दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

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बिहार के लोग अगर जाति के आधार पर भी भोट देना चाहते हों तो भी नीतीश कुमार उचित एवं बिश्वसनीय उम्मीदवार कहाँ हैं? पहले जब जीतने का मौक़ा बड़ी जातियों के भारतीय जनता पार्टी के साथ था तो उनके साथ थे। आज वही नीतीश सब कुछ ताक पर रख केवल मुख्य मंत्री बने रहने के लिये, यादवों का मत पाकर अपने घोर दुश्मन लालू प्रसाद, जिन्हें अपने परिवार से आगे कुछ दिखता नहीं, से हाथ मिला लिये हैं। लालू परिवार के बल वे कैसी सरकार बनायेंगे और चलायेंगे । यह भी छोटी जातियों को भुलावा देना या बेवक़ूफ़ बनाना नहीं तो क्या है? कल चुनाव के परिणाम उन्हें फिर किसी की सहायता लेने को मजबूर करेंगी तो इन्हें कुछ संकोच नहीं होगा । भगवान बिहार का ख़्याल रखें ! जातियों का भेदभाव केवल भा. ज. पा. ही मिटा सकती है ।यही इसके पक्ष में है बिहार बचाने के लिये ।
जाति धर्म न मायने रखते,
एक श्रेष्ठ देश अभिमान
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What Ranking in Education Means : As per a study, ‘the average income of households—where the highest education of any family member is a college degree or above—is roughly four times more than that of a household where no family member is literate (R3,35,174 versus R80,759). And Bihar stands among the last last at 10.1 PF households after a rule of 25 years of Bihar between Nitish and Lalu Prasad. Can you expect anything better when Bihar will be ruled by Nitish Kumar assisted by Lalu’s basically illiterate sons who have inferior educational qualification than their father with Misa Bharati as its political ideologue?
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Funny, Is it Prasant Kishor’s advice? As reported in Indian Express today, “Leaders from the grand alliance in Bihar today urged the Election Commission to order the removal of banners and posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah from the Patna airport.” Are the Biharis who will make them win flying these days rather than using the trains? What a bankruptcy of ideas! Perhaps, they are on loosing path.
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Shaibal Gupta, member-secretary, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna
in an article in Indian Express says ‘Double Standard in Bihar’, “Upper caste-centric alliances are not referred to as caste combines, while a coming together of marginal and subaltern castes — as in the case of the maha gathbandhan — is invariably considered a caste-centred coalition”. What is this Asian Development Research Institute? What does it do for Bihar? Is Shaibal Gupta an independent intellectual or working for Nitish Kumar as Pavan Verma does? Every real Bihari intellectual is expected to give some effective solutions to remove the social ills of caste and religion that is also one of the reasons for the lack of real development in Bihar. It is essential to drive the growth of the state to bring it in the league of the developed states of India. Will the readers respond?
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/double-standard-in-bihar/#sthash.UYUge9gj.dpuf
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Development during Nitish Era: Liquor is the only noticeably thriving industry in recent years, thanks to his relaxed excise policy. The share of revenue from excise in the total revenues had nearly doubled from 10.33 per cent in 2006-07 to 18 per cent in 2014-15.Liquor licences in rural areas increased from 779 a decade ago to 2,360 now. Big distillers like United Breweries, Cobra and Carlsberg are the only big investment who set up distilleries near Patna in recent years. How has then Nitish promised the women of Bihar a control on liquor? Should there be no ethics and moral responsibility in politicians for the future generation?
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Is Nitish a reliable ally? Mulayam Singh Yadav on Nitish Kumar : “When we decided to contest the Bihar polls together, Mr. Kumar supported the coalition. But when the coalition announcement was to be made, he [Mr. Kumar] quietly went to meet Rahul and Sonia Gandhi…….We kept waiting for Nitish Kumar and when I called him I was told that he was in Delhi and when I met him, Nitish Kumar said he needed to leave for Patna for an urgent work….Is it correct to lie? Is it not betrayal?”
(Further) “Injustice was, in fact, done to Lalu Prasad…he was sentenced to jail for five years but I’d ask you all who was responsible for his punishment…it was the Chief Minister (Nitish Kumar).”
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This Bihar election will be difficult to predict. Nitish Kumar has somehow succeeded in projecting himself as Vikash Purush. But for any rational thinkers, Nitish was nowhere near what Bihar wanted from him as real development. Development of rural roads may be unique for Biharis but it has happened all over India. Growth went higher on very poor base value of 15 years of Lalu Raj. Nitish failed in creating jobs for the Biharis and higher education facilities for young boys and girls. With no skill imparted to them, a Bihari migrate only for working as menial worker from Kashmir to Kerala and Kuchh to Kolkata. Migration for higher education increased the cost of higher education for the parents. Many sell even their landed property for this. But still Nitish has better image as he with full assistance from BJP improved law and order. However, Nitish couldn’t do any thing with the rampant corruption in Bihar. It has, as some say, has increased. The win of Nitish will come only from the emotional and social unity of backward caste and will serve to satisfy their ego, but enmity between the castes will increase. It will certainly create internal bitterness with the centre that will be harmful for the state. Nitish may win but Bihar will be a great looser. With win for NDA, Biharis will be getting one more chance, though without a tested leader, for effective development with full support of the centre.
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Today I wrote a letter to The editor, India Express:
Dear Editor,
You have published an article by Tejshwi Yadav, the son of Lalu Prasad. I shall like to know if the article has been really written by Tejshwi. Please let me know.
I am from Bihar and a graduate of IIT, Kharagpur 1961 batch. I shall be obliged if you let me have the truth.
Indra Roy Sharma
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Mr. Nitish Kumar! Your model of progress can keep Bihar only as the last ranked state in all parameters, as you can’t give land,nor change labour laws neither you have any grand plans to create jobs or skilling Biharis for already available better jobs that can change their lives to better ones. For you education is a cycle, going to the school for midday meal, not acquiring knowledge and skill for students and a subsisted employment for teachers. Your statement “….Bihar will progress on its own efforts…” shows your arrogance. You would have taken help from one and all, if it aids to the progress of the state, and that’s what get reflected when you say, “…..What will these outsiders do? I want to ask you a question, who will take Bihar forward, Bihari or bahari?….” None of the political alliance after they win will impose outsider to take the top chair of Bihar. It will be only one Bihari who is contesting the election. Please be ethical enough and don’t mislead innocent and honest Biharis. Don’t be under a misperception that you are the only Bihari who has been born to take Bihar forward. “If a Bihari is to take Bihar forward, then a real Bihari is here before you. We don’t need any of these ahari-bahari. Say goodbye to all these outsiders…” Can you explain how are you a real Bihari, and Sushil Modi, Pappu Yadav, Jitan Manjhi, Paswan and Ram Kripal Yadav are not?
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Litti Pe Charcha: I am excited with these entries on my tag line. It seems this wonderful endeavour of young Biharis, particularly the NRIs has come for the first time. Will it integrate the NRI Biharis in the foreign lands? As I have experienced Biharis outside desist from identifying themselves as Biharis unlike Andhraites or Punjabis. I wish I am proved wrong faster. The reported widespread popularity of Litti Pe Charcha must get expanded to give the state a good brand image. As reported,”NRI Biharis met at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Times Square, New York city, Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles, California under the aegis of ‘Litti pe Charcha’ -to discuss the presently ongoing election in Bihar. However, it appears persons from so-called backward group were not participating in the Charchas. I wish my conclusion be wrong.
Moreover, I would have loved to see some Bihari entrepreneur developing Litti-Chokha as cuisine acceptable to Indians of other states and to foreigners too, as many Mexican food outlets such Chipotle, Chuy. Unfortunately, because of very poor quality of education system in the states such as Bihar, there is hardly any significant presence of innovative entrepreneurship among Biharis, though many have done great in administrative assignments. I hope one day I will order my Litti-Chokha on line and enjoy the same at home in Noida.

And.

I have been reading that ‘Babur’s grandson, Akbar, planted the “Lakh Bagh”, a mango orchard containing one lakh trees in Darbhanga, Bihar.’ What happened to that? Shershah and his sons built a number monuments that could have attracted thousands of tourists. Why didn’t it happen? A number of young technocrats open enterprises in Bihar, but none could scale it up to be a known entity in India. Why couldn’t Bihar create entrepreneurs in a large number? What is that for which I must like Nitish Kumar? Here is another listing of reasons that I don’t like Nitish Kumar who could have performed much more when he had full opportunity. But then he decide to break the very well performing alliance just for his personal ego, as he could not become the prime ministerial candidate of Election 2014. Here are some more:

@ Nitish Kumar humiliated Modi without any reason except for just pleasing the minority. And his lust for power has taken him to Sonia Gandhi and Lalu who have just one objective- to keep the power in the family. Even today, many doubt if Lalu will provide unconditional support to Nitish, as it is very clear from his utterances such as “When the BJP left him, he came to me. I made him CM. Humne inko bana diya.”

@ Nitish Kumar doesn’t know how to dream and think big for transforming Bihar into a developed and respected state. Perhaps he lacks that capability. Nitish Kumar has wasted his 10 years of rule and could not implement any worth mentionable project such as Mayawati’s Yamuna Expressway or Akhilesh Yadav’s Agra-Lucknow Expressway that will also be extended up to Ballia. Nitish Kumar could have connected the East-West corridor to Delhi-Kolkata GQ with a 4- or 6- lane highway. And then I could hardly find the promised industrial projects listed in large number on Bihar website in the ten year run of Nitish Kumar getting implemented.

@ Nitish Kumar though a product of JP movement had hardly the desired respect for JP Narayan or for that matter Dr. Rajendra Prasad. He hardly did anything noticeable to perpetuate their memories, as the caste of these great men does not own a great vote bank.

@ Nitish Kumar could not take any reformative step and corrective measure. Even today Bihar loses a whopping 54 per cent electricity that is either “stolen or lost”.

@ In Bihar, the state government records show that there are about 40 million people in the age group of 15 to 29 years of which less than 1 per cent had some sort of formal vocational training. Bihar exports its greatest human resources to all parts of India from Kashmir to Kerala to just humiliating menial jobs there as he can’t provide even that in Bihar.

@ Bihar can easily be the leader of the second green revolution of India. Nitish has not done anything significant to encourage the farmers to diversify in high-earning agriculture produces such as vegetables and fruits from its most fertile land or poultry and animal husbandry as resorted to by many states. Its productivity of agriculture produce is still lower, though Nitish Kumar kept on talking about the record per hectare production of paddy and potato. Nitish hardly took up any great irrigation project.

@Bihar is the third most illiterate state with 43.85 per cent population falling in that category. The quality of education at primary and secondary level in rural Bihar is just dismal. The kids come to the schools to have only their midday meal. Adult education has just vanished. Does it not cast a shadow on the effectiveness of the initiatives of chief minister Nitish Kumar in promoting education in rural areas?

@ The presence of non-agricultural enterprises in rural households is about 1.67%, minimal in Bihar.The meagre size of the registered non agriculture sector in rural areas indicates the inability to tap into the non-agriculture potential of the rural sector. Only with the large number of migrants poring money in Bihar, 6.9% of the households has members earning more than Rs 10,000 a month in Bihar.

@ Why does Bihar not appear with significant progress in e-governance as attained by other states? And many good things started get mired because the lack of maintenance, such as free Wi-Fi zone, multi-level parking, ghat beautification or the so talked of road along the Ganga.

@ The election campaign will be around the development one of Nitish Brand and the other will be the development associated with Modi. How will Lalu clan fit in the mission? Nitish will have to take all three– two sons and one daughter in his cabinet and allocate to them whatever portfolio they will seek, if they win.

@ Nitish Kumar can become tech savvy for winning election, but he hardly did anything to connect the schools digitally. Government teachers in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttarakhand are using WhatsApp groups to exchange knowledge and ideas with each other. The Karnataka Open Educational Resources platform is enabling teachers to create digital content. Why can’t the same is possible in Bihar? Nitish Kumar did hardly invest in training for teachers and school leaders in the effective use of technology.
As I understand Nitish Kumar has got the assistance of a team of 300 technocrats from IITs and IIMs for his election campaign. I wish after the election Nitish deploys them to 300 Panchayats to create action plans for improving the economic condition of the poor there and move ahead accordingly.

@ Nitish Kumar would have at least learnt from his new friend Kejriwal and done something significant in rural health care. Is it not a necessity to have a good dispensary with an ambulance in each panchayat with remote villages? I keep myself in contact with at least some villages in Bihar. When in those villages, I have discussed the necessity of a dispensary too. In none of those villages there is anything related to the public health in last so many years.

@ Nitish Kumar could hardly change the poor situation of open defecation in the state that causes many problems.Open defecation raises the risk of low birth weight, pre-term births and spontaneous abortions.Irrespective of household income levels, pregnant women without access to toilets at home were twice more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes – pre-term births, low birth weight babies, foetal loss, or stillbirths – than women who had toilets.

I shall like to end with two statements from two well-wishers of Bihar in a recent conference on ‘Resurgent Bihar’:
1.”Rather than asking for votes by knocking on the doors, the JDU should ask whether schools and hospitals opened in the areas concerned. Instead of launching 160 Parivartan Raths, the BJP should have rolled out ambulances or Shiksha Raths. Today’s voters cannot be fooled by false promises,” said Anand Kumar Super 30, Patna .
2.”Bihar is far behind the national average in the sector of health education and quality of life. Resurgence of Bihar is not happening in agriculture and industrial sectors as well, nor in the villages,” Suraj Kumar, Chief Mentor, Neeti Foundation

I don’t like Nitish Kumar because he is too much political and he has not worked aggressively to take Bihar in the league of developed states.

Nitish Kumar after working for a year or two for some low hanging items of development, went into full electioneering mode with a single objective of keeping the chief ministership of Bihar safe for himself by be-fooling the most illiterate, ignorant and backward people of the least developed state of the country. Nitish is no more a person focused for the growth and development of Bihar and eradication of its poverty.

@. Nitish has allied with family run parties such as Lalu’s RJD and Sonia’s Congress, both corrupt and with no faith in developmental politics.

@. Nitish will have to be casteist in company of Lalu, becoming messiah of Mahadalits, Muslims with Yadavs . Lalu might have agreed to have Nitish as CM but if he wins sufficient number of his own MLAs, he will certainly push out Nitish and run his own agenda. It will affect development and governance. It is not at all a natural alliance. The alliance hardly have faith in making Bihar a strong developed state.

@. Nitish from day one of his era has planned and worked to keep himself in the driving seat of the state. He kept on going on yatras all over the state with that single objective. He never talked about the improvement required in social setups and weaknesses of individual Biharis to improve the image of Bihar and its hardworking people.

@. Nitish certainly did a good work on law and order as well as road construction. But it became noticeable as the previous governments under Lalu and Rabri had created a ‘jungle raj’, and the situation had touched rock bottom.

@. Nitish could not promote any other city but Patna. Even Patna didn’t see the development that other capitals of Indian states have achieved. Gaya, Muzzafarpur, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga could have been improved to much better status. Gaya could certainly become a city of international attraction with an international airport linking SE Asian Budhhist countries.

@. Nitish could have encouraged yoga all over through the educational institutes through reputed Munger school of yoga. Instead he finds satisfaction by criticising Modi for getting Yoga an international event.

@. Nitish hardly did anything to make Bihar a ‘must visit’ state for domestic and foreign tourists with its Budhhist and Hindu circuits and yoga. Yoga could have been a big attraction and source of employment.

@. Nitish failed to encourage and take the traditional art such as Madhubani paintings to the national and international stage. Even his Litti-Chokha could not reach the Indian metros.

@. Nitish with Lalu are satisfied by declaring the people of Bihar as poorest and had hardly taken any out of the box policy to eradicate poverty through empowering. Can they feel proud when a Kashmiri driver tells them too that the agriculture and construction in Kashmir ( perhaps all over India) will collapse if Bihari workers move out?

@. Nitish has hardly done to train and skill its uneducated millions to get a better remuneration and respect in labour market. Is it very difficult to train masons, drivers, electricians, plumbers, tailors or cooks and housekeepers that the migrant workers from the state get engaged in.

@. Nitish didn’t do sufficient work to make solar and biomass electricity light every nook and corner of Bihar to improve the quality of life. If states like Gujarat and Rajasthan can do it, why couldn’t Bihar? Nitish hardly took up major irrigation project to take care of draught with so many rivers criss-crossing the state.

@. Some young entrepreneurs set up their startups in Bihar, but Nitish Kumar did not provide the required assistance and encouragement to scale up in a large manner to impact the economy.

@. Nitish and Lalu with all their clout in Delhi with Manmohan and Sonia hardly did anything to get the projects of the two railway loco plants in Bihar implemented that would potentially make Bihar a manufacturing state if properly executed.

@. Nitish hardly took a significantly large assistance step to encourage MSMEs that all backward states such as Orissa and Madhya Pradesh have been doing.

@. Nitish hardly took any initiative to get set up the proven models of good schools in rural Bihar, where one or more of schools such as Kendriya , Navodaya, or Kashturba Gandhi Vidyalayas are required in each block. As per the media, he was against them, when that can only be the way out to uplift the rural education. Every block of the state must have a good school of that proven model.

@. Nitish Kumar and Lalu have not taken any step to educate the people at large against the mass copying in all examinations in Bihar thereby damaging the image of Bihar.

@. Nitish did not do anything to attract good professional engineering and medical schools, nor he did anything to improve the older educational institutes of higher education to be in the national ranking. Today, Bihar depends totally on other states for good higher education.

@. Nitish Kumar didn’t do anything to stop rather his government encouraged the spread of country liquor shops even in the remotest nook and corner of the state. All the rural habitations of Bihar has lost its old culture, its traditional festivals and I now avoid going to even my own village. Nitish Kumar hardly did anything to involve all the villagers in running the Panchayats. Mostly, it is run by goons of different types with help of some of their sycophant followers.

@. Years ago, I used to get amazed when in my village every one had two questions for any unknown visitor: first what was your caste, and if the visitor happened to tell that he was employed, the obvious question bombarded was if he got some outside income (bribe). The condition is no different even today. Every one earning through wrong means, say bribes, is considered smart. All the hypes of the actions against dishonest employees has not changed the situations. Biharis have earned an image of corrupt. Nitish could not bring any change.

Nitish with Lalu can’t be the answer for the growth of Bihar. It is for the people to decide if they wish Bihar as state in the league of developed states or remain at the bottom of the ranking when all other Bimaru states but that with ‘B’as the first letter, racing ahead.
(To be continued)