This story is about Bihar, a state that has degenerated from the position of the pinnacle where it once was situated. The idea for the piece germinated owing to the two proximate reasons.
One, the most recent incident involved Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar indulging in a bizarre ‘sex’ talk in the temple of democracy — the Bihar state assembly in this case. The raj dharma of a chief minister is to protect the legislative maryada, but when Nitish Kumar went berserk with crass profanity at its worst, arguably he was talking about the role of women’s education in the population control.
Two, the damning findings of the latest caste survey in Bihar tabled in the Bihar Legislative Assembly on November 7, 2023. Unsurprisingly, the report reveals that 34 per cent of Bihar families are mired in extreme poverty living on a daily income of 200 or less. Assuming an average family size of 5 (5.5 as per 2011 census), the income per capita of the poorest of the poor of Bihar is Rs 40, less than $0.5 per day. It is ironic to note that the current state of poverty in Bihar makes a mockery of the minimum per day wages of Rs 318 (basic + VDA) for the unskilled and Rs 330 for the semi-skilled labourers as per the 2022 revised wages in Bihar Minimum Wage Act, 1948 and Minimum Wage Rules, 1951. Only 3.9 per cent of the state earned a livable wage of more than Rs 50,000 a month.
In 2021, the NITI Aayog in a report on the National Multidimensional Poverty Index, using a globally accepted and robust methodology developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), had the following disturbing finding- “With 51.91 per cent of the population in the State is identified as multidimensionally poor, Bihar has the maximum percentage of population living in poverty among all the States and the Union Territories. Its next distant cohorts on the poverty index nearly eight decades after the independence are Jharkhand (42.16 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (37.79 per cent), and Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent).”
How pathetic the penury and destitution in the state of Bihar is best exemplified by the most recent World Bank report that says that 648 million people in the world, i.e., 8 per cent of the global population, live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day. Contrarily, 34 per cent of the population of Bihar survives at $0.5 or less a day.
And what a solution to the dire poverty of Bihar the government has proposed — increasing the reservation from 50 per cent to 65 per cent for backward classes, Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). By approving the increase of the reservation quota from 50 to 65 per cent, the state has not only demolished the soul of affirmative action as enunciated in the Constitution of India, but with fewer jobs available in the governmental sector, it has knowingly once again opted for the institutionalisation of poverty.
It has forgotten the fundamental truth that the only way to improve the lot of the poor and destitute is to increase the pie of the economy, in which the state has miserably failed with the result that with its oft-repeated unworkable nostrum of increasing the quantum of reservation in the dwindling government jobs, the state only perpetuates and distributes the penury amid governmental apathy.
Make no mistake, Bihar has withered away.
Born to be a Bhaiya, I am a Damned Bihari
Born on the inauspicious 13th day of November 1958, in a destitute family at the historical headquarters Ara, of old Sahabad district in impoverished Bihar, I was destined to be a Bihari bhaiya (goon, doodhwala and sabjiwala) as famously nicknamed in Indian metropolises. My father, an illegal clerk to public prosecutors in Ara Civil Court, would have been happy and contented had I ended up as a peon in Ara civil court. But luck by chance intervened and helped me rise above the “station of my birth”. To my erudite friends and colleagues whenever I say that I am a proud Bihari, born to an illiterate mother and non-matriculate father, their immediate response is “You cannot be a damned bloody Bihari.” Damned that may be, but I am a proud Bihari.
Before I come to the degeneration of Bihar, I better begin with the extraordinary role played by the state in the religious, cultural, social and political renaissance of Bharatvarsha that is now India.
Land of Rama, Janaki, Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Govind Singh
Bihar is the birthplace of Janaki (Sita), Lord Mahavira and Guru Govind Singh and the Karmabhoomi of Lord Rama and Mahatma Gandhi. It has also been an important seat of Islamic study and is famous for the Mazar of thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Makhdoom Sharfuddin Ahmed bin Yahya Maneri, popularly known as Makhdoom-ul-Mulk Bihari and Makhdoom-e-Jahan.
It was at Buxar in Bihar where Lord Rama and Laxman were educated in the ashram of Guru Vishwamitra, and Lord Rama killed the famous demoness Tadika. Also, at Buxar, Rama restored Ahilya, the wife of Gautam Rishi, her human body from that of stone as she got salvation by a mere touch of the feet of Lord Rama.
In 599 BCE, the 24th Tirthankara — Lord Mahavira — of Jainism was born at Vaishali in Bihar and he attained nirvana in Bihar’s Pawapuri. Also, around 500 BCE in Bihar, Prince Siddhartha of Kapilvastu at the banks of the Phalgu River after three days and nights of penance under the Bodhi tree (at what is now known as Bodh Gaya) attained enlightenment, after which he was christened Gautam Buddha.
Tenth and the last Guru of Sikh, Guru Gobind Singh, known chiefly for his creation of the Khalsa (Punjabi: “the Pure”), the military brotherhood of the Sikhs was born at Patna (Patna Sahib) in January 1666. He was the son of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
What more can one ask from one state? But there is more to the Bihar story.
Sankh Naad of Kranti
Bihar has been the epicentre of two uniquely positioned Kranti, one that eventually gave birth to the independence of India using satya and ahimsa and the other that gave rise to the Indian Spring.
The role of Bihar in the making of India is next to none. It was here in 1917 at Champaran that Mahatma Gandhi (duly assisted by personalities like Dr Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Mazharul Haq, J.B. Kriplani) began his first Satyagraha against the British Raj. Cut to the post-independence era, on June 5, 1974, from the ramparts of Patna Gandhi Maidan, Lok Nayak Jayaprakash gave his clarion call of “sampoorna kranti” that gave birth to the Indian Springs and resulted in the decimation of Iron Lady Indira Gandhi at the hustings in 1977.
The Legacy
In 1984 at the Dholpur House headquarters of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), in the interview for the Indian Civil Services Examination, the interview panel head lobbed a bomb with his first question to me — “What is the role of Patliputra (modern Patna, the capital of Bihar) in the history of India?” Bewildered and numbed for a couple of minutes, I blabbered eventually — “For 1200 long years from c.6BCE to 8 ADS, the history of India was the history of Patliputra.”
Well, that was an audacious statement, but every word was and is true. Here is an extract from my yet-to-be-published memoir, ‘The Naked Naked Truth- Life and Times of a Manic-Depressive Indian’ that says Q.E.D. to my assertion-
(Quote) “Magadha, Bihar has played the defining role in Indian history. It was the nation’s nerve centre for a millennium. The supremacy of Magadha was established by Bimbisara and his son Ajatsatru through the war-victories and marriage-diplomacies. But they initially ruled from the fort town of Raj Griha. Patliputra came a little later in the reckoning.”
The grammar of Panini, Buddhist canons and Hindu Puranas mention Patali-grama, the river port. It was around this river port at the bank of Ganges where in about 490 BC Ajatsatru constructed a small fort city Patliputra “that turned out to be among the grandest metropolises of the world in ancient times.” Patliputra was the epicentre of politics, culture and religion and witnessed two golden periods — first from c321 to 185 BC, under Mauryas and second under the Gupta Dynasty ending in 7th AD.
Eminent historian Romila Thapar writes in The Penguin History of Early India, “The reigns of the first three Mauryas (with Patliputra as capital), the first ninety years or so of their dynasty were the most impressive. Their significance lay not merely in the administration of the rulers over a vast territory (with Patliputra as the nucleus of the empire), but also in the fact that they were able to draw together the largely diverging elements of the subcontinent. They gave expression to a political vision that coloured subsequent centuries of the Indian political life.”
For a thousand years, India’s destiny was shaped at Patliputra. During the reign of Ashoka in the Mauryan empire, the spread of areas under the suzerainty of Patna had spread to the following. “Magadha kingdom was bounded by the Himalayas in the north, it covered areas well into Pakistan, Baluchistan, parts of eastern Iran and Afghanistan in the west, Assam, in the east, and most parts of the south of India, except for parts that paid tribute to Ashoka as did Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.”
The city also hosted the second and the third Buddhist councils — the second after Buddha’s death and the third during the Ashoka reign (c250BC). Historian Romila Thapar suggests, “Third Buddhist Council decided to send emissaries outside India, resulting in the propagation of Buddhism all over Asia by the turn of the Christian era. Patliputra lost its glory after Guptas and by the 12th century, the city which gave so much to Indian history, culture and religion, itself became history.”(Unquote)
Sadly, what was true for Patliputra and Bihar in the 12th century end is true in the 21st century. Bruised and battered, it is on the verge of getting relegated to history.
The Degeneration
Here is the depiction of the degeneration of Bihar across six key parameters-
Kissa Kursi Ka
Bihar, the land of fractured polity post-independence, indubitably holds the dubious medal for being the worst-governed province of independent India. If one removes the tenure of 34 years of two chief ministers (the first Krishna Sinha and the latest 17 years of Nitish Kumar), Bihar had to be placed under the President’s Rule 10 times and in the remaining period has had 25 chief ministers, with the average tenure of a little more than one year. Truth beckons that ten Bihar CMs had a tenure of less than one year while the shortest tenure was of Satish Prasad Singh (5 days) and Deep Narayan Singh (17 days).
It suffices to say that in a state in which getting and somehow staying at the Kursi by hook or crook is the dominant paradigm, governance has been the main victim.
Criminals ruled state
As per the data compiled by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) from the self-declared affidavit of Bihar lawmakers, 68 per cent of MLAs of Bihar have criminal cases (a 10 per cent increase from the previous assembly) and elders in the Bihar Legislative Council compete neck to neck with 62 per cent having criminal records. As per a recent study, titled ‘India Justice Report’ (2022) by Tata Trust, Bihar along with UP is at rock bottom with regard to the law and order among major Indian states. The result is unsurprising. For a state abounding in the private militias – Lal Sena (of Naxalites), Kunwar Sena (of Rajputs), Ranvir Sena (of Bumihars) and Durg Lords (of my native district Bhojpur), police are the fifth peg in the square.
Bottomless pit
As against the per capita income of India at Rs 98,374 in 2022-23, that of Bihar languishes at Rs 47,498.442 for 2022. Such a travesty of a state that was once a beacon for the nation is tragic but born out of statistics. The per capita income of Bihar was 40 per cent of the national average in 1951, that was before the start of the First Five-Year Plan (1952-57), and the same now at the start of the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17). Bihar’s per capita income languishes as the lowest in the country. It is unsurprising then that nearly a crore of Biharis have fanned across the nation as bhaiyas and unskilled labourers for survival.
Joblessness
The most recent caste survey by the state government shows that 67 per cent of the state, or 88.2 million people, were classified as housewives and students. Only 1.57 per cent or around 2 million were in government jobs, and even fewer 1.22 per cent or 1.59 million people held private jobs in the organised sector. 2.14 per cent or 2.79 million people worked in the private unorganised sector, 7.70 per cent or 10.7 million worked as farmers or agricultural help and 16.73 per cent or 21.8 million worked as labourers. 3.05 per cent or 3.9 million people were self-employed.
I consider myself lucky that despite being born a Bihari, by sheer force of luck by chance, I have reached where I have reached.
Demographer Ashish Bose in the mid-1980s coined the acronym BIMARU, formed from the first letters of names of some of the poorest Indian states, namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. As destiny would have it, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (recently) have exited the tag of BIMARU states, while Bihar has sunk deeper into the abyss of abyssal.
Unlettered, unschooled, nescient
As per the latest Government of India data presented to Lok Sabha on March 14, 2023, the literacy rate in rural India is 67.77 per cent compared to 84.11 per cent in urban India. The data also showed that among states, while Kerala has the highest literacy rate in India at 94 per cent, Bihar with a dismal record of 61.8 per cent literacy ranked lowest in terms of literacy.
What a degeneration and downfall from the pedestal for a state that was home to world-famous universities — Nalanda (circa 427-1197) and Vikramsila (circa 800-1400 AD). The disaggregated numbers of the latest caste survey are both an eye-opener and an eyesore- “22.67 per cent studied up to primary classes (1-5), 14.33 per cent up to secondary and 14.71 per cent finished high school. Barely 6.47 per cent of the state were found to be graduates that included general graduates, engineers and doctors.”
The killer truth
As per Jan Swasthya Abhiyan 2018 numbers, total health expenditure per capita in Bihar is Rs 2047, out of which out-of-pocket expenditure is Rs 1685 – constituting a whopping 82.3 per cent of total health expenditure. A noteworthy percentage of Bihar’s poor coverage of illness by government saga is that the population already the poorest in the country is being fast pushed to the BPL category because of health expenditure.
It is unsurprising then that in average life span, Bihar is amongst the rock bottom of main states and the infant mortality remains alarmingly high, though slightly decreased, from 48.1 per cent to 46.8 per cent.
Lowest among lowest in Social Progress Index
It is unsurprising then that Bihar, in the Government of India’s latest ranking of the Social Progress Index (SPI), for states across 12 parameters, basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity, Bihar with its offspring Jharkhand ranks lowest.
Post-script
Bihar, once the cradle of civilisation, home to India’s first republic and the seat of power from where the history of India was scripted for 1,000 years, is facing existential crisis. If it is not saved today, tomorrow will be too late.
The author is Multidisciplinary Thought Leader with Action Bias and India Based International Impact Consultant. He is a keen watcher of changing national scenarios. He works as President Advisory Services of Consulting Company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.