The State that India left behind

One of the biggest trends of the Twentieth Century, not just in India but throughout the world has been the mass uplifting of people out of absolute poverty

Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud. The US has Mississippi, China has Inner Mongolia, England has Luton, Australia has Tasmania.

India of course, has Bihar.

The birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh, Aryabhatta, Gautam Buddha, Dr Rajendra Prasad, more civil servants than any other state and the first republic of the world, today finds itself dead last in almost every single important metric comparing all 29 Indian states.

How did it happen? Who’s to blame? Could things have been different?

In the quest of the eternal-analyzation of these questions which continue to happen despite historical economic rivals like Uttar Pradesh and Odisha racing forward, one question gets lost in the process…

When. When did this happen? Has it always been this way?

The short answer is that Bihar was already lagging behind the rest of the country before Independence. Before the start of tracking every metric which is now cited to illustrate the gulf between Bihar and the rest of the states, it was already behind.

It was already losing out? Isn’t Bihar rich in minerals and home to some of the most fertile land in the subcontinent? What happened pre-independence?

The answer is two fold:

Bengal was the poorest funded province under the Indian government (Bihar and Odisha were still part of this province). Bihar and Odisha were furthermore the most fund deprived region of the worst funded province of British India.

Part of this was because the Zamindari system implemented in Eastern parts of India dis-incentivized any investment to develop agricultural lands in these regions.

This was in contrast to the Ryotwari system implemented in Madras and Bombay provinces which directly linked tax collection to economic output.

The Zamindari system also sowed the seeds for the caste-based and hatred fuelled politics which play out in the state to this day.

Secondly came India’s freight equalization policy which ensured that essential commodities were available at the same price across the country completely eradicating Bihar’s advantage of possessing raw materials and minerals.

That quote referencing the Union Government freight equalization policy is a rare admission of error but will provide little solace to the ill-educated residents of the land-locked state.

Ofcourse Bihar’s problems are multidimensional, not least stemming from the fact that the state had 23 Chief Ministers in its first 70 years coming out to an average tenure of just 1.5 years but there’s one theme to the entire state that comes up time and time again…

Mukherji and Mukherji at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy coined the phrase ‘designed governance failure’. Now I would never take subliminal shots at Lalu Prasad Yadav and his consistent under-investment into the state’s infrastructure but…

Let’s take a quick look at what happened in Boston.

James Michael Curly, four-time mayor of the city, deliberately used public re-distribution to favour his constituents while using inflammatory rhetoric towards the rich forcing them to leave the city. This led to significant economic stagnation in Boston but helped the Mayor consolidate his support base.

Do you understand what he’s done? Turn the poor against the rich and drive them and their investments out of the city.

The result? The state sees little to no economic progress but because the poor outnumber the rich, they continue to offer an enticing voter block who will always vote for their illusory messiah.

The story of Bihar elicits sympathy, anger and more and more questions. However, it is a story still being written. The story of a people, that despite all setbacks continue to offer an irreplaceable flavour in our national cultural mix.