Nowhere To Hide, Mr CM: Poverty Data Proves Nitish Kumar’s Policy Failure

The nation cannot be built only in New Delhi. The persistent status of Bihar among the bottom-performing states should be a matter of collective national anxiety. Unfortunately, reports by the government think tank, Niti Aayog, seems to have no impact on New Delhi’s policy approach, as well as on the government in Bihar. A report wherein Bihar lags behind on all significant indicators should have been a matter of collective shame, but the government in Patna invariably looks for a shroud of denial to cover that in the most brazen manner. On the one hand, the shock-and-awe policymaking by this regime seems to be in no need for any data to back its claims, and on the other, all the data state institutions produce are studiously ignored.

If we look at the history of Centre-state relation in India, it is easy to pick up the trend that when the same political party or coalition forms both state and Union governments, the state can exp­ect some preferential treatment in terms of development layouts and public expenditure. If this tacit principle is flouted to benefit a state reg­ardless of the configuration of parties in power, it would exemplify the best of cooperative federalism. However, the reactions of the parties in the ruling coalition in Bihar to the latest report by Niti Aayog show that the present situation in Bihar belies the very logic of coalition politics. Cooperative federalism and coalition dharma have both been left to hang high and dry.

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Consistently poor performance by Bihar on most crucial indicators of social and economic dev­elopment only elicits routine reactions and noises. An analysis of demands made by CM Nitish Kumar to the Union government proves that his coalition is in a deep policy coma that is disturbed only by convulsions induced by its own absurdity and immoral character. For years, scholars have been dissecting the bombast around the ‘sushasan’ and ‘growth miracle’ achieved in Bihar by successive Nitish Kumar-led NDA governments. Now Niti Aayog has laid bare the truth that the ‘sushasan’, just like its related empty mantra ‘vikas’, is mere perception management achieved through media manipulations.  

Politics affects poverty and the way government institutions function makes a profound difference in the lives of the most vulnerable. It is not alarming that 50 per cent of Bihar is multidimensionally poor because the Nitish government has been notorious for rampant corruption in key social schemes. Corruption threatens social progress, devastates the economy and inviolably harms the poor. Nitish’s flagship scheme has been in news for all the wrong reasons, from an alleged high level of corruption to giving contracts to close aides, the government has indeed mastered the governance of patronage rather than good governance. Corruption has been enabled at all levels instead of the distribution of social benefits. Unsurprisingly the regime is called a ghotalo ki sarkar (government of scams).

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Long March Migrants from Bihar walknig back home during the first Covid lockdown. (Photograph by Tribhuvan Tiwari)

In a 1953 report on public administration in India, Paul H. Appleby concluded that Bihar is the second best-governed state of India. The most tragic part of the sorry story since then is the suffering of the people of Bihar despite their toil and hard labour. They have not received enough credit for their political astuteness and their will to change society by striking at the very structural roots of social injustice. Their physical toil as an economic contribution and their pioneering struggle against violence and caste domination as a political contribution, are the most essential ing­redients of nation-building. Perhaps–since it has become common sense these days to accept the ideas of cultural nationalism as the pivot of nation-building–the people of India need remi­nding that such a contribution by the poorest of India’s national community is nothing short of revolutionary.

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Bihar has withered away to such an extent that basic services have become alien to the people and they move with a one-way ticket for want of a better education and job opportunity, thus making ‘Biharis’ synonymous with migrants. Tales of migration misery of Biharis are painfully common. Education and health outcomes are abysmal, solely because we have failed to make structural changes conducive to a prospering soc­iety. It is also unbecoming of Nitish to blame the statistics on legacy issues and the landlocked geography of Bihar for slow growth. It is a well-known fact that precolonial Bihar was immensely affluent and was a flourishing centre of trading activities.  

Despite all the claims and counterclaims, what we have learnt from the latest Niti Aayog report, although distressing, is nothing new. The Raghuram Rajan Committee, set up by the government of India in 2013 to suggest methods of measuring backwardness of states using a variety of criteria and to give recommendations for grant of special status for development of states, shows that Bihar was among the least-developed states. Yet, the grant of special status for the development of Bihar has not materialised.

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In my opinion, this is not due to politics, but rather a failure of electoral politics. The formation of the state government after the 2020 ass­embly elections in Bihar is a prime example of the deliberate undermining of democratic processes and the political will of the people of Bihar. Rising above the caste divides, the people of Bihar, especially its youth had put their faith in the progressive economic and social agenda articulated by youth leader Tejashwi Yadav as UPA’s CM face. An illegitimate government propped up against the electoral mandate given to the UPA coalition led by RJD was a result of blatant bureaucratic and administrative capture by the NDA caretaker government. RJD under the leadership of leader of opposition Tejashwi Yadav has shown its commitment to play the role of an alert and responsible opposition by raising crucial issues of development and governance in the state assembly, but there has been little indication of any engagement by the government. In this regard, again, the state government mirrors the unyielding attitude with which the Union government conducts Parliament in New Delhi.     

Amid all this, it is obvious that Nitish Kumar’s desperate need to cling to power at any cost has not only diminished his political status but has also cost the people of Bihar dearly. He has tried to spin this as a move to continue to bestow the people of Bihar with ‘sushasan’ but I am ready to place an expensive wager on if there are any genuine buyers of his brand of good governance. His ‘kushaasan’ was exposed to full public view by his callous response to the miseries of the migrant workers of Bihar during the first, hard pandemic lockdown in 2020. The sheer incompetence of his government during the devastating second wave of pandemic infections in April-May 2021 has left an indelible, traumatic mark of death, economic and emotional devastation among the affected families.  

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We have heard a lot about the ‘double-engine sarkar’, and on the face of it, it does seem like a compelling metaphor for cooperative federalism, but we need to ask what exactly is this double-eng­ine train carrying? In what direction is this double-engine train moving? From where I see, it has been pulling—or pushing out—human res­ources out of Bihar. It painfully reminds me of the naming convention of trains connecting Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to the various parts of the country—Shramjeevi Express, Shram Shakti Express etc—that emphasise who they were meant to carry. The trend unfortunately continues, only the speed has been doubled by this so-called double-engine government.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Nowhere to Hide, Mr CM")

(Views expressed are personal)

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Manoj Kumar Jha is a Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar and a RJD leader