Attaboy, Nitish

Everyone who has ever been made to feel ashamed of being a Bihari can now rejoice with pride after the recent release of state wise GDP report by Central Statistical Organisation (CSO)

Everyone who has ever been made to feel ashamed of being a Bihari can now rejoice with pride after the recent release of state wise GDP report by Central Statistical Organisation (CSO). The mentioned statistics made it clear that Bihar's GDP growth of 11.03 per cent was next only to Gujarat's 11.05 per cent. While it came as a pleasant surprise to many, those who had always believed in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's capabilities knew that this day would arrive sooner or later. The figure is morally uplifting for sympathisers of the corruption and crime-laden state.

The 'change', led by Kumar, first saw light of the day when emphasis was laid on the formation, functioning and deliverance of a transparent and effective government. He then started implementing the strategies of e-governance, where he made sure to conduct regular teleconferencing sessions with the chief secretary, DG police, department heads, and district magistrates to reduce pending tasks and thus lay the ground for developmental works. No doubt, Kumar deserves every bit of credit, but he wouldn't have been able to do that had the people of Bihar, who were left unattended in the hands of a collapsed governance for two decades u2014 first under the leadership of Jagannath Mishra and then Lalu Yadav, not cooperated. Take the instance of public servants who are now willingly attending to peoples' grievances, and helping restore the lost faith in the government.

It's in Kumar's rule that the citizens of Bihar have been seen using their most potent tools like Right to Information (RTI), e-governance, social audit and citizen charter that helped the state in achieving good governance. Earlier, it was a common practice to conceal information that helped babus, to glorify their 'under the table' earnings. But things are changing for sure, thankfully.

But now, everything about state development is equally flowery. Nitish will still have to fight corruption that's rooted deeper than it seems. It needs immediate and sustained attention if the pace of development has to be maintained in times to come. Transparency International India (TII) had highlighted Bihar as the Union's most corrupt state in a 2005 report, which is still an import hurdle for the government to overcome. Even in its latest TII survey in 2008, out of six million Below Poverty Line BPL families, 1.6 million paid bribe amounting to Rs 793 million to avail basic services. Another challenge: more than 99 per cent of BPL households do not know about RTI.