Patna,(BiharTimes): Deafening silence of both BJP and JantaPariwar in regards to key ingredients missing in packages promised to be delivered to Bihar in course of next five years bothers a lot. It is apparent that the leaders on both sides do not have stomach for out of box thinking nor do they have energy for meticulous planning for development of Bihar. In fact, they do not have time beyond petty politicking andnitpicking to ponder over any path breaking initiatives. We certainly have had benefits of prime minister who are endowed with vision. But they are not supposed to narrow down there thinking to just think from perspective of Bihar. That is where state leadership becomes crucial. However, there is no leader on the horizon of state as yet, we merely have gutter style politicians. That is why none of these sides are able to come up with a convincing road map for development of Bihar. As a result several things which beg for urgent attention go a begging. Developments of important economic and infrastructure corridors, integrated cross state all season irrigation facility, improvement in research linked higher education ambience and making Bihar cities livable are some crucial omissions.
As such Bihar requires four crucial ingredients for its economic development which are achievable with right effort. These are:
All Weather Cross State Irrigation
Economic and Industrial Infrastructure Corridors
Research Complex
Urbanization
These four major measures required for state calls for innovative thinking and meticulous planning. For example, providing all weather cross state irrigation facility would call for setting up of a cross state irrigation grid would call for development of:
Water sources – typically all-weather Rivers of Bihar’s can meet this requirement along with ground water.
Water reservoirs for off season requirements- Possible to have many such large reservoirs in south Bihar. these can be covered with solar panels
Water transmission lines: Solar panel covered and concrete lined canals and large diameter water pipe lines.
Water distributaries to farms- Piped water distributaries to farms.
Similarly, Bihar earnestly requires development of two stem lines of economic corridor along with multiple spurs. Bihar need to focus on following two stems:
Raxaul to Rajauli:. This corridor would have a much larger significance as it is in line with proposal of China, Nepal, Jharkhand, and Odisha.
ShahpurPatori-Samastipur- Saharsha- Purnia. This stem could be part of Mekong- Ganga economy corridor as advocated in research by UN agencies.
Besides, a number of spur corridors can be linked to these stems to form a fishbone structure of corridors.Two suchspurs could be along either bank of The Gangase. Other set of spurs could be Banka–Jamui-- Nawada- Hishua- Gaya- Daudnagar- Viikramganj- Dumaraon.Yet another set of spurs could be along NH2. Aarah- Arwal- Jhanabad- Biharsharief-Sheikhpura- LakhiSarai- Munger.
As for research complex, this can be one integrated complex setup as multi-agency, multi institutional international research complex. Having ignored Bihar completely so far, various research agencies under government of India are obligated to set up at least one research institute each. These agencies are ISRO, DAE, DRDO, DSIR, DBT, CSIR, CDAC and so on. Bihar can rightfully demand that and pressurize center for the same.
Rural economy in Bihar is not in a position to sustain such huge load of population. That’s why we witness large-scale migration to other states and even to WestAsia as well. Rapid urbanization can be a solution. But for that cities in Bihar will have to evolve into livable cities capable of sustaining and supporting large loads of population in a comprehensive manner. Bihar would require at least one Metro size city and about six to eight mega cities with all kind of urban amenities and complementing job opportunities.
Unfortunately though, these crucial ingredients are missing in the packages and counter packages announced for Bihar. If politician of Bihar can show vision to take up these or similar kind of path breaking initiatives, they would have come of age. Only then they can really claim to have evolved into true leaders from cheap politicians. That will be the time when people of Bihar can also claim to have arrived on national development map.
