Borrowed Leaves

When Singh tried to protest that it was his work that was being published as a book by the CM, he found himself facing overwhelming forces. The publishers of the book, the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), accused him of stealing a state document and passing it off as his own work! Not just that, they also charged him with drawing two salaries—one from JNU, and the other from a sister concern of theirs, the Centre for Economic Policy and Public Finance, where he was said to be an assistant professor. Stung by the unfair accusations, Singh decided to file a lawsuit against the chief minister and ADRI for infringement of copyright. He claimed damages of Rs 25 lakh.

Back at JNU, though, Singh’s dream of acquiring a PhD was fast turning into a nightmare. Academicians backed him, but the university administration decided to put his future on hold and initiated inquiries against him. On May 10, however, they cleared him of all the charges levelled against him. A note from the office of the chief proctor of the university, H.B. Bohidar, said that “the charges of employment [irregularities] levelled in the complaint against Singh are inconsistent, have many discrepancies and do not stand evidence. Therefore, the case stands closed”.

It was in 2006 that Singh enrolled for a PhD at JNU. His state, Bihar, was the subject of his research, and his thesis was to be titled, ‘Role of State in Economic Transformation: A case study of contemporary Bihar.’ The specialisation involved the conducting of an economic survey, which is how Singh happened to get in touch with ADRI. “It was around this time that ADRI director Saibal Gupta advised me to write a paper on special category status for Bihar to support a PIL pending in the Patna High Court, which I did,” says Singh. “The PIL was quashed, and much later I heard my paper had made its way into a book authored by the Bihar CM.”

While Gupta does admit that he asked Singh to submit a paper, he denies that the book brought out by his institute has been plagiarised from his paper. “If I write one chapter in the economic survey of Bihar, can I be called its author? Several people have researched and contributed to the book and Atul Kumar Singh is one of them,” he says. It is a little strange, however, that all 81 pages of Singh’s report appear as the 79-page book by Nitish Kumar. The only additions are two paragraphs in the introduction where, in an earlier version, Nitish Kumar makes an appearance in the first person, saying, “Ever since I took over the reigns (sic) of Bihar, my government has been saddled (sic) with every effort to bring economic resurgence to this state.” The book was, in fact, released by Lord Meghnad Desai. Outlook has a copy of the invite sent by the Bihar government and ADRI on May 15 last year, announcing the release by Desai of a book  “authored by Shree Nitish Kumar”.

Following the brouhaha, a ‘final’ version of the book has now been brought out. Here, Nitish Kumar is not the author of the book; he has simply “endorsed” it. Calling Nitish an author was a “clerical error”,  ADRI’s Gupta now says. Even the introduction has been amended: the CM now appears in a third-person avatar: “Ever since Nitish Kumar took over the reigns (sic) of Bihar, his government has been preoccupied (notice change from ‘saddled’) with the effort to bring economic resurgence to the state.”

“Endorsement,” says Gupta, “is a relatively new concept and having the book endorsed by the chief minister was aimed at getting maximum leverage.” Whether putting his name there will elicit a special category status for Bihar from the Centre is debatable. What is clear is that one person’s work has been used with someone else as the author. Plagiarism is plagiarism, even if it’s in the name of the Bihar chief minister.