One may motor down to Kishanganj from Patna within six hours––as is being claimed––after the construction of East-West Corridor by the Union government.
But whether it is really possible to cover in six hours a distance of around 25 kilometres from Khagaul to Patna Saheb railway station via Kadam Kuan, Rajendra Nagar and Kankarbagh or between Danapur and Deedarganj via Gandhi Maidan and Ashok Rajpath during monsoon.
Perhaps no.
One would rather prefer to get down and wade through knee- or waist-deep muddied water to reach one’s destination as there is every risk of car breaking down in any of the big and small Nala Roads of the state capital.
One gentleman of Rajendra Nsagar got his four-wheeler repaired by spending Rs 25,000 after the week-long August waterlogging. When it started raining again on Sep 19 evening he got his vehicle hurriedly shifted to the relatively high land of Arya Samaj Road as he does not want to spend any more.
A day after almost every Dhanteras the poor citizens were bombarded with the figure of increase in the sale of cars in Patna by none else but Sushil Kumar Modi, the then deputy CM-cum-finance minister. He dutifully did it for seven years, but could not do so last year as he was kicked out by good friend Nitish Kumar, the man who ushered in a new era of development.
No doubt he got some roads built in Patna, but they were really ‘engineering marvels’. He got them elevated by 20 to 24 inches reducing the rest of the lanes and by-lanes into a veritable drains. But unlike beautiful Venice, a city of 118 small islands––and which is also called a City of Canals––boats can not ply in Bihar’s capital.
Patna was never a paradise. It was notorious for bumpy roads and crumbling sewerage system. Yet it can be said that the situation was never as hellish as it used to be in the recent years. Our ladies and gentlemen in the media, along with the then BJP ministers, were more aggressive in applauding the achievemnts of Nitish Kumar than his own Janata Dal (United) leaders. They would brook no criticism when some brave-hearts would question the elevated roads, haphazard and unplanned construction of flyovers and coming up of thousands of illegal apartments in lanes and by-lanes of the city.
Yes, the state government can spend Rs 1,000 crores on building a world-class museum, 300-odd bungalows for legislators and Buddha Smriti Park––which started leaking after heavy rains in the very second monsoon. But there is no money for improving the drainage system.
Anyone who would dare to question this pattern of development and loot––including this writer––was dubbed as the Lalu Yadav’s agent. The truth is that I am saying the samething even though today Nitish Kumar is closest to RJD supremo.
If you have to chose three politicians responsible for this hellish condition of Patna they are Nitish Kumar, Sushil Kumar Modi––who incidentally is a local citizen––and Ashwini Choubey––the last named did enormous harm to the state capital by claiming that Patna would soon become Paris. He said so within days of becoming urban development minister in November 2005.
In the words of William Wordsworth “beauty lies in the eyes of beholder.” So for our politicians, cutting across the party lines, filth, garbage and soiled water of stinking Patna give a very attractive look.
Throughout these years the media came out with, what William Shakespeare called “excellent falsehoods.”
They invented lies, twisted figures and wrote fictions instead of facts to showcase Bihar’s turnaround story. Perhaps no chief minister received so much awards from the media houses as Nitish.
A Roving Editor of a national English daily carried a first page banner headline story about six hour journey between Patna and Kishanganj. The ‘pamphlet’ went on to shower praise on Nitish. This gentleman later wrote a book on this all powerful chief minister. It hit the stand a bit too late as by that time Nitish has fallen from the grace––he had snapped ties with the BJP. What this journalist failed to tell the readers is that the East-West Corridor on which Kishanganj lies is, like all national highways, a central government project for which Nitish can not be credited.
Similarly, the credit for all the village roads built under the central government’s scheme, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, was taken away by Nitish and not the then Manmohan Singh government.
Instead, Nitish’s duty was to see to it that people travel from one end of Patna to another within 60 minutes, and not 360.
Blaming Patna Municipal Corporation is an easy job. But then who appointed men like Senthil Kumar as its Commissioner. Hundreds of illegal structures were passed almost in one go. And when another gentleman in his place, Kuldeep Narayan, tried to stop them he was virtually sent packing. He had to take the shelter of court. After all these builders were either close to the Janata Dal (United) or the BJP.
After PMC it is the Mahadalit chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, to take all the blames. He flew to London to attend the annual conference of International Growth Centre when people of the state capital are spending horrible time. Nobody in July 2007 asked why Nitish Kumar flew to Mauritius when Bihar was reeling under flood, and how much investment SuMo brought when he attended another IGC meet in the United Kingdom a few monsoon ago.