The state recorded marginal decline in the percentage of population below the poverty line, from 54.4 per cent in 2004-05 to 53.5 per cent in 2009-10 whereas at the national level 7.3 per cent poverty reduction was recorded between 2004-05 and 2009-10. The stagnancy in poverty reduction finally added five million more poor in the state population.

At the national level 7.3 percent poverty reduction was recorded between 2004-05 and 2009-10 but Bihar has now once again become the poorest state in the country after a remarkable improvement in poverty reduction in Orissa which was, once, on the last ladder with the highest poverty ratio. The reduction from 57 percent to 37 percent in that state made it a fit case for researchers to do a case study.

With 56.5% the poverty ratio for Muslims in urban Bihar is highest in the country whereas in rural Bihar and Chhattisgarh, nearly two-thirds of SCs and STs are poor. In states such as Manipur, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh the poverty ratio for these groups is more than half.

But the moot question is why this great turn around story failed miserably in tackling the issues related to have-nots?

“The development in the state is largely construction centric fuelled by the public investment that didn’t have much impact on rural poverty” explained Shaibal Gupta an economist and General Secretary of Asian Development Research Institute..

But the extent of urban poverty is marginally better than rural poverty with 39.4 percent living below poverty line just above Manipur 46.4 percent. Nitish’s slogans of good governance and reforms too failed to contain poverty in urban centre despite construction boom particularly in the capital city Patna where real estate prices are matching metropolitan cities like Mumbai and New Delhi.

“The 90 percent population is totally dependent on agriculture and there is complete stagnancy in agriculture sector in last five years. This led to a major downfall in the per capita income in rural areas. Even its share in state GDP declined considerably”- explained Patna University senior Professor N K Chaudhary. “The increasing population too compounded this problem as the state registered one of the highest fertility rate.” Chaudhary added further.

Abhijit Sen, in a recent seminar in Patna, openly raised the point that in spite of high growth rate, the persistent high poverty is a cause of concern. The rampant diversion of PDS food grains and dismal performance in employment generating programme like MGNREGA where state utilized only 7.38 percent, fund lowest among all the states, are clear cut example of failure of delivery mechanism.

“Simply pumping money in different social security and poverty related programmes without any effective monetary system resulted in leakage to a greater extent in most of the areas. Panchayat representatives are more interested in purchasing SUVs than implementing government programmes” said Shashank, an IITian who runs an organization Farms-n-Farmers in Vaishali district.

The high growth rate and high poverty ratio not only exposes the claim of inclusive growth by the government but also indicates the exclusive growth of microscopic urban elite class. It is happening in the state with strong roots of socialist politics.

The poverty figure also puts a question mark on the claim of Nitish Kumar that there has been a sharp fall in the distress migration. If poverty scenario particularly in rural areas is so grim, can any one stop distress migration?

Courtesy: Sunday Standard

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