Nitish Kumar’s Bihar is arguably the worst governed state in the country, yet the media is under compulsion to project it is as the best governed (susashan) one. Herein lies the crux of the problem.
Eight months have passed since the death of officially 20 people––once again children and women––on Chhath day in Patna yet no action whatsoever has been taken against anyone in the state and no accountability has been fixed.

Even the media can not dare to ask as to what has happened to the promised investigation.

Naturally, the BJP would not raise this issue as it was sharing power then and none else but the then deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi was held responsible for the construction of the bamboo bridge, which had collapsed.

The Chhath mishap reminds one of the prevailing chaos in the state. There was no requisite number of doctors or para-medic staff available in PMCH nor was there any ambulance ready though such an incident can not be ruled out in such a mass congregation. For the first time in the state history victims had to be shifted to private nursing homes.

In fact the much-maligned PMCH was much better prepared when Alliance Air crashed in July 2000 near Patna airport in which 57 passengers perished. This was so in spite of the fact that this mishap took place all out of sudden while the administrative machinery was supposed to be ready for any eventuality during Chhath.

So when 22 children and a cook died at Dharmasati Gandaman village in Masrakh block of Saran district many people wondered as to why such a tragedy happened so late as, in the words of Rupesh, Advisor to the Commissioner of Supreme Court on Mid-day Meal, “there is absolutely no infrastructure whatsoever for mid-day meal.”

Neither the teacher has been trained nor the cook. “In fact all schools should have a manager to look after mid-day meal. How can one expect a teacher to teach the kids, look after the preparation of food and supervise and monitor the distribution of meal. The Supreme Court has repeatedly been asking the states for better community participation in the scheme, but Bihar is a unique state in this regard,” Rupesh said.

What is strange is that the state which boasts of distributing lakhs of cycles every year to girls and boys can not afford to build school buildings. “The ill-fated school in Saran district was running in Vikas Bhawan with just two teachers. One of them was in fact on leave. So everything was left on just one. There was no kitchen nor any space for it,” the Advisor added.

In spite of such a hopeless situation the state government claims of breaking one record after another in school enrollment.

As no accountability is fixed on anyone, tragedies like this may happen in future.

“It is shocking that instead of suspending DEO and Mid-day Meal Coordinator the state government has taken action against contractual employees of block level,” Rupesh said.

The problem with Bihar is that in the last seven and a half years each and every institution has been destroyed. Yet anyone who dares to point this out is silenced.

The primary duty of a government is to manage, administer and govern, but here it is earning pat on its back by just mastering the art of distributing freebies such as bicycles, transistors etc and claiming all the centrally-sponsored national highways, rural roads and rural health schemes as the state government’s achievement.

The BJP realized the gravity of the situation when its ministers were thrown out of the cabinet. Earlier, along with the JD(U) and media, it too was busy in passing all the blames on 15 years of Lalu-Rabri Raj.
What needs to be told here loud and clear is that even in those days of ‘jungle-raj’ Bihar hand never witnessed such a series of incidents with nobody being held responsbile. At least the other institutions like media, judiciary were there to pull up the government.

Anyway the police firing in Bagaha, the blast in totally unprotected Mahabodhi Temple and death of 22 kids in Saran have––all within a month––prompted one to ask as to whether there is something more in store to happen in the state.