It has never been so good for Bihar. A Rs 3,600 crore railway zone at Hajipur, Rs 7,200 crore super thermal stations of the NTPC in Barh about 70 kilometres from Patna, a Rs 800 crore railway bridge over the Ganga in the state capital, several other railway projects involving another Rs 1,000 crore, a Rs 600 crore ordnance factory near Rajgir, an international airport at Gaya, besides conversion of thousands of kilometres of state highways into national highways and installation of thousands of telephone connections in a brief period. As if that was not enough, the UNESCO on June 27 declared Bodh Gaya as a world heritage centre.

There is no doubt that these massive investments are the outcome of the competitive populism among the post-1995 non-Congress politicians. Yet it is also true this huge capital has the potential to bring about a socio-economic revolution in the state, despite a lack of enthusiasm palpable among the common mass of Bihar till the politicians of West Bengal, especially Ms Mamata Banerjee, opposed the creation of a East Central Zone.

If the creation of a new rail zone at last generated some interest in Bihar the case is not so with other big projects such as the NTPC. Surprisingly, neither the media nor the social analysts are writing much about the impact these investments may have on the state. The sudden inflow of investment raises an important question: who should the credit go to? Ironically, to some extent, it goes to the man who has apparently done nothing for the state, RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav, who has been accused of destroying all institutions and running Bihar as his fiefdom. Yet, none can challenge the fact that had there been no Laloo Yadav at the helm of state politics, Bihar would not have seen such a massive investment.

No one can deny the fact that in the first two decades after Independence, Bihar was ranked among the two best administered states of the country according to the Appleby Report. Even then the state did not get the attention it required. Old timers recall that there were complaints of discrimination always in those days too. Ever since the establishment of the Bokaro Steel Plant in the early Sixties, which incidentally is now in Jharkhand, Bihar had never seen so much investment.

When political and social anarchy started gripping the state after 1967 Bihar was virtually left to fend for itself. Successive Central governments, wittingly or unwittingly, continued to ignore the state. Bihar’s bargaining position was weak. At one point of time during the prime ministership of Narasimha Rao, there was only one minister of state in the Union Cabinet as the Congress won only one Lok Sabha seat in the 1991 election.

However, by the mid-Nineties the situation started changing. After having swept the 1995 Assembly elections, Laloo Yadav, who later became the national president of the then Janata Dal, went abroad to woo multinational companies. Later, he organised an NRI meet in Patna and started the beautification campaign of the state capital and some other cities. No doubt most of these were temporary measures, yet they did spark off competitive populism. Laloo might have done nothing for Bihar, but he spoke about the discrimination of the state and against the policy of freight equalisation.

His bete noire in the United Front government, Ram Vilas Paswan, picked up from there. He sensed that to neutralise Laloo politically, it was essential to take up some developmental work. True, he too embarked on the path of populism and wanted to help his party workers with these projects. Be it the establishment of East Central Railway at Hajipur, his parliamentary constituency, or a rail bridge over the Ganga near Patna, or conversion of thousands of kilometres of metre gauge into broad gauge and introduction of several new trains, the credit, to a great extent, goes to Paswan. When the NDA government was voted to power in March 1998 some of these works slowed down, though the new railway minister Nitish Kumar was also from Bihar. However, when President’s Rule was imposed on Bihar for a brief period in February-March 1999, the Prime Minister paid a two-day visit to Bihar and inaugurated several major projects worth over Rs 30,000 crore. While Nitish Kumar took personal initiative in the projects meant for north and central Bihar, the then finance and now foreign minister Yashwant Sinha took more interest in south Bihar, which later became Jharkhand.

The October 1999 parliamentary elections sped up the competition for bringing in new projects to Bihar with Nitish and Paswan, the latter now back in the Cabinet, topping the race. Though their motive was essentially to provide contract and business to their supporters who were fighting Laloo, Bihar benefited as a lot of investment came in. An interesting aspect of the development is that it is taking place in and around Patna. The creation of East Central Railway at Hajipur, just across the Ganga near Patna, is likely to have an impact on the state capital. The real estate and construction business will boom. There is possibility of the growth of ancillary units in Hajipur and Patna as railways make most of the purchase of spare parts from the zonal office. Unlike other industries which failed in north Bihar, the prospect of these units is good as they will have a readymade market in the form of railways. Besides, the resource-starved post-Jharkhand Bihar would earn Rs 200 crores annually as sales tax from the East Central Railway. Ironically, these investments coincided with the bifurcation of Bihar, whose richest part was operated out and Jharkhand was created on November 15, 2000. It is to be seen whether its loss will be compensated by these investments.

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