel Nitish must use the platform to spread the right messages to the people of Bihar and appeal to those present in ‘junta durbar’ to help the state in achieving its various people-oriented projects. They can make the Sarva Sikhsha Aviyan mission a success by sending all their children to schools. They can also help in family welfare planning. They can also see that whatever work is being done to provide a minimum amount of earning such as pond repair or road building, or plantation in NREGS are corruption free and useful on long term for the village. He must also appeal others to emulate some success stories such as one of the woman who is earning his living by growing mushrooms in Patna. The people must feel empowered and independent rather than dependent on unscrupulous officers for doles by sharing the government money with them.
Nitish Kumar has certainly taken up improving law and order in the state as top priority, and many dons are in jail after convictions by fast track courts. Unfortunately, a huge number of the followers of those dons are still freely carrying out the task. Can Nitish bring a change in the feudal mindsets of the people of Bihar that gets manifested in many horrendous incidents that are stilling getting reported in the media quite frequently?
But a lasting solution for all these social problems can come only through good education and through good disciplined and exemplary teachers, through creation of sufficient engagement for the young people of the state. Nitish will have to attract the entrepreneurs in big way in IT, ITeS, education, tourism, sugar, traditional textile and food processing sectors. He and his core team must find out why the industrialists are visiting him but not committing investment and starting business in the state. What are their apprehensions and how can that be removed? It happened the same way in the neighbouring West Bengal too. Till the time Jyoti Basu remained in power, no industrialists were looking towards the state. But one must credit Buddha Bhattacharya for creating an impression of positive and attractive change and his industry-friendliness. Nitish must at least emulate Buddha in attracting IT biggies by offering all that other sates are doing plus something more. It is the future of the state. It can bring a revolutionary change in living style. And for Nitish, it is doable. Let him create capacity in engineering colleges for an intake of 10,000 students. Let the universities prepare their science graduates too for the IT sector where they are in demand. Let the institutes focus on the quality of education along with the soft skill such as the ability of proficient communication in English language and basic computer knowledge. Nitish can certainly select able and missionary persons as cabinet minister and secretary for IT.
With not much of private investments and industries in Bihar, it is for the government to focus on projects that can lead to development, be it encouraging System of Rice Intensification, or inviting some entrepreneurs to start establishment such as ‘Dilli Haat’ for the state’s artisans or designers and craftsmen, or some thing like the village resort of Chokhi Dhani in Jaipur.Patna must attractions for the visitors to stay back and spend. But the government can certainly expedite the long pending distribution of government lands among the deprived class.
Many a times, I get confused and hurt when I hear the people from Bihar talking so casually. I lost my temper when someone said, “Nitish is least bothered. He can still be the chief minister after next election. And he would perhaps by tie up with Ram Vilash.” I shall be shocked if Nitish wishes to do that.
I still hope Nitish can find some miraculous ideas to bring Bihar at par of, if not ahead of, other high performing states, and shall like to be remembered for that in history of the state.
I wish he keeps a small group of advisors who can help him in providing the ideas and monitoring the key projects. And finally, I hope he gives up visibly painful confrontations with UPA ministers and try to use their services for the benefits of the states through the development projects that they can bring in for the state.
Latest: BJP may opt out and lend outside support to Bihar government
- Indra
Category: Indian politics |
1 Comment »
Mukund Kumar contributed this
This one from Norman Uphoff.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Norman Uphoff
Date: 19 Apr 2008 01:14
Subject: RE: [se-food] Query: Systemic Rice Intensification (SRI) - Experiences. Reply by 26 April 2008
To: Food and Nutrition Security Community
Moderator’s Note: We thank Prabhat Kumar for facilitating this response from Norman Uphoff. We look forward to further inputs from our members to this query on ‘Systemic Rice Intensification.
Dear members,
Prabhat Kumar at AIT has shared with me some recent communications on SRI, and I would like to add some thoughts to the discussion in response to Bamji’s queries.
Regarding success stories, the most evident one is in Tripura state of India, where thanks to the leadership of an agricultural scientist in the DOA, Dr. Baharul Majumdar (imbaharul@yahoo.com) there has been very rapid spread in the past several years. Baharul first learned about SRI in 2000, and the first report he had on it, a many-times photocopied paper, was so faint he said that he had to take a pencil to write in some of the words to understand it.
Baharul spent two years trying out the methods himself, because he was understandably skeptical at the beginning. He also had to work out some adaptations for the very humid conditions of Tripura state (average rainfall is 2500 mm), particularly placement of drainage channels across the length of the field every 8 or 9 rows. He got 44 farmers to try the methods in 2002, and by 2005 had raised this number to 880. At this point he had both confidence and evidence, and got the Secretary of Agriculture, and then the Minister of Agriculture, and finally the Chief Minister all to come see SRI fields and talk with SRI farmers themselves. This persuaded the political leadership (which had made a pledge to make Tripura self-sufficient in grains, which means mostly rice, by 2010, without any good way to achieve this goal — five years of trying conventional Green Revolution technologies had made hardly a dent in the rice deficit) to give SRI support.
Baharul was given one-third of the state’s agricultural budget for 2005-2006, and by great personal efforts, and with cooperation of DOA staff and particularly PR institutions, the number of SRI users went from <1,000 to >30,000 in one year, and up to >70,000 the next year (2007). At this point, WWF sent a delegation from AP and other states to visit Tripura, to understand what was going on, and it then organized the 2nd national SRI symposium in Agartala in October 2007. I was fortunate to be able to attend, and attached is report of the symposium and then of the village visits. This will give everyone a good idea of the SRI experience across India (27 states or territories were represented among the 250+ participants) and specifically within Tripura.
The question of whether SRI can be ‘universally adopted’ is the wrong question, since SRI is not a technology to be adopted (transferred), but rather a set of insights, concepts and principles to be adapted to local conditions. Kumar expressed this very well in his response. But we see wide variation in the agroecological conditions to which these principles can be adapted. In Nepal, SRI has made improvements in rice production from almost sea level in the terai (Morang district), with doubled yield, up to 2,500 meters around Humla, with sufficient improvement (and cost reduction) to interest farmers. (Under adverse conditions, one won’t get the same kind of response.)
Moreover, we see great variation in response to rainfall conditions. Separately, I will send a report from Mali, from the Timbuktu region on the edge of the Sahara Desert, where they got a 9 t/ha yield in their first evaluation last year — completely the opposition environment from rain-saturated Tripura state. Laos is more like Tripura, and I will attach a recent article from there showing a doubled yield. I recently received a report from the team of PRADAN, an excellent NGO, working in Purulia district of West Bengal, where there is little irrigation for very poor communities. There, starting with just 4 farmers in 2003, the number has grown to over 3,000, with average yield over 7 t/ha — rainfed. Or see the results obtained in three years of evaluations in the Punjab, where the problem is a rapidly falling water table that will lead to the demise of irrigated agriculture in central Punjab soon at present rates of extraction.
The question was raised about labor-intensity. It is interesting that in China, where there are over 100,000 ha of SRI rice this past season in both Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces, up from maybe 20,000 ha in each two years before, the main reason farmers give for taking up SRI concepts and practices is — labor-saving. Chinese farmers, being imaginative and industrious, have taken the ideas and figured out how to reduce labor requirements — along with seed, water and cash requirements.
Studies by IWMI’s India programme and by TNAU in 2004 both calculated an 8% reduction in labor required per hectare, with increases in yield, the first study being of rainfed SRI (Purulia district) and the latter of irrigated SRI (Tamiraparani basin). So SRI is more labor-intensive for many farmers, and in the first season while there is a learning process going on it will usually require more labor. But most farmers, some very quickly, convert the 80-90% reduction in plant population into a plus for saving labor.
With no flooding, there is need for weed control. And it amazes me that some farmers find the cono weeder or rotary hoe a godsend, saying saves them time and makes weeding much easier on the body, and others complain bitterly about what a chore the weeding is. I don’t know how to assess this. Weeding is a task that practically no farmers enjoy, but we have evidence that good (soil-aerating) weeding with a mechanical weeder can add 1, 2, even 3 t/ha to yield, making this investment of labor very paying.
So, the bottom line I come up with is that SRI has a lot of objective evidence to support its productivity and desirability, but there is a huge subjective, attitudinal factor, which deserves more study. Maybe with the expanding use of SRI in Tripura, this would be a good place for people from many parts of India to visit and learn from this experience, working mostly with farmers that are not very well educated, and poorer, many of the SC or ST households.
When Baharul showed his pictures from the first SRI national symposium, held in Hyderabad in 2006, one could almost hear sighs of amazement when participants saw the beautiful, orderly and productive fields of rice being grown by tribal farmers with SRI methods, some farmers who were not even doing row planting two years before, now managing large, well laid-out and prosperous fields. People from AP who had been complaining about how difficult SRI was for their farmers had to rethink their pessimism when they saw what Tripura counterparts were accomplishing.
So, SRI is a very human innovation and a very human story. I am glad to know that there is so much interest and so much conversation going on. In Tamilnadu, they are up to 4.3 lakhs of SRI this season according to the Minister of Agriculture. Why other states in India are so lagging behind Tripura and Tamilnadu is itself a very interesting question, which Indians can answer better than me.
Norman Uphoff
Cornell University
New York
Posted by: Indra at May 2, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
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