One Bihar

Patna Airport and The Juggernaut of Bihar's economic development

2010-06-11T10:52:00.006+05:30

When news came of Bihar being the second fastest growing state in India, there was all round skepticism, even derision in some quarters. I remember the TV debate in which a geriatric retired member of the Indian Planning Commission tried to deride the suave NK Singh by hinting that as the basic data is supplied by the state government, there is reason to doubt it. Funny why he never doubted the data from any other state or even Bihar data for years when its growth was slower. Bizarre was the statement of Mr Pronab Sen, the Chief Statistician of India who, in spite of the data being released by his own Central Statistical Organization, claimed it is not his data. He was probably implying that he is a mere clerk whose job is to tabulate the data given by the state governments.

I am happy to say that there a been continued flow of data which supports the story of an economic turnaround in Bihar. There was the news of Bihar being the fastest growing cement consumer in India, then the huge growth in foreign tourists in Bihar (mostly Gaya) and now there is the news of Patna being the fastest growing airport in India. Year on year, it had a massive 60.8% growth in passenger traffic. Having been a regular user of the Patna airport since 1988, I always believed in the potential of the airport. I have seen withdrawal of the regular international flights from Kathmandu, the introduction of the IA flight to Mumbai in the early nineties via Ahmadabad and later by Sahara via Lucknow or Ranchi, the increasing frequency of the flights to Delhi and so on. I always found the flights to be full and getting a ticket never easy. So I always felt that there was scope to have more flights. In this context, I was very surprised when IA discontinued its flight to Mumbai. As a private citizen and one who is directly affected, I tried to take this up with the authorities but was told that this is a commercial decision taken due to lack of traffic. I found it strange since all the flights I had taken on this sector around that time were pretty much full. Thankfully, it is the age of liberalization and private carriers took up the space and we soon had Mumbai - Patna flights by Kingfisher and Go Air proving my hunch to be right. There is the similar story of telecom. When a modern day enterprise like Airtel, free from biases or a blinkered view of Bihar, came to the state, telecom took off in Bihar and the current growth is quite in step with the rest of the country.

This growth amply proves that when Bihar has been given a chance, it has delivered. These nail the lie that there is something inherently wrong with Bihar. These negate the cynicism of the likes of the above mentioned planner who have hitherto dominated economic policy. Historically,they have come up with harebrained schemes like the Freight Equalization Scheme and then blaming Bihar! In spite of these obstacles, Bihar has delivered. Now it is for the rest of the country, particularly the central government, to amend policies which can accelerate this growth.

On the airport specifically, Patna is a very small runway and very little scope to increase its length or the operational area. So a modern airport with facility to land aircraft like A380 is required. I know the planners may find the idea laughable, but given that Bihar is a landlocked state with a massive and increasingly prosperous non resident population. There is vast scope of tourism given the holy places of the Buddhists and Jains in Bihar. There is no reason to continue to penalize the poor migrant from Siwan by forcing him to go t Delhi and then take a flight to Dubai. (Siwan has among the largest Indians in the gulf). The international hub of Singapore is just two hours away. A good airport at Patna will convert the trickling traffic to a gushing stream. I hope Praful Patel as also the authorities at Patna listen to the changing times and take appropriate steps.

Obituary - John Shepherd-Barron - Inventor of the ATM machine

2010-05-27T14:26:00.003+05:30

John Shepherd-Barron passed away on May 15. His is an interesting case of an invention which can be called a true Eureka moment. One day he was in an urgent need of cash but was locked out of his bank since the banking hours were over. While having his bath, the idea of a cash dispensing machine like a chocolate dispensing machine struck him. Being an engineer working with De La Rue instruments, he could give shape to his idea and designed what could be called the first ATM machine. This machine did not work with a plastic card but with a slightly radio active cheque. This machine was first installed by Barclay's Bank in North London on June 27, 1967. Come to think of it, the world existed without an ATM machine just over 40 years ago and now we have more than 1.7 million of them installed worldwide.

Another interesting snippet is that originally, he wanted a 6 digit PIN. But when he asked his wife, she said that she can't remember a number more than 4 digit. And thus was the ubiquitous 4 digit PIN born.

Shepherd-Barron's principal motivation while inventing the machine was 24*7 availability of cash. However, it helped reduce the cost of a transaction greatly and replaced the human tellers rapidly. Today in India, the average cost of an ATM transaction could be as low as Rs 12 (majority of the cost going towards cash counting and transportation) while the cost of the same transaction if done through a teller clerk, in spite of the low salaries, could be Rs 50 or more. The difference between cost of cash dispensed by humans and the ATM machines in the more well economies such as UK or USA would be much higher.

It is quite possible that the plastic card itself or mobile payment products or another invention could obviate the need of an ATM machine in future and the ATM machine becomes but a footnote in the long history of financial innovation. But at the moment, this machine is the mainstay of the retail banking industry replacing the need of a branch with this machine. In fact, Paul Volcker, the former US Fed Reserve Chairman, described the ATM as the last truly great innovation in financial services

Community Outreach Program - a Bihar Foundation Mumbai initiative

2010-05-25T15:58:00.002+05:30

I am delighted to share that we, Bihar Foundation Mumbai, initiated a community outreach program at Mumbai yesterday. As part of this program, a group of 50 students and 20 senior citizens are visiting the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya. They would also be visiting places of tourist interest at Patna like the museum as also a visit to the Vishnupad temple at Gaya. The outbound train from Lokmanya Tilak terminus was flagged off by the tourism minister of Maharashtra, Varsha Gaikwad.

The Govt of Bihar is also rolling out the red carpet for the delegates. The return journey will be flagged off by Ram Pravesh Rai, Tourism minister of Bihar. It is thus one of those happy bipartisan events where both the UPA and NDA ministers are participating.

I enjoyed watching the enthusiasm of the people going to Gaya. And why should they not be? They are going to have a long and exciting journey to the holiest of their shrine besides a visit to the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, Patna.

This is but a small event, like the gentle first rain drops at the peak of summer. Inevitably, it will get evaporated soon. Hopefully, it will also generate the "saundha" smell as also herald the outpouring of monsoon in the coming months. Small as this event maybe, there are two firsts: proactive initiative by Bihar to take tourists from Maharashtra to Bihar as also taking Indian Budhdhist pilgrims to Bodh Gaya as opposed to the foreigners. An interesting snippet is that the the Gaya airport is the only airport in India and possibly in the world that has several regular and chartered international flights from different destinations but not even one from within India.

I do hope this will some day lead to a direct train between Gaya and Mumbai in to facilitate Budhdhist pilgrimage from Maharashtra to Gaya. Thus the traffic will not remain a one way traffic.

Nitish Launches blog: More than 400 comments in 2 days

2010-04-21T21:57:00.002+05:30

I was directed to this blog by a friend just now

http://nitishspeaks.blogspot.com/

Nitish's blog must be generating a lot of traffic since it had attracted more than 400 comments in just two days. I also liked his first entry, where he highlighted the bicycle for girls scheme. I can say from personal experience that this has been a huge success. Part of the reason for success is the innovation in its execution, where instead the govt procuring the bicycles and then distributing it, the govt chose to give out the cash directly to the beneficiary thereby letting the user choose the bicycle of his choice.

If I recall Patna of my school days, there were hardly any ladies riding a bicycle, let alone a motorcycle or scooter. All one could see was very very few ladies driving a motorcar. In this social milieu, to see girls riding to their school in rural Bihar is nothing short of a revolution. Godspeed to such schemes!

Mumbai terror attack: What we can contribute

2008-12-04T02:10:00.003+05:30

It is now one full week since terrorists attacked the landmarks of Mumbai. Amidst the 24 hour media coverage, for me, the haunting image of the attack has been our ill equipped policemen fighting the armed to the teeth cowards from hell. Think of the lone RPF constable at CST throwing a chair to distract attention of a terrorist so that he can fire from his obsolete .303 rifle. Think of ATS Chief Karkare trying to fit a useless bullet proof vest. Think of armed with lathi Mumbai police personnel trying to stop the Skoda of the terrorist at Girgaum Chowpatty. Think of the army man getting down from the army truck with a 5 kg battery and equally heavy communication equipment. Think of the NSG commandos reaching Taj in the morning of 27th in BEST buses. What would have happened if another terrorist had laid siege on the tin bus of BEST and deflated its tyre?

Most of our policemen bravely fought the cowards, but did they have a chance to succeed? We are a brave country but we have let ourselves down by failing to look after those who are responsible for our security. We have seen any number of talk shows on our TVs about how spectacularly the government has failed. We have lampooned our politicians. But after all this, what?

I propose that the Government of India immediately set up a Civil Defence fund of India where all of us can contribute according to our capacity. Let this fund be created under an act of Parliament with water tight regulations to ensure that the Achutanandans of this country cannot fiddle with this fund for their own agenda. Further, utilization of this fund can be linked to the police reforms which have been resisted by our ruling classes for the last several decades making policing a hand maiden of their nefarious designs.

The contribution to the fund can be made exempt from income tax. Its management can be done by a highly empowered and autonomous board consisting of eminent men and women who will oversee its utilization. The utilization should be restricted to policing infrastructure of the country: central para military forces such as NSG, CRPF, CISF, RPF, BSF and so on and the state police. A broad outline is given below:

Expensewise Percentage
Equipment for below: 60%
Firearms – Small and Large
Transportation: Armored vehicles, Boats, Helicopters, aircrafts
Surveillance-Radars, Sonars, unmanned aircraft
Safety Equipment -Bullet proof vests
Intelligence gathering Equipments
Training: 20%
For welfare of police martyr families: 5%
Exceptional bravery awards: 3%
Discretion of the board (for other items related to related to policing): 12%
Exclusions: Luxury transportation such as expensive cars for senior officers, luxury aircraft.

Supervisory Board
Leaders and Percentage
Eminent industrialists, business leaders from the private industry: 30%
Security Specialists viz. Retired IPS, Retired Armed Force Officers, Retired Intelligence Officers: 30%
Specialist in strategic affairs: 20%
Politicians: Union Home Minister and A person appointed by Leader of opposition in the Parliament (Shadow home minister): 2 in number
Other eminent persons like scientists, academics and the like: Remaining percentage
Exclusions: All serving officers of the government, Retired civil officers like IAS, revenue service etc (Police Service and Intelligence service being the only exception)

This has been done in the past. Our IITs and IIMs are a result of such farsighted legislation which the Arjun Singhs of this world have not been able to destroy in spite of their best efforts. Hence I am confident this can be done. Let us put pressure on the central government to enact such legislation in the coming session of the parliament itself. Once this is passed, let us contribute whole heartedly to this fund to make it a grand success.
When the terrorist strikes again, let this be a battle by well armed men. Let not another constable be seen firing from a first world war vintage .303 to combat the next cowardly terrorist. A few of us will recall the fearlessness in the eyes of the young CRPF constables who defeated the nefarious designs of the terrorists during the parliament attack. Well armed and well trained, our brave men can show how the terrorists can be tamed.

Dr Chandrakant Patil's supreme sacrifice for flood victims

2008-10-01T18:32:00.003+05:30

Dr Chandrakant Patil was a young medical student at KEM college at Mumbai. He travelled all the way from Mumbai to the Kosi region of Bihar to serve the flood ravaged people. While serving the suffering humanity, he was struck by lightning and lost his life. Dr Patil comes from a rather humble background. His father is a mill worker and his mother is a house wife. His younger sister is a student. His family had great hopes from him as he was effectively the sole bread winner for them. http://www.patnadaily.com/news2008/sept/092208/doctor_killed_by_lightening.html
His supreme sacrifice is especially laudable since it has come at a time of increased regional chauvinism. It is like a balm to the divisiveness that we see all around us. We have been justifiably vocal in voicing our protest against the cancer of regional chauvinism. Now let us come forward to the aid of the family of a person who gave his life rising above such narrow sectarianism. It is through such gestures that we can combat the poison of divisiveness.We earnestly appeal to all of you to contribute generously. Guneshwar Anand (a guy known to me) has volunteered to collect the money on our behalf. You may send your contribution to the bank account of
Guneshwar Anand A/C No. 016501513442 ICICI Bank.
He will personally visit his family to hand over the money. Full details of this campaign can be seen at the blog
http://drchandrakantpatil.blogspot.com/

Cool Bihari: Bihari Talents shine again

2008-06-24T00:44:00.000+05:30

Cool Bihari: Bihari Talents shine again

Maharashtra not among top five destinations for Bihari migrants

2008-04-12T01:41:00.000+05:30

According to a recent survey by ODI, UK, Delhi is the top destination for the migrants for Biharis. In spite of having the financial capital of India, Mumbai, in its midst, Biharis do not find Maharashtra even among the top five destinations for migration. Punjab, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are the other destinations preferred by the Biharis.

What is noteworthy is that this survey pertains to 2005-06 and hence a period which precedes the recent anti Bihari tirade. Another study by TISS and IPSS had estimated the migrants from Bihar to Maharashtra to a puny 2.3% and 3.5% of the new migrants to Mumbai respectively.

All this makes one wonder what is all this fuss about Biharis swamping Mumbai and changing its culture. Are these just political gimmicks?

Rajdeep and Goa- lessons in media management

2008-03-22T11:27:00.002+05:30

Have a look at the blog of the great moralist Rajdeep Sardesai.

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/50559/goan-with-the-wind.html

The same Rajdeep Sardesai who does not hesitate to use terms like Biharisation to describe crime of any hue is disturbed that Goa's image is getting sullied due to Keeling murder.

It is a case of crime, of murder. If I am not mistaken, the primary duty of the state is to maintain law and order and prevent of crime. In Goa, most politicians, whether the CM or other ministers, have taken turn to publicly blame the parenting, family value and god knows what else for the crime. I have not heard even an opposition leader to point to the failure of the state to act in time. No one of any stature from the state government thought it fit to explain why the investigation was shoddy and why the accused was not arrested until the mother of the murdered made such a noise about the affair.

The great moralist Rajdeep does not see anything wrong in it. He is more worried about the image of his beloved state. I can only compare the news with the way the likes of Rajdeep react when a much smaller incident takes place in Bihar which they roundly condemn. Take the case of the minister of rural development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh. Reader's will recall his family was accused of employing children for ploughing the field with pictures showing what was clearly giving 'henga' or 'chowki' Or the case of Anant Singh, MLA, wrongly accused of murdering a muslim girl which DNA tests proved was totally false. Or the thrashing of the motorcycle thief which was relayed ad infinitum on TV.

What are these if not instances of double standard - of morality being made into a hand maiden of convenience?

As a Bihari, it is perhaps best to take this as a lesson in image management. It is also an opportunity to analyse how Bihar's image has been tarnished by the media to suit their end of selling their channels and earning their ad revenue.

Focus on the migrant issue of Bihar

2008-03-10T23:49:00.002+05:30

Nitin Chandra, a young film maker who is a native of Patna, is making a documentary on the on migration issue facing Bihar - agitation in Maharashtra as well as the lynching of Biharis by ULFA thugs in Assam. This is the link to the promo of the film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGV-2xmiD0k

An article on the issue was written by Bihar CM Nitish Kumar himself in the Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/282073.html

I thought very thoughtful and balanced thinking in an atmosphere supercharged by histrionics

Management Institute at Patna - A dream becomes reality

2008-03-10T12:14:00.000+05:30

Friends
A committed low profile state govt in India has been quietly working at improving the lot its people. The law and order is better, the roads are better and the primary health centers now have doctors and medicines which the people now find worth visiting. Last year's war with the floods (UN called it the worst in living memory) has been fought pretty well. Basic things like classes and examinations being held on time have been achieved.The state now moves to improve the educational infrastructure to the next level.
As part of this initiative, a management institute will start working at Patna this summer. Supported by the state govt, financially and much more crucially, with an emotional bonding now rarely seen between politicians and the people, it has behind it a vast body of experienced professionals, from Bihar and other places. Apart from teaching post graduate students, it will also have a research center for appropriate technology focussed on powerful ideas that can change the lives of the people.
The management institute, named Chandragupt Institute of Management, Patna (CIMP) has a constitution that will make it highly autonomous so that professionals running it can take it to the envisaged heights of excellence much like the Patna Science College and Netarhat Vidyalaya of yore. All the learnings of the past have been put into it to make it stoutly autonomous.The first director would be Prof V Mukundas, formerly of IIM A. A number of other faculty members, both serving and retired, as well as professionals from the industry, are working for it. The syllabus is largely drawn from those of IIMs and XLRI. The admission would be through combined admission test (CAT) of the IIMs.
Please do visit its website
www.cimp.in
Warm regards
Thakur Vikas Sinha

Attack On Bihar

2008-02-13T21:53:00.002+05:30

After recent attacks on biharis, uttarpradesh and north indians by goodns of Raj Thakrey there has been a sense of discomfort across India. Some of us are very upset and some want to revenge while most have offered to display Gandhigir. In this context our take is that we need not be aggressive but yes we must defend our brothers/sisters by all means. I would say that we should be "assertive". We should not be hesitant to celebrate our festivals like "chath" at all. At the same time we should make all efforts to mix up / assimilate local culture and festivals as well. Guess most progressive people and we biharis do as well,

As far as, Raj Thakrey and goons are concerned, they are best ignored and "defended against". This whole series of incidents against biharis is giving rise to emergence of bihari subnationalism. Which is much needed. However do not expect most of the well educated and well placed Biharis to speak-up or stand-up and be counted.

Most of them will just prefer to watch silently over TV or read newspapers and analyse for few weeks and then move on to their routine life. Some of the political kind will try to get some mileage out of it (this side or that side but their end goal is to benefit) . Those whose bread and butter is affected or those whose life and honor is being threatened will either react in self-defence or migrate to safer places. However some, especially the young students will see this as a wake-up call and they will react by their heart. We need to make sure that the reaction is on right track. We don't resort to the level of "goondas" on road. We must prepare to defend and support our people and at the same time, wake-up to the reality that there is no place like home. We must try to give our best to our current place (Maharashtra or Delhi or US) but at the same time should also retain our connections with the homeland and continue to give back to our parent society(bihar, jharkhand or india).

For almost 2 months i have been hopping from city to city (Patna, Munger, Rajgir, Nalanda, Tilaiya, Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Delhi). If the socio-economic-political trends as observed by a non-expert are to go by then we are already on the path of socio-economic renaissiance. The dark days are over. Bihar is going through a churn and transformation that will really shake up the world. In the few weeks that I was in Patna, there were some or other othe trade-expo, seminar, socio-economic event going on. Patna's calendar was very busy and so was rest of bihar. National/International level sports events and positive events going on.

We truly are living in very very interesting times and the outlook is very positive. These attacks on Biharis are sad but hopefully yet another incident reflecting the "awakening" of bihari subnationalism. As long as we were willing to build the roads, work as maids and servants or IT/Management Coolies then the local "netas" were okay with us. However as soon as we started displaying some solidarity and display of our cultural heritage then the world has problems. Very soon the IT and Management "coolies" amongst us will also start showing their Bihari Identity without any disrespect for the local identity, the world will start respecting us. The display of strength of IMA (Indian Medical Association) was one good example. Many more such "skirmishes" will take place but in the end, we will emerge stronger.

Bihar is the most promising market for talent, mobile, pharma, tourism, agribusiness, innovation and many other industries. Smart money of Sunil Mittal, Ambani, Tata, Mahindra and others are already benefiting from the "market". Bihar-jharkhand is world's fastest growing mobile market, but soon they will start jumping in many other sectors as well

To sum it up,
a) Let us remain assertive and not be aggressive. Losers like Thakrey will lose steam soon.
b) Let us see the big picture and remain focussed on rebuilding Bihar2.0 and giving our best to India and world
c) Bihar is an opportunity for the smart brains to see and insecure societies/people to feel threatened
d) Let us remain connected to our roots
e) In whichever society we go we need to have strong local networks so that we remain safe

Scientific Foresight 2007

2007-11-09T18:58:00.000+05:30

Happy Deepawali and Chath to all of us

We are in the middle of finalizing sponsors,speakers for Scientific Foresight 2007 . This event that will be used to showcase to the world that Bihar is not just India's Spiritual Capital. We are not just the heart, mind & soul of India etc. That we are not just the UMBILICAL CHORD of HUMAN CIVILIZATION as well from where ZERO, Yoga, Kamasutra were born as well. We are poised to reclaim our space as the fountainhead of World's Science & Technology as well (thanks Mayank for Umbilical Chord metaphor)

This event on the south of River " Ganga" from Dec22-Dec24 in ancient India's Capital (Patliputra) will have an Audience of 3000+ bright students, 200+ Professors and professionals Globally. It is happening in that much forgotten city of India where the next eBay or Skype or Google or Facebook or Cisco or Salesforce.com or Collectivex WILL emerge within few years. Hate to say after the fact afte the event , "I told you so" .. so come join now or lose out on this opportunity.

Yes, you can also also celebrate X'mas after the event. However advisable to attend this event if you wanna be better informed about "creation", "life", "evolution" or more mundane things like future of "Nanotech","Biotech","Artificial Intelligence","Neural Networks","Open Source","Robotics","Genomics" etc etc

Also great opportunity to network,recruit,market and then celebrate Christmas after the event

If any of you want to be part of the organizing team then can join our SciFore 07 Intranet . We will also try to arrange a trip to world heritage sites like Patna Sahib, Bodh Gaya, Nalanda. Critics, Ideas, Comments, Suggestion, Proposal to help welcome . We can design something around your specific needs.

Best way to reach us would be via mail or skype or gtalk ( atultech ) or people marked in 'cc'

Don't wait. Act NOW or you will miss the event of the year as we plan to close International sponsorships, speaker slots etc within 2 weeks. After we will only try to focus on domestic participants and then only local participants who will get a very very special discounted rate.

We are also looking to partner with philanthropic trusts who want to leverage this occasion to spread their cause.

Some attendees
APJ Kalam might be chief guest
Liz Ryan from Business Week is coming
Marc Benioff of Salesforce
Mehmood Khan, Global Leader of Innovation for Unilever
Ron Somers of US India Business Council

We are trying to avoid politicians/filmstars since some of them distract a lot. However we are open to extending invitation to select names as "audience" if they promise not to come on stage or not use the mike except asking questions

International Media Coverage likely so far
Business Week, WSJ,Economist,FT.com
EBC Radio, BBC

Likely Corporate Sponsors or Participants
Google, GE,Genpact, DRL, Bristol Meyers, Ranbaxy, Alchem, Hutch, Tata, Jet, Kingfisher,Air India, SBI We haven't approached Cisco, Microsoft ,TCS, Infosys etc yet

Mehmood, Liz, Ron, Marc: forgive my taking your names without seeking formal permission
President Kalam : You are still the president of our hearts so have to accept this challenge of "inspiring 3000 young students"

Cheers
Atul Kumar
Sponsorship,Media & PR
Scientific Foresight
+1 203 987 4452 USA
+44 20 8144 5289 UK
Tri-state(NY/NJ,CT), USA
http://atultech.blogspot.com
Can Do, Will Do, Right Here Right NOW !

The glue of culture

2007-11-01T23:22:00.000+05:30

Culture is such a powerful and beautiful thing - it binds where there is nothing else to bind. How else can you explain the closeness one feels when one goes to an island in Africa from Bihar and feels that one has come home. Neither is the terrain similar, nor are the people related to you or are your old friends. Yet they feel like your own, someone calls you beta and your spouse beti - they open their home to you as if you are their long lost brother.

I am really thankful to Santosh for having shared the beautiful vacation at Mauritius where indentured labourers were taken from Bihar more than a hundred years ago. Amazing how they have preserved their culture and how they give you a welcome.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this blogpost.

Personal Manifesto

2007-10-25T22:13:00.001+05:30

This is a personal manifesto have prepared to share with friends, well wishers and skeptics. Will appreciate comments, errors and sources which need to be referred

read more | digg story

Scientific Foresight at SK Memorial, Gandi Maidan, Patna

2007-10-21T01:49:00.001+05:30

This TECH FEST is aimed to provide an opportunity to explore the hidden aptitude of the budding engineers & scientists. Participating students will be able to develop their interests and awareness about the contemporary industrial and research trends in science and technology. They will be able to make them up to date their technical knowhow

read more | digg story

Ad for Student Volunteer for Mission Possible

2007-10-20T22:43:00.001+05:30

Some mavericks at work are trying to execute some very very ambitious projects but plan on using Open Source 2.0 / Wikinomics 2.0 model of setting up a non-profit or profit org at lightspeed with no overheads. If you wanna join please ping us or refer to friends ...Projects areBihar Society (WIP)IIM Society (WIP)India Society (long term)

read more | digg story

Letter to Members of Parliament in India

2007-10-20T22:19:00.001+05:30

Bihar has got a very very "unfair" share from Govt of India in terms of investment for infrastructure, both hard & soft.Hard Infrastructure like : Energy, Water, RoadsSoft Infrastructure like : Education, Museums. Archeology, Art, Schools, Higher Educationtime to correct it and need to correct it very very fast if the raw energy locked in Bihar is to be tapped and unleased. Till we do that some of the anger will keep getting expressed in not so pleasant or productive ways

read more | digg story

No offence meant

2007-10-07T22:03:00.000+05:30

It is a tradition of some "intellectuals" Indians to make the most offensive comment, but add a wry ' no offence meant' and they expect to be absolved of any responsibility of hurting you. To me, it is worse than just making the offensive comment. The guy is aware of the offence his comment would cause, and yet chooses to make it. Latest in this tradition of obnoxious behaviour is this article in Churimuri, a so called forum of Kannadiga intellectuals.

Karnataka is going through nasty political turmoil. The only guy to hold the position of PM from that state has shown his lack of character by not honoring the public commitment of handing over power to the BJP. Any self respecting community would feel ashamed by it. But what do they do? Drag Bihar into it.

Bereft of self confidence, these are basically bullies who have to pull down something to hide their own inadequacies.

It is not the first time that people from Karnataka have shown their abhorrent attitude towards Bihar. MV Kamath, a journalist from there, had written an essay in The Illustrated Weekly of India saying Biharis are not fit to rule Bihar. He had thereby shown his anti democratic and racist character, besides showing his deep antipathy to Bihar. It is to the perpetual discredit of Karnataka people that this abominable character is hailed as a great intellectual of that land.

PS Appu, an IAS officer from Karnataka was the director of LBS academy at Mussorie when he chose to cut short the career of a young probationer from Bihar on allegations of misbehaviour. When the Deptt of Personnel insisted on an inquiry before initiating action, Appu publicly threatened to resign saying this is interference in his work. Newspapers of the day had a field day alleging Biharis are weak in character and hailing Appu as a shining example of integrity. The probationer was sacked summarily without any inquiry. Later, Supreme Court struck down the ruling of Appu and reinstated him into his job.

To the best of my knowledge, Appu never apologised for his hasty decision. Neither the newspapers ever apologised for their biased reporting or even gave prominence to the reinstatement news. Public perception continues to be of a wayward probationer from Bihar rather than the anti Bihari bias of an arrogant bureaucrat.

Last year, when Pratham did a survey of school kids in the various states of India, it was found that Bihar was way ahead of other states. Karnataka was one of the laggards. "Intellectuals" of Churimuri commented as if it is the divine right of the Karnataka kids to do better than Bihar. I had requested them to refrain from such thinking. It appears my words have fallen on deaf ears. These racists are bent on using Bihar to manage their inferiority.

What a shame that I have to share my nationality with these obnoxious characters.

Typical Elite Delhi Kid's view on Bihar

2007-09-30T09:12:00.000+05:30

We often hear of many Indias within India. It is mainly used to differentiate between the rich India and the poor India. Sometimes, we also hear of the divide of the Vindhyas - the north and the south. That a chasm exists within North India itself is seldom visible to an outsider. But exist it does. Actually, it exists to a level that its ferocity would take anyone off guard.I

In this blog, the kid wishes to exhibit his sense of humour. And what does he do? He repudiates Bihar as nobody's business. It should come to nobody as a surprise if it is fouund that he has probably never set his foot in Bihar. He must have met a few labourers from Bihar, for Delhi cant move without the contribution of the hard working Bihari. He would probably have met a few Biharis who are toppers at DU / JNU / IIT or wherever this kid has studied from. But then in the society of these elites, Bihar has to perform a function, namely, to satisfy their sense of superiority by perpetually being worse than his society, and believe me, a place can only be worse than hell if it has to be worse than their society.So those toppers or for that matter any other Bihari who exhibits any agreeable trait does not register as a Bihari. Abominably, these chaps do not even hesistate to say on the face of a Bihari that he does not seem to be a Bihari if they wish to honour him. And they mean it as a compliment, not sarcasm!!!What does one say of this culture? What is the future going to hold for a Bihari kid in days to come if such arrogance is tolerated anymore?Indeed there is an all round lowering of standards, specially in Delhi of today. But Biharis have to survive, actually not just survive but flourish and thrive. So whatever be the depth to which the standard sinks, one will have to look after one's own interest in this big bad world.Has the time come for we Biharis to develop our own militant sub nationalism which gives these chaps back as hard as it gets?

Emerrging from the shadow

2007-09-25T13:07:00.000+05:30

It has been fashionable to blame Bihar for anything that goes wrong for the last two decades at least. Wherever the fault may be, the blame is always put on Bihar. When I first heard about a decade back that BHEL has been less than honest in its supplies to the Kanti thermal, near Muzaffarpur, I also had felt that some guy at Bihar SEB was trying to externalise the problem. However, when one of the engineers explained to me the details - how components rejected at other projects have been supplied, how there is no seriousness in the project plan, I could sense something amiss.

Now comes the story of the ineptitude of BHEL and NTPC in Bihar. They have not been able to keep any of the commitment they made to Bihar Govt. For a change, one finds Bihar Govt doing a proper appraisal and putting the blame where it is rather than follow the tradition of blaming the hapless BSEB. In fact, the power minister of Bihar was so miffed that he wishes to discuss the option of scrapping the contract with BHEL and NTPC with the central power minister.

Such confidence should do a lot of good to the governance in Bihar.

Smart Brains, Smart Money and Bihar

2007-09-12T16:21:00.000+05:30

I was commenting on a blog by Ranjan Rituraj, and couldn't resist pasting my comments here.

As usual very good "local contextual" knowledge and understanding from Ranjan. He makes a good case for why NRB (Non Resident Biharis) need to start coming up with micro investment projects in Bihar and we need not wait for the large corporate houses. They will take time and don't have the agility and speed of individual micro-investments.

My comments there:
And yes very good ideas. NRBs will have to come first and show some initiative. Just sending Money Order is not enough. Coming back with expertise,ideas,investments (micro is better than mega projects),networks etc are very important. Once Bihar reaches the "tipping point" then smart money will follow and that need not be Bihari. Even the big Private Equity, Venture Capital guys will come for sure. Industriats will also come.

Though smart money will take time since this lack of "contextual" and "local knowledge","local networks", "risk appetite" will be a hindrance

However smart brains will not wait that long. The APJ Kalam and likes will see the "historic opportunity" and surely "RUSH" to bihar.

What about you ?
YOU - I mean, you, who is reading this blog and comment.

Are you smart enough ?

If yes then do you have the "local networks","knowledge" etc. then forget the Silicon Valey or Wall Street or India-China opportunity. Here is an opportunity of lifetime.

Go grab it my friend. Need advice or have concerns then talk to Ranjan. He might help. Else drop a word on this blog. Someone here can help. Else drop a visit to Bihar Govt. At site you might find good links. But take some action, don't click out and resume your web-surfing.

ऐसा मौका जिन्दगी में बार बार नहीं आता है मेरे दोस्त ! अगर आप आईटी बूमं मिस कर गए और फिर ब्पो बूम भी और डॉट कॉम और फिर इन्दुस्त्रिअल बूम भी। गूर्गाओं और बैंगलोर और हैदराबाद बूम भी तब ये एक और मौका है

A very humane Chief Minister

2007-09-10T18:18:00.000+05:30

Politicians in India have come to acquire a rather nasty image. In such a scenario, images of the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar come out strikingly different.

Soon after his coming to power, the Patna West MLA and a close friend of Nitish Kumar, Naveen Kumar Sinha passed away. The pictures taken at the time showed a tearful Nitish as he attended his creamation. Nitish lost his wife a couple of months back due to pneumonia complications. People saw a grieving CM captured weeping inconsolably on TV as he took her for her last rites. Just a couple of days back, there was the sudden death of the Bihar Education Secretary on whom Nitish was relying very heavily to bring in reforms in the education system. Picutres of Nitish were published with visibly moist eyes as he went to pay his last respects.

Conditioned as we are by the culture of the modern Indian metros (and away from the rural culture of India), we may find such public display of emotion rather odd. The western culture even considers tears in the eyes of an adult male as a sign of wekaness. However, expression of such genuine human emotions can only come from a man deeply imbued in humanism. Only a person who is confident will not feel shy to show his emotions even under the glare of media. It feels great that even today, such a humanist is able to hold his own in rough and tumble of Indian politics. This certianly fills me with a lot of hope and optimism.

Gauravshali Bihar e-book version

2007-09-09T19:57:00.000+05:30

Bihar is renowned for its great historical legacy and rich cultural heritage. This great land of Ashoka and Buddha has been the motherland of some great legends of human civilization. To recognize these great legends and pay a small tribute to our motherland we came out with a book titled “Gauravshali Bihar” last year .You can read about the launch of this book here.

One Bihar team has decided to make this book free for circulation and now the book is available for free circulation in the e-book version. Please click here to download the free to circulate version. Do pass it to your friends and colleagues who are interested in reading about the legends of this great land which is know as the soul of India.

We will also be publishing the English version of this book shortly and it will be available for sale in the next few months. Thanks for reading and don't forget to give your valuable feedback and suggestion.

Days of one sided Bihar coverge is over

2007-08-28T22:48:00.000+05:30

This had to happen. I am so glad it has finally happened. The realization that there is more to the barrage of negative news emanating from Bihar than a desire to expose wrong doings. Or even a neutral desire to report the happenings. Such news, inevitably accompanied by commentary like "the most lawless state", "the state where civilization has ended", "where the state has withered away", are an attempt to sully our image. It is meant to take away our self confidence so that we dare not ask for what is rightfully ours.

If a rape took place in Delhi, a snide link was created with Bihar. If there was a bomb blast in Mumbai, there were allusions to Bihar. The one that I found the most hilarious in this ever growing and long list was one linking Bihar to Katara and his human trafficking business.

We Biharis, having been brought up in a culture nurtured by nationalists like Dr Rajendra Prasad, Sri Krishna Singh, Anugrah Babu and JP, had a misplaced faith in the impartiality of national institutions like the national press, the national planning commission and so on. This misplaced faith was so deeply ingrained that we always justified their sins of commissions and omissions. When Indian Express exposed the Bhagalpur blindings, we genuinely felt that it is an attempt to improve the Bihari society, not to denigrate it. When MV Kamath wrote in the Illustrated Weekly of India that Biharis are not fit to rule Bihar, we somehow convinced ourselves that it is genuine criticism. When hare brained schemes like freight equalization scheme were introduced, we bore its brunt for the national cause. When NHAI drew up the alignment of the Golden Quadrilateral or the East West corridor through Bihar (and Jharkhand) bypassing our population centers, we never complained. When the Central Water Commission gave us its misplaced embankments for flood control, we did not find anything amiss. And the flood prone area of Bihar increased from 2.5 M hectares to 7 M hectares. And this went on for sixty years!!

With increased exposure to the world, there is now a realization that there is no benign external agency that will look after our needs. WE have to fight our own battle. And this realization is now finding expression in various forms. Here are two samples. Mayank Rasu gives expression to his angst in Musings of a Bihari. And Sunny writes a satirical piece in a similar vein.

People are even questioning the alacrity with which the media highlighted the Nathnagar case. What were TV cameramen doing in this remote town? How could they film the sad incident and telecast it immediately? Did they try to intervene or were they also part of the mob? These are questions being asked by Mr Indra Sharma.

The new found confidence of Bihari has resulted in a sea change in attitude and he is not willing to take things lying down. He is in a mood to question Shivraj Patil why he is so slothful in giving security to the poor Bihari in Assam. He wants to know from Chidambaram what happened to his solemn promise in the parliament that Bihar would be given a special financial package? He wishes to question Saifuddin Soz what is Central Water Commission doing to reduce the flood menace. And if they fail, Bihari is in a mood to take them to task and ensure that his genuine interests are not compromised.

Conspicuous by its absence

2007-08-24T16:18:00.000+05:30

Many many years ago, while being taught English at my school at Patna, I recall being taught the expression "conspicuous by its absence". The expression greatly appealed to my adolescent mind - the apparent contradiction of being absent and yet conspicuous. If one thing deserves to be described as such, it is the coverage of the recent floods in the Indian Mainstream media (MSM). Prof Madhukar Shukla of XLRI Jamshedpur brought this to my notice.

BBC ran a story for several weeks giving us details of the floods which has affected several states of India, besides Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The poignant “Aid Worker Dairy” is there on the web for all to read. The UN called it the worst floods in living memory. From NY Times to several other prestigious global newspapers and media, there has been fairly comprehensive coverage of this humungous human tragedy. The Japanese PM during his visit to Delhi delivered a speech in the Indian parliament. His speech started with a tribute to those who had lost their life in the floods in Bihar.

Contrast this with the almost total absence of the coverage in the Indian MSM. Take any national media - TV, newspaper or magazines, either of English or Hindi. You would hardly find any reference to it. The only exceptions were when Lalu criticized Nitish for being in Mauritius later followed by criticism of Lalu for his helicopter fiasco - in short when there was a stick to beat Bihar and Biharis.

There is hardly any reference to the repeated release of water from the dams of Nepal. There is no reporting of the misery of the poor stranded on the highways. There is no reporting of the Rs 1500 crore allotted by the state Government for the cause of flood relief. There is no recognition of the tireless effort of dedicated officers like Ratn Sanjay and Sudhanshu Kumar who have been working for the welfare of the flood victims without a break. Alas, there is no concern for the imminent outbreak of water borne disease once the water starts to recede.

Agencies like OXFAM and Aid India are doing commendable work on the ground. Multinationals like GE have contributed water treatment plants for the flood affected. Punjab Government is sending fodder for the cattle of flood affected Bihar. Experts like Dinesh Mishra and Eklayva Prasad are advocating their alternatives for water management. As Dinesh Mishra says, the flood prone area of Bihar has increased from 2 M hectares in 1955 when the embankments were started to be built to 7 M when we have several thousand kilometers of them in Bihar. But I have not yet heard of a debate on the abject failure of the Nehruvian temples of modern India in the “conscientious” and free Indian MSM.

A few months ago, some people were discussing the lack of developmental benefits reaching the poorer sections of the society. In this context, someone asked "Does Bihar Matter?" As a take on that, I was tempted to put the headline of this post as "Does India Matter?" After all, there is more international concern for the floods in Bihar than in the Indian MSM. But then I checked myself, for India does matter – may not be to the Indian MSM or the insular civil society in the metros, but to the mainstream Indian population. It does matter to Bihar, the Heart of India, appropriately placed a little to the left of centre in the upper part of its map.

In a documentary prepared by Mr Dinesh Mishra’s team on the floods of Bihar, there is a scene where India’s Independence Day is being celebrated in a village affected by the floods. The village headman unfurls the flag on a bamboo post to the singing of the national anthem followed by cries of Bharat Mata Ki Jai (Long Live Mother India) by semi clad children of the village. India might have given up on Bihar, but Bihar has not given up on India – it never will.

Bihar – the Heart of India, is also the name of a book by Sir John Houlton published in 1949). To be fair, sensitive Indians are very concerned about the floods

Seeking Support for Flood Relief in Bihar

2007-08-11T16:41:00.000+05:30

Bihar has seen one of the worst floods in recent times and we are working towards getting some medicines,funds,cloths and any other help for the flood relief work in Bihar. I am presently working with a team which is providing direct help to people who have been affected by the floods in Bihar and also coordinating with people from other organizations in getting whatever possible help we can. Some of the organizations have agreed to provide medicine, machine for clean water and even basic relief material like plastic sheets.

Unfortunately the magnitude of disaster and loss of life has not been widely covered by popular media so we are finding it difficult to drum support for this cause. Our effort intends to provide direct relief to people in need and we are soliciting help from all quarters, especially Biharis who can make some contribution for this cause.

Our team members from the One Bihar Team are diligently working 24*7 for this operation and we desperately need some help from every quarter.Do let me know if your organization or you as an individual would like to contribute for this humanitarian cause. Please let me know in case you are willing to support us in whatever way you can. We are also seeking contributions through Prayaas please come forward and lend your support.

Floods in Bihar - Relief is urgently needed

2007-08-07T20:15:00.000+05:30

This year's floods in Bihar have been unprecedented. Press reports are calling it the worst floods in the last thirty years. Districts after districts in North Bihar are under deep flood water which are not yet showing signs of receding. Crops, villages, roads and railways have got washed away.

The governments: at the state and at the centre - appear barely affected by the human misery and tragedy. The people are unconcerned. The press, and I mean the national Indian Press, is not bothered. I saw not a column in HT, TOI or ET of Mumbai today. Funny I have to depend on BBC World Service to get an authentic account of the floods!

The simple fact is that close to one crore people (ten million people) have had to leave their homes and taken shelter in the open on comparatively higher structures - raised roads, railway line or roofs of houses.

Some of our friends got in touch with relief agencies and found that safe drinking water, clothes and temporary shelter are the most urgent need of the hour. Safe drinking water seems to be the most important and also perhaps the easier to tackle.

The best way to provide safe drinking water is through use of chlorine tablets. A good quality chlorine tablet can render 20 litres of water safe for drinking - enough for one family for a day. One lakh tablets of Chlorine from a good Indian manufacturer can be bought for thirty thousand rupees. Or one million tablets for three hundred thousand rupees. In other words, the cost of safe potable water for one family for one month is Rs 10 or 25 US cents.

Some of us are thinking of adopting a cluster of villages, what is called a block or prakhand in local parlance and try to ensure safe drinking to all the residents of that block for one month. At this stage, it is a just a thought. Let us see how this germinates.

Thanks

The story of biased high offices

2007-07-18T14:29:00.000+05:30

In the high court of Andhra Pradesh, a case was brought up alleging malpractice in re evaluation of MBBS papers conducted by NTR Medical University, Vijayawada. The case was taken up by a bench consisting of the Chief Justice G S Singhvi and Justice C V Nagarjuna Reddy. Then why are we discussing this case in a site related to Bihar?

Well, this is because the hounourable judges have chosen to link it to Bihar. I went through the entire news item word by word thinking maybe the scamsters are from Bihar, for the last I heard, Vijayawada was not in Bihar.; nor does NTR Medical Univeristy have a branch or medical college in Bihar. Then why have they linked it to Bihar?

What I could make out is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing to link the case to Bihar or Biharis, except presumably the bias of the honourable judges. I shudder to think what would happen to a Bihari whose case is brought up in the court of these judges. Can they hope of unbiased hearing?

When it is the honour of the judges, we have the contempt of court proceedings; then what is the recourse to the eight crore people of a state whose name is dragged into a scam which has nothing to do with them? Do we as Biharis have no honour? Can public servants whose salaries and pensions are paid by the public exchequer make such statements and get away with it? It was not too long ago that Mr Prakash Singh, an apparently well educated person who has held high positions such as DGP Uttar Pradesh, had pointed his finger towards Bihar when asked questions about the law and order of UP in a CNNIBN programme. So it is not a one time issue. The bias runs deep and wide.

Can we petition the Govt of India to have bias correction training for such people? Can there be exemplary punishment for them? At the very least, can they be made to apologise?

Or shall we, the natives of Bihar, continue to suffer the ignominy and the bias of public servants occupying high offices?

Unsung Heroes of Bihar-Baba Nagarjuna

2007-07-15T23:09:00.001+05:30

जी हाँ, लिख रहा हूँ ...बहुत कुछ ! बहोत बहोत !!

ढ़ेर ढ़ेर सा लिख रहा हूँ !मगर , आप उसे पढ़ नहीं

पाओगे ... देख नहीं सकोगे,उसे आप !

दरअसल बात यह है कि इन दिनों अपनी लिखावट

आप भी मैं कहॉ पढ़ पाता हूँ नियोन-राड पर उभरती पंक्तियों की

तरह वो अगले कि क्षण गुम हो जाती हैं

चेतना के 'की-बोर्ड' पर वो बसदो-चार सेकेंड तक ही टिकती है ....

कभी-कभार ही अपनी इस लिखावट को कागज़ पर नोट कर पता हूँ

स्पन्दनशील संवेदन की क्षण-भंगुर लड़ियाँ

सहेजकर उन्हें और तक पहुँचाना !

बाप रे , कितना मुश्किल है !

आप तो 'फोर-फिगर' मासिक -वेतन वाले उच्च-अधिकारी ठहरे,

मन-ही-मन तो हसोंगे ही,की भला यह भी कोईकाम हुआ , की अनाप-शनाप ख़यालों की

महीन लफ्फाजी ही करता चले कोई - यह भी कोई काम हुआ भला !

These words were penned by legendary poet of people “Baba Nagarjuna”.Born on 30th June 1911 as Vaidya Nath Mishra in the village Satlakha, his mother’s village,he was fondly called baba by his followers.Baba was known for his revolutionary ideas and unconventional lifestyle. His writings inspired generations and he was known for his candid and anti –establishment views.

Born in a lower middle class Brahmin family of Tarauni village in Darbhanga district of Bihar, Nagarjun lost his mother when he was barely three years old. His father lived as a vagabond and hedonist. So as a child Nagarjun had to depend upon compassionate relatives and some generous landlords for financial assistance for his education. He showed excellence in the learning of the ancient Indian languages like Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit first at the rural centres and later in the cities of Varanasi and Calcutta where, alongside his higher studies he also worked for his livelihood. Though, Nagarjun's academic expenses could be met by the scholarships which he won as a bright student, he always bore the fact on his mind that he had also to support his father who could barely earn any money by himself.

After the years of learning and semi-employment in Calcutta, Nagarjun moved to Saharanpur (U.P.) where he got a full time teaching job. Apparently Nagarjun had moved to a better paying job but in fact his unsatiable urge to delve deep and yet deeper into the traditional wisdom of India particularly the Sanskrit treatises and philosophical discourses, Buddhist scriptures and handwritten manuscripts of sorts put him on the path of an unstable nomadic existence.

This pursuit took him to Sri Lanka where in the Buddhist monastery of Kelania he had to adopt Buddhism in order to have free access to the well guarded manuscripts which were inaccessible to the outside world. (This had a precedent. Nagarjun's mentor Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan had to pass through the same experience). It was in 1935 that Nagarjun became a Buddhist monk. As an imperative he had to change his name.

That is when he started his literary career with Maithili poems by the pen-name of Yatri in early 1930s. By mid 1930s, he started writing poetry in Hindi. This is when he adopted the name Nagarjun. A wanderer by nature, Nagarjun spent a considerable amount of his time in the 30s and the 40s traveling across India. He was influenced by Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati.

He also participated in many mass-awakening movements before and after independence. Between 1939 and 1942, He was jailed by the British courts for leading a farmer's agitation in Bihar. For a long time after independence he was involved with journalism. He played an active role in Jaya Prakash Narayan's movement prior to emergency, and therefore was jailed during the period of emergency. He was strongly influence by Leninist-Marxist ideology. This was one of the reasons that he never found patronage from the mainstream political establishments. Coupled with this, his own vagabond way of life, became the cause of his extreme poverty. He spent his last days in illness and poverty in the poor localities of Delhi and Darbhanga. He died in 1998 at the age of 87 in Darbhanga.

Baba’s style of writing had tinge of social and political satire and also protested againt the poltical regime of the times. He wrote on wide range of issues and was loved by all for his hard hitting and incisive views.

The subjects of his poetry are varied. Effects of both his wandering tendencies and activism, is evident in his middle and later works. His famous poems like Badal ko Ghirate Dekha hai , is a travelogue in its own right. He often wrote on contemporary social and political issues. His famous poem Mantra Kavita), is widely considered the most accurate reflection of a whole generation's mindset in India. Another such poem is Aao Rani Ham Dhoenge Palaki, which sarcastically humiliates the then prime minister of India, Pt. Nehru, for the extravagant welcome thrown by him for Queen Elizabeth.

Besides these accepted subjects of poetry, Nagarjun found poetic beauty in unconventional subjects. One of his most astonishing works is a poem based on a female pig called paine daanto wali. Another such creation is a series of poems on a full-grown jack fruit .

Because of the breadth of his poetry, Nagarjun is considered the only Hindi poet, after Tulsidas, to have an audience ranging from the rural sections of society to the elite. He effectively freed poetry from the bounds of elitism. was given the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1969 for his historic book Patarheen Nagna Gachh. He was also honored by the Sahitya Akademi by appointing him its fellow in 1994.

A Socialist to the core of his heart, it was probably only Nagarjuna, after Munshi Prem Chand, who strongly advocated the cause of the downtrodden and the exploited. He wrote extensively about the rotten social system which, according to him, was being used to exploit the peasantry.

Nagarjuna was basically anti-establishment, because he was not compromising by nature. This is why he even rejected the offer of nomination to the Rajya Sabha and thrice to the Bihar Vidhan Parishad.Unfortuanlety on 5th Nov 1998 Baba breathed his last in the Khwaja Sarai locality of Darbhanga town in Bihar in the small house of his eldest son, Shobha Kant. About a month before his death, his daughter-in-law made a sentimental appeal to all Hindi lovers to come forward and provide financial help to the seriously ill poet. Her appeal fell on deaf years.

His famous protest poetry Om recently featured in Sanjay Jha’s movie Strings bound by faith and thanks to this effort of Sanjay the new generation is discovering the magic of Baba’s writing.

Cool Bihari would like to remember the great soul who enlightened the heart and minds of many but the sad truth is that he died in penury. Its an unfortunate truth that our the great legend had to bid goodbye to this world in great hardships.His writings will surely inspire generations to come and will always be remembered for his great work of Hindi literature.

Indian MSM - the attack on Bihar continues

2007-07-14T19:40:00.000+05:30

Please have a look at this article. The provocative headline besmirches the name of Bihar claiming the accused who allegedly outraged the modesty of a woman, the Railway protection force DIG PJ Rawal, to be a Bihar DIG.

Now what is the connection of the accused with Bihar? Is he a native of Bihar? Does he work for the Govt of Bihar? Is he a resident of Bihar? Well, the answer to all the three questions is NO. Then pray, how does he become Bihar DIG?

The simple answer is that the Indian MSM (Main stream media) revels in throwing dirt on the fair name of Bihar. The OBB (Oye Bihari Brigade) member who has written this article earns his bread and butter by demonising Bihar. He is fully conscious of the rewards that await him if he does that efficiently. So he takes care not to mention that the Bihar Government has extended all support to the complainants, without dramatizing the issue. Alas, he does not even mention that the Delhi Headquartered Railways have openly tried to cause miscarriage of justice by exonerating the accused even before the inquiry was conducted.

I donot remember who said Poverty is a Sin. But even he would not have conceptualized this dimension of his statement when he said that!!

BBC Shows the way, will Indian MSM follow?

2007-07-09T13:49:00.000+05:30

This news item by BBC deserves special mention. It is not the body of the news, some of which is old. The real news is that good news from Bihar is now getting the attention.

For example, the municipal taxation system was introduced almost five years back and led to a vast improvement in tax collection by Patna Municipal Corporation. Later, it was adopted by ohter municipal bodies as well. However, it was never considered worthy of widely publicity by the "national" newspapers. The SAP has been in existence for more than a year now and has achieved great results. However, all our "national" newspapers could report is a upward treand in the crime graph. No thought was spared for the fact that police has been made much more approachable and people feel more confident to appraoch the police to report the crime. Also, there is visible action by the police once a crime is reported. The prosecution figures which have vastly improved tell their own story of the massive imrovement due to diligent crime investigation.

Now that BBC itself has reported these good news from Bihar, one can expect the English newspapers of India to follow the lead since past data supports their copycat tendencies.

What the World thinks of Nalanda Univ revival

2007-06-29T23:30:00.000+05:30

Pls have a look at the New York Times op ed page article

I could not but help notice the sharp contrast between the article in TOI with its propagation of regional chauvinism of a very low order vs the very enlightened view expressed in the NYT post.

I would like to quote

"But Nalanda represents much of what Asia could use today — a great global university that reaches deep into the region’s underlying cultural heritage, restores many of the peaceful links among peoples and cultures that once existed, and gives Asia the kind of soft power of influence and attraction that it doesn’t have now. The West has a long tradition of rediscovering its ancient Greek and Roman roots, and is much stronger for that. Asia could and should do the same, using the Nalanda project as a springboard but creating a modern, future-oriented context for a new university.....

The problem is that the key Asian officials are not thinking big enough. There is more talk about making Nalanda a cultural site or a center for philosophy than a first-rate modern university. The financial figures being thrown around are a fraction of the endowments of Harvard, Yale or Columbia today. A bolder vision is in order.....

But the bigger issue is imagination and willpower. It is not clear that the Asian nations are prepared to unite behind anything concrete except trade agreements,.......... "

Hope we also learn to think BIG and think VISION than mire ourselves in a quagmire.

Thanks

Revival of Nalanda and real politics

2007-06-23T15:55:00.000+05:30

The idea was first propounded by President Kalam and enthusiastically sought to be implemented by the Govt of Bihar. In a remarkable show of pan global view, the Dy CM of Bihar announced the name of Prof Amartya Sen as Chairman of the proposed Nalanda University.

But what do we see? Pranab Mukherjee is trying to monopolise the idea as a diplomatic masterstroke to fight Chinese hegemony in south east asia and the our easterly neighbours still thinking of creation of Bihar in 1913 as a insult to them (thank god it is a miniscule minority now) are pushing their narrow regional agenda.

Read this article in the TOI :

An ancient institution to be re-built with the help of several nations including China is first sought to be reduced to a tool of real politik in the hands of Pranab Mukherjee and then Shilbhadra is projected as a Bengali!! Did Bengal or Bengali language even exist in the seventh century? Maithil Kokil Vidyapati is seen by some linguists as the first poet of Bengali language and he was born much later!

There is not even a mention of the 500 acres of land that the govt of Bihar is acquiring for the university. Why dont we leave at least a few things alone for overall betterment than put real politics into everything?

End of a dream

2007-06-04T13:45:00.000+05:30

The passion driven idealism of a Mathematics genius and a police officer which got 122 students out of 150 from the poorer sections of the society coached by them successful in the highly competitive IIT over five years has come to an abrupt end. The commerical coaching institutes poached their students by offering them the lure of the lucre and claimed them as their own. Thus an experiment which could have been a template of empowering the un empowered has ended.

It is a very sad day indeed. Even more sad is that this end would be unlamented. The national media is busy debating the far more saleable Gurjar agitation in Rajasthan. How can the mere closure of an institute run from a thatched hut in a poor lower middle class locality of Patna compete as a news item with the armed to the teeth militants of Rajasthan? Who has time for the bright eyed boys from backward Bihar who merely wield pens? Earlier there was the excuse by the national media to dismiss the successful JEE candidates from Bihar as those belonging to the 'forward' castes from privileged background. This time around, the students of Super 30 were children of the deprived sections of the society - belonging to families which did not even know where the next meal is going to come from. It thoroughly exposes the anti Bihar attitude of most journalists and media men who have merely used the name of Bihar to denigrate and demonise this economically deprived state. As if on cue, the 'national' newspapers, deprived of their regular quota of bad news from Bihar for the last several days, have again got their chance to deal in muck.

The inaction of the central government is also lamentable. Arjun Singh had sought to become a messiah of the students of the backward community when he introduced reservation in the government owned institutions. The country erupted with very divisive debate on this contentious issue. Super 30 showed that students from the backward castes can succeed without reservation. It underlined they need information about the opportunities and guidance to make the most of these opportunities far more than any reservation. But then the success of this would not fetch votes for the UPA - merely equal opportunities for some deprived sections of the society. For such a small gain, why bother about niceties like oversight of the publicity by the commercial coaching institutes? Commercial Coaching institutes have been known to offer lavish gifts to successful candidates to claim them as their own. So what is new if a couple of them falsely claim to have coached the Super 30 candidates?

What business do middle class idealists like Abhayanand and Anand Kumar have to dabble in such esoteric ideas as equal opportunity to the deprived? Let us question their motives. Let us drag them through muck. Let us be insensitive to their sensitivity and mock them for their over sensitivity. Let us prove that only ventures with a profit motive can succeed. Let us proclaim from our roof tops that the only sustainable success is that obtained through unfair means. And hound them out from our society. For if idealists are around, they will end up showing a mirror to us and make us look bad.

Empowering the un empowered – a different paradigm

2007-05-31T23:15:00.000+05:30

The divisive debate rages on at the national capital Delhi and various state capital on ‘Reservation’ as a tool for bringing social equity. In this backdrop, the efforts of the coaching institutes at Patna to empower the poorest of the poor is worthy of note and of emulation. Their objective is to prepare the students from the most underprivileged classes to sit for the competitive IIT entrance examination. Many of these students are first generation literates. Most have not even heard of IITs till they are picked by these institutes. One candidate is the son of a security guard. Another is the son of a nurse at a private hospital. A third is the daughter of a road roller driver. Yet another is the child of an unemployed father.A very large number of them are from the so called backward castes, but their success is not under reserved quota but general category.

Mr Anand Kumar, a Mathematics genius and Mr Abhyanand, Addnl DG, Bihar police, started an institution called Super 30 some four years back. They selected 30 bright students from the poorest of the poor and gave them intense coaching to compete in the prestigious IIT Joint Entrance Examination. Over the last four years, their success has increaed from 14 out of 30 to all 30 making it to the IITs this year. Abhyanand, in spite of his very demanding police job, finds time to teach Physics to these students.

The even better news is that the model has been replicated by others as well. Genius 40 picks up 40 students from the underprivileged background and provides them not only tution but also food and lodging so that they concentrate on the task of preparing for the competitive examination than worry about their next meal. Another similar initiative is I Desire which has been set up by former IIT graduates in the memory of Satyendra Dubey. Dubey, an IITian from Bihar was murdered in 2003 by the mafia due to indiscrete information leak from the Prime Minister’s Office while fighting corruption at the National Highway Authority of India.

Unlike the commercial coaching centres with their slick air conditioned class rooms, these coaching centres have the bare necessities such as the black board, the roof above and functional seats for the students. Books are re used. These private initiatives have ascertained what are the essentails and just focus on those, leaving the non-essentials for their more privileged counterparts.

It is pertinent to note that while the reserved seats are getting cornered by the well off Meenas and other creamy layer, this private initiative strikes at the root of the problem and brings empowering education to the really needy. The fundamental question, how will reservation help if the candidates for whom it has been made are not even aware that such institutions of higher learning exist, remains the most fundamental and unanswered question.

Let me end with a quote from Mr. Abhayanand, one of the founders of Super 30: “For only when we can open up opportunities otherwise blocked for the underprivileged can we aspire for a just and equitable society.” This is indeed not an empty boast. Apart from the direct contribution of teaching 30 carefully selected students from the underprivileged sections of the society, they also ask for a guru dakshina from their students : “Give back to society what you have got, if not more. "

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998416.htm

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070530/43/6gfj5.html

http://www.patnadaily.com/news2006/june/061606/film_on_super30.html

http://www.bihartimes.com/news07/May/3051.html

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/05_2007/28-of-bihars-super-30-crack-iitjee-41772.html

How To Be a Programmer

2007-05-12T08:03:00.000+05:30

These days I started to use a new tool which integrates well with my Mozilla Firefox brower. It is called Stumble Upon. This tool helps me looking for sites based on the interest (I need to define them first after I sign up with Stumble Upon). While browsing through programming Category yesterday I came across a very good site which says How to be a Programmer. Well it might sound like one of those cheap trick sites, but it is not. Its a lengthy article to read and takes about an hr to read and understand.

There are two major skills identified for the programmer (or developer)

Personal Skill
Team Skill

Each of them are then further divided into sub sections. While the first skill deals with what the person must have in terms of skills required like Technical, Aptitude etc. The second skill focuses more on what it takes to be part of the successful team ie correct estimation, managing self time etc.

In a nutshell its a good read for all those who aspire to build their career in Software Industry and want to grow. It is recommended to read for those who are in Software Industry as well. So that they can identify their gaps and make sincere effort to fill them.

Until Next Time..:)

Images from the Global NRB meet

2007-05-08T02:04:00.000+05:30

Brand Bihar in action

2007-05-05T21:45:00.000+05:30

There’s a steady but significance change in the investment pattern in Bihar. The state and its citizens have always been a subject of ridicule and apathy over the years for the tardy growth rate and dwindling investment over the years. The history of neglect and step motherly treatment by planning commission and financial institutions has seen the growth of the state plummeting over the years. Bihar’s annual growth rate was 5.2% compared to all-India’s 5.6 % in the 1980s, declined to 3.46% in contrast to the national growth rate of over 6% in the 1990s, and has recently increased. Central Statistical Organization (CSO) figures place its average growth rate from 1993-94 to 2003-04 at 5.8% per annum, just under India’s 5.9% per annum.Much has been said about the unfair treatment meted to Bihar but these figures do not present the real picture of the immense market potential and untapped resources of the state. However times are changing fast and more and more organizations are realizing the immense potential which Bihar has.

The recent meet of Industrialist in Bihar is one such significant step in the direction to change the investment climate in Bihar. In the recently held first-ever meeting of Bihar Development and Investment Promotion Council (BDIPC) meet at Patna it was decided that Chairman of Aditya Birla Group Kumarmangalam Birla will look after harnessing the private sector in Bihar, vice-chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra Anand Mahindra will be involved in harnessing agriculture. Similarly, Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel will extend his cooperation in mainstreaming the rural economy. A dozen sectoral groups to be known as 'Abiding Initiatives', each headed by a top CEO, have been formed to help formulate and fine-tune policies. The easing credit flow initiative will be headed by ICICI MD K V Kamath, while noted architect Hafeez Contractor will draw the blueprint for urban design.

Priya Paul, chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Group, who showed keen interest in tourism development will head the group on tourism, travel and employment potential and RPG Enterprise V-C Sanjeev Goenka will oversee the energy concern. Chairman Max India Analjit Singh has been involved in new health paradigm. With a stress on popularising Brand Bihar, an initiative has been shaped for state's image building.

The think-tank unanimously resolved that there was a major improvement in the crime-control situation under the Nitish Kumar administration and this was a giant leap for putting the state on the threshold of development.

“The state requires a consistent 8.5 per cent growth rate and the key lies in developing basic infrastructure. Stress on education and leveraging the state’s travel and tourism advantage should form the key,” said ICICI Bank chief K.V. Kamath, whose organisation has been doing brisk business in the state.Mahindra and Mahindra Group head Anand Mahindra promised that actual announcement of projects would begin soon.

The govt. has been swift to react to the changing times and has amended the Bihar Sugarcane (Regulation of Supply and Purchase) Act, 1981, in March-end which mean now sugarcane juice can be directly used for producing ethanol or rectified spirit and for cogeneration.Prakash Jha recently laid foundation of his sugar factory at Gurwalia in West Champaran district.he also announced his intentions of setting up 10 more sugar mills in the state.

In another development a World Bank aided project for boosting rural economy through self-employment will be launched in 4,000 villages spread across six districts of Bihar in September this year. The Rs 306.5 crore project, christened 'Jivika' (employment), will be executed under Bihar Rural Livelihood Project. According to a five-year action plan prepared for 'Jivika', the project will be implemented in 4,000 villages under 42 development blocks across Nalanda, Gaya, Khagaria, Muzaffarpur, Madhubani and Purnia districts. Altogether 5.9 lakh poor families would benefit from the project, the burden of which will be shared by the World Bank, Bihar government and the beneficiaries.

The revival of Bihar has also seen the revival of the Bhojpuri film Industry which is witnessing a phenomenal resurgence after a lean patch. With 76 films produced in 2006, Bhojpuri films have recorded the fastest growth rate — a 100 per cent increase over 2005. They also account for 7 per cent of the total number of films produced, only marginally behind Malayalam and Kannada films, according to figures released by the Central Board of Film Certification.

This summern and even Spiderman is going to make its debut in Bhojpuri version. But a Bhojpuri Spiderman doesn't come cheap. A whopping Rs 3 crore is being spent to dub it; an amount that can fund two Bhojpuri films. And as many as 50 to 60 prints of this Bhojpuri Spiderman will be released.

Jack & Jill - Bihari Style

2007-05-01T15:19:00.000+05:30

Everything looks better with a little bit of Bihari element in it :-)

The Unfeeling Madrasi

2007-05-01T13:41:00.000+05:30

Just read this article Laloo Yadav beats Nehru hollow

If the heading gives an impression it is about the newly acquired management skills of Lalu, perish the thought. If the first paragraph makes you think it is about economic liberalisation, it is only partly right. The real intent is to bash Bihar, plain and simple. It comes as any article on Bihar bashing, short on data and long on rhetoric.

I quote: “By some yardsticks, Bihar exceeds the national average. Bihar’s infant mortality rate of 61 per 1,000 in 2002 was better than the national average of 63 per 1,000 ………. the quality of Bihar’s data collection is suspect, so I would not read too much into these figures”. So my dear learned friend, what should you go by? Your biased hunch or that of your equally dubious co workers?

Let me quote further “the collapse of law and order and the rise of criminals linked to Laloo was seen, locally, as lower castes improving their market share of Bihar’s biggest business — crime.” What has the author based this dubious conclusion? He rants that Lalu won three elections, implying the winning of elections as Biharis endorsement of crime. In his selective amnesia, he forgets that Lalu kept loosing his vote share in each election and was kept in power partly by the ineffective TN Seshan’s failure to conduct a fair election and partly due to AICC which chose to support Lalu in spite of the clear displeasure of BPCC. As soon as we had a fair election under KJ Rao, the whole equation changed.

Now read the openly contemptuous next paragraph “I suspect that Bihar exceeded 4% growth under Laloo mainly because Biharis could migrate to other states for jobs, send remittances home and bring back new skills.” What about the prosperity that the hardworking Bihari has brought to the states he has migrated to? Or they are employed as charity? What about the equally large remittance out of Bihar to support the large Bihar student population? Perhaps his economics does not allow these to be taken into consideration. Quite apart from the demeaning tone of the sentence, notice that this is being said in Mumbai where just recently Biharis were subject to tasteless racist remarks. Should I take this as an endorsement of those anti Bihari feeling?

Thus, he draws his conclusion, “Laloo succeeded for reasons beyond his control” Now notice the superciliousness of the concluding sentence “Even Bihar, which has terrible law and order, terrible roads and electricity, terrible education and telecom, has grown at close to 5% per year for over a decade.” Italics are mine, but rest of it is exactly as given by this special gift to mankind.

Does it ever occur to this expert of economics that Bihar has had the lowest per capita spend among all states in each five year plan since independence – when it was adjudged the best governed state and when it was felt it is the worst? Whether there were same party in power at state and centre or whether they were different, the situation never changed. It had to suffer the crippling freight equalisation scheme for close to three decades. That the most recent irrigation project in agricultural Bihar is the 19^th century British built Son Canal system? That it does not have a single IIT, IIM, IARI, ICSR or DRDO lab? That PUSA, the only national agricultural research centre in the largely agricultural Bihar was shifted to Delhi, presumably to research the trees of Lutyens Delhi?

Why go so much in the past, just take the modern highway projects. Inevitably, the East West corridor and the Delhi – Kolkata highway pass through Bihar. But how many towns and cities of Bihar does it serve? It does not serve Patna, Gaya, Arrah, Chapra, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga or Samastipur. Neither does it serve Monghyr, Mokamah, Bettiah, Siwan or Sitamarhi. Muzaffapur is the only town of any consequence in the whole of Bihar or for that matter Jharkhand which would be served. Does the ‘economic’ expert have the foresight to see the injustice of all this? Smug in his south Mumbai office, he has perhaps never ventured into Bihar. But comment he must on Bihar. Not for him any guilt for the feeling of hurt his line of thinking may cause to eight crore Biharis. For him, Bihar is a punching bag, to be bashed.

In the syllabus of Bihar board where I did my Class X, we had a subject called Samajik Gyan or Social Studies. Prepared by eminent Bihari educationists, it had comprehensive coverage of the various regions of India. The teachers at my school did a very decent job of teaching us about the four south Indian states and the union territories of Pondicherry and Lakshadweep, their geography, language and culture. My school also had teachers from Kerala and Tamil Nadu teaching other subjects, economic migrants, who were accepted by Biharis with full dignity due to a teacher. Thus it was at an early age that I was made aware of the subtle and not so subtle differences between the south Indian states. Then why do I use the omnibus term Madrasi in my heading? This term is used by the south Indians to illustrate the ignorance of the north Indian about the south of Vindhyas and by Dilliwalas as a pejorative. Surely, I do not wish to demean the labour of the Bihar educationists, much less typecast people from south of Vindhyas. A Bihari, I know the pain of being typecast only too well and would not wish to do that to anybody.

It is my extreme angst at the totally un-empathetic tone of Mr Swaminathan Ankleswaria Aiyer that makes me use this term as a pejorative. It helps that no place is now known as Madras. Thus I can call this unfeeling person Madrasi without typecasting anyone from any region.

What future does a Bihari youth have when a senior journalist in a national newspaper have such an attitude?

Killing Bihar, steadily

2007-04-28T16:10:00.000+05:30

It is an undeniable fact that Bihar stands at the bottom of the ladder as far as the economic indices are concerned. In the past, blame has been put on the Govt of Bihar, and rightly so. Blame has also been put on the people of Bihar. However, we have always let the central govt and its agencies get away lightly. This is rather surprising since in the federal structure of India, the status of the Govt of India is that of a “Mai-Baap” which has the power to dole out favours. Most of the taxes are collected by them and then distributed. Locations of major industries are decided by them. Major infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, irrigation systems – are all decided by them. In this context, two recent developments show the central government in particularly poor light.

The first concerns the nascent tourism industry of Bihar. The Buddhist circuit in Bihar has been a major unutilised asset of the impoverished state. In a remarkable show of vision, the state government decided very early on its term that it would promote the Buddhist circuit. To this end, several initiatives have been taken. For example, land has been made available to the hotels; special care has been taken to maintain the law and order situation; the upkeep of the tourist destinations has been improved drastically; and the road infrastructure has been improved greatly for better connectivity.

Bodh Gaya has made good progress in the last year. Even in the face of the very basic facility at the airport, it now has international flights to Singapore, Bangkok, Paro and Colombo. There has been persistent demand to upgrade the facilities at the airport so that they can increase the frequency of their flight. The Japanese and the Koreans cannot take a direct flight to Gaya as the runway is far too short for the long haul aircraft to land. Given half a chance, Gaya can easily beat Calcutta as the premier airport of the Eastern India, but no plan is forth coming by the Airports Authority of India to take any of those steps. However, this story is not about that.

This is about the criminal neglect by the Indian Airlines to break the back of tourism at Gaya and give a bad name to Bihar and to India. In fact, it has even led to a diplomatic fracas already. Read for your self what they have done.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/29464.html

The passengers that they brought to Gaya on confirmed return tickets have been left stranded for over one week since the flight was cancelled in a huff. Indian Airlines, being a PSU, should have been at the forefront of promoting Gaya as an upcoming destination. That is how they justify their colossal losses and their pathetic standards. Far from it, they seek to destroy even what has been achieved.

Who gave Indian Airlines the right to cancel their flights? Is it a commercial decision or has been done with an ulterior motive to destroy the nascent tourist destination of Gaya? What are their obligations if they cancel their flights? If they have failed in their duty, what steps the Govt of India has taken to take them to task? Who are the people responsible for this mess? How are they being held accountable? What would be their punishment for this gross negligence? Unfortunately, there is only silence as an answer till now.

The second is an even bigger tragedy as it concerns the issue of universal education for the indigent. Excellent work is being done by the Govt of Bihar under the Sarva Shikhsha Abhiyaan. A very dedicated, scholarly and avuncular officer, Anjani Kumar Singh, affectionately called Anjani babu, has been put in charge of the program. He along with the Secretary, Education, Dr MM Jha, have done immense work in this area, which is both good quality and good quantity. Particular care has been taken to reach out to the girls from the most deprived sections of the society. The work has come for singular praise by several independent agencies, Pratham and the Indian Planning Commission being two of them. This rediff article captures the spirit of this monumental government work which is nothing short of a revolution.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/apr/19sl1.htm

Unfortunately, this good work would be under immense pressure in the coming financial year. Under a change of policy, the “mai baap” at Delhi, the HRD ministry, would drastically reduce the grant for this most laudable scheme since primary education is being made the responsibility of the state government. The education cess that you and I pay would be diverted to higher education so that little games may be played over issues of such national importance as power of HRD ministry over IIMs and IITs. Thus, while the poorest of the poor would be deprived of even primary education, the central govt attention would be riveted over providing better facilities to the already privileged.

Till now, Bihar was denied funds because of inadequate utilization. Now when it has shown the best utilization, in a show of real politik that would put Machiavelli to shame, the rules of the game are being changed. There is no debate on this in the parliament. The electronic media, always in the look out for issues of national importance for its innumerable debates, finds this topic unworthy of any mention.

Rashtra Kavi Ramdhari Singh Dinkar had perhaps this situation in mind when he composed this couplet in his immortal “Hunkaar”

“Swanon ko milte dugdh vastra, bhookhe balak akulate hain
Maa ki haddi se chipak thithoor. Jadon ke raat bitate hain.”

The pet dogs of the privileged get milk as food and finery as dress
The hungry children of the poor scrounge for bare necessities
They cling to the to the bare bones of their mother
They try to get some warmth on the cold winter night

The poor children in the poignant poem at least have the warmth of their mother’s emaciated body to cling on to. Where do the daughters of Bihar go when their mother, Mother India, refuses to give them even that solace?

Just Do It!

2007-04-26T23:17:00.000+05:30

Just Do It!
by Mayank Krishna
First Published: Feb. 1, 2007

In last one year, with the change of government in Bihar, a lot of hope and aspiration has come to surface in the life of Bihar and Biharis. Apart from the efforts of the government, a select group of passionate Bihari intelligentsia scattered around the globe is making the concept of a flat world a reality and working toward bringing back the past glory of Bihar as a land of wisdom, wealth, opportunity, abundance, governance, and cultural heritage. And it has already started making some small but meaningful impact.

But with the hope there is a concern too. From the interaction I had had with numerous Biharis at various stages of their life and career, it seems that a large number of them, particularly young and well educated, are either not interested in Bihar or show utter pessimism about Bihar's future. Some typical responses are 'There is nothing in Bihar', 'it’s too late', 'development in Bihar is next to impossible', etc. This reasoning is devoid of logic. It smacks of ignorance, stereotyping, and a lack of will and conviction.

These young people educated in top colleges of India often attribute 'criminalization of politics and serious law and order problem' as the root cause of all problems of Bihar. Nothing can be more wrong and preposterous. These children of economically liberated India, devoid of knowledge of the post-independence developmental economic policies of Indian government, believe an effect to be a cause. They believe that fortunes of Bihar tumbled in the last 20 years when the truth is that the script of this tragedy was written by the learned economic planners of India in 50s, 60s, and 70s through unjust allocation of developmental resources. Take an example: In 1955, the total national outlay for irrigation was Rs.29106 lakhs. Of this, Punjab got 38% while Bihar got just 4.5% even though Bihar was 3.5 times larger than Punjab. The result: Almost 76% of Punjab’s land is under irrigation while just 41% of Bihar’s land is irrigated. Or, take the Freight Equalization Scheme that applied to Steel and Coal and remained in vogue till 1991. This policy of consumers paying the same freight whether the coal was transported from Jharia to Dhanbad or Jharia to Vishakhapatnam broke the back of industry development in Bihar. Many of us are blissfully ignorant of numerous historical injustices of this kind meted out to Bihar by the economic planners.

They talk of lack of opportunities in Bihar and assert that opportunities should first be created before they can exploit them. This is passive mentality. If Bihar has to progress then opportunities will have to be created and tapped by Biharis themselves. If one can't help oneself, no body can. Others can help, they can support, but they cannot set your house in order. This is something all Biharis need to understand. I am reminded of the old story of two shoe salesmen who went to a place where aboriginals existed. The first sales man saw that no one wore shoes and reasoned that there was no market for shoes while the second one saw a huge market because no one wore shoes! We have to create our own opportunities. Whining and complaining will not help but action orientation will and this is what is expected from the younger generation of well educated, smart, and suave Biharis. They should feel proud of their Bihari roots and act with courage and conviction.

Another issue is entrepreneurship development. In Bihar, people view entrepreneurship as something that smart, educated people don’t do. This has to change and entrepreneurship has to be accorded its due status. With the pool of well educated and technically qualified young Biharis, there is no reason why entrepreneurship development can't take place in Bihar. The opportunities are immense though they might not be so obvious. An entrepreneurial wave can turn Bihar into the vegetable capital of India. Similar big opportunities are in agriculture, horticulture, fisheries, fruits, agro-processing sectors. The need of the hour is not large scale entrepreneurial ventures but small grassroots level ventures that ensure wealth generation along with economic and social development of the local community. We don’t need 10 investments of Rs.100 crores each; but 100 investments of Rs.10 crores each. Spread of investment is key not the quantum.

Ultimately, what Bihar and Biharis need is the Nike philosophy – Just Do It! And may I modify it a bit – JUST DO IT WITH PRIDE AND CONVICTION!

The Racist Indian Media?

2007-04-26T23:13:00.000+05:30

The Racist Indian Media?
by Mayank Krishna
First Published: Feb. 3, 2007

Indian media is racist, albeit of a different kind. It bats for glamour, power, influence, high and the mighty. It seldom plays for people who don't have a voice, are weak and without power or influence. In other words, Indian media practices the fine art of racism of not giving a voice to people without voice, which is essentially at the core of any enlightened media.

The biggest irony with Indian media is its obsession with insignificant issues and its ability to transform such trivial matters into a national debate. At the same time, it is well versed in the fine art of trivializing the significant issues worthy of national debate. More than 50 innocent people, most of them laborers from Bihar, got killed in Assam by outlawed outfit called ULFA and the news hardly created a whisper. Numerous children got physically molested and brutally chopped into pieces by two maniacs in Nithari in Noida and the news lasted just a few days. On the other hand, a silly English lady called names to a not so famous Indian actress on the sets of Big Brother in distant England and that created a national fury in India thanks to the Indian media. It became an issue of national importance and generated many a serious debate on electronic media as if the issue was as serious as Pakistan planning an attack on India! If there is an apt example to explain the meaning of the phrase “blown out of proportion”, it has to be Indian media’s handling of Shilpa Shetty issue.

This is not the first time Indian media is behaving like a bottle fed toddler. The truth is that it is biologically and genetically incompetent to handle issues as per their worthiness. Perhaps the only consideration for Indian media today is – how saleable is the story in generating eye balls. And this phenomenon is not limited to odd issues that crop up from time to time. Blindness of Indian media is omnipresent all the time. The bias is so evident that it stinks.

Take the example of negative stereotyping of Bihar, an economically poor state of India thanks to the myopic policies of Indian government, by the Indian media. Even if something great happens in Bihar, Indian media finds, or perhaps concocts something negative about it and puts it in national glare. And if it can’t find anything negative, it simply ignores the good news. On the other hand, it seldom reports anything bad about so called progressive states of India. Roads of Mumbai are worst of its kind with potholes and craters, but when Indian media has to talk about bad roads, it always moves to Bihar. Rape, murder and abductions are rampant in the economically well of national capital region (NCR) comprising of Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida, and Faridabad; but when talks of crime start it always moves to Bihar. Talks on caste also lead to Bihar, even though the neighbouring West Bengal never had a single chief minister from the backward class. Talks on corruption again lead to Bihar, when the most corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are in Mumbai!

Bihar is economically and socially poor not because of itself. A large part of blame should go to the policies of central government of India in last 60 years that propped other states on the pillars of prosperity at the cost of development of Bihar. These included unjust allocation of funds meant for development of agriculture, infrastructure, irrigation facilities, etc. These unjust allocations combined with regressive policies like Freight Equalization Scheme virtually destroyed all possibilities of development of industry in Bihar despite abundance of natural resources. Many of us are blissfully ignorant of numerous historical injustices of this kind meted out to Bihar by the economic planners of India. Indian media never highlights this, may be by design or by ignorance.

And the same Bihar, which is trying to rise today from ashes like a phoenix, is today facing the worst kind of reporting racism practiced by Indian media. A few days back, a global Bihari meet was organized in Patna which had eminent speakers like Honourable President of India Mr. A P J Abdul Kalam, noted economist Lord Meghnad Desai, Ex-governor of RBI Mr. C Rangarajan, Chairman of ITC Mr. Y C Deveshwar, and which was well attended by NRIs. The meet was to discuss the agenda of Bihar’s growth and to attract investments. This high profile event was hardly reported in any national media, though local media covered the event on a grand scale. My question: Was it not a duty of any enlightened media to highlight this meet to create positive vibes about Bihar and help it in its endeavour to walk on the path to development? Well, perhaps Indian media was preoccupied with glam doll Shilpa Shetty!

But the irony of all ironies is that even on Shilpa Shetty type issues, Indian media is biased. It talks of racism in case of remarks on Shilpa Shetty. But where was this same Indian media in all its glory when a lower rug Indian actor, Deepak Tijori, made a similar racist comment on Biharis on the Indian reality show called Big Boss? Indian media, it seems, suffers from selective amnesia. Or, does it wear a mask to hide its racist face to fight another racist?

To me, it seems, Indian media has become impotent and it needs a big dose of Viagra to perform like an enlightened media. Amen!

Future of Bihar

2007-04-23T09:01:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I wonder why I'm so optimistic and sanguine about the future of Bihar. Despite reports on violence and high kidnapping figures there’s a strange optimism about the future of Bihar. Often we question our own beliefs about the way we see our native state. Are we blind to the realities of Bihar and oblivious about the facts of the state? Are we simply building our own castles in air and far away from the realities of the day?

The answers to these facts are simple and very clear. We are all aware of the challenges which Bihar faces today, we are all connected to our villages and have ourselves braved the odds at some point in our career. My generation has survived the odds of some dark days in Bihar during the days of effete leadership. We have spent our times in the street of Bihar and spent hours in the Patna University campus and have some precious memories of our lives. Bihar has a flavour which only a true bihari soul can appreciate. You need not be a born Bihari to relish the essence of being a Bihari. What you need is a big heart and an even bigger attitude to be proud of what you are and the way you are.

You may be a Harryies of the world who takes dig at every thing which goes wrong with Bihar and also showcase yourself as someone special atypical Bihari .You may also be Bhai G’s like us who are out of Bihar but you can never take a Bihari out of them. The quintessential Bihar by heart who relishes the unique gustatory bliss of Liiti and chokha, the rustic beats of Bhojpuri Music and takes pride in everything which Bihar has got to offer. We are proud of our History and what we have achieved and are also committed to have a better tomorrow for our beloved state.

We have the courage to tell the world that what if we have lagged behind but at least we are trying. What if we may not have the best roads in the world but we are on our way .We may not have the best literacy figures to boast of but we have made a sincere effort to improve. We may not have the best police force in the world to fight odds like this; however we are hoping to improve it. We may not have the best leadership in the country but we have someone who is willing and humble enough to learn from others. We may not have loads of investment flowing in to our state but we have started the process and hope to see some thing positive.

We are going to see a new Bihar in the days to come and let’s take pride and put our best in reviving our golden past and take our state to new heights.

History of Shampoo, Indian perspective

2007-04-22T21:39:00.000+05:30

Deen Muhammad, the head massage expert, is mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) for helping Europe coin the word “shampoo”. He hailed from Bihar. The ODNB carries the name of those persons who played a major role in England over the last 2000 years. This lowly barber, Deen, now stands in the same row in the roll of honour as Princess Sophia Alexandra, who was married to Maharaja Duleep Singh of Patiala.

Deen’s father was an employee of the East India Company and collected tax from the people of Bihar and Bengal around mid 1700. Deen settled down in England in 1775 and was the first Indian to write and publish a book in English, ‘Travels of Deen Muhammad’ in 1794. It is believed that Deen was born in Buxar where the famous Battle of Buxar between the East India Company and early India revolutionaries took place. Deen’s father had fought for the Company in that battle.

Beginning his career as a servant of the Company, Deen used to massage the heads of war-fatigued soldiers with soap and a special oil. He was called the shampoo champion by these soldiers because they could not pronounce “champi”, the Hindi word for head massage. In England, Ireland and Scotland, Deen gained fame as a shampoo surgeon. The ODNB describes Deen by this name. Deen learnt the art of massaging from local barbers, and hakims from the different towns of Bihar.

Bihar and Central Infrastructure (or the Lack of it)

2007-04-22T21:33:00.000+05:30

The four ills of casteism, corruption, criminalisation of politics and inequitable land distribution have been repeated ad infinitum as reasons for Bihar's backwardness and has been accepted as conventional wisdom. But is that the truth? Let's look at how Bihar fares in some key Centre created infrastructure.

Bihar & Jharkhand and the new highways

Have a look at a map of the new highways being built by NHAI

Inevitably, a good portion of these passes through Bihar and Jharkhand. The alignment will not serve most Bihar and Jharkhand towns: Patna, Ranchi, Gaya, Ara, Chhapra, Bhagalpur, Hazaribagh, Bokaro, Dhanbad or Jamshedpur!

Muzaffarpur is the sole exception to prove the rule. The up country cousins from "backward" states are considered unfit to be served by such modern wonders! Or maybe we should call them the Bihar bypass!!!

Is this plain incompetence, deliberate mischief or the inherited imperial mindset of Delhi planners? Either way, the visible outcome is that none has thought to make these locally useful.

See the tortuous turns these highways take in other states. Look at UP where most towns with a population over 5 lakhs are connected. Being land locked, Bihar can't have ports. Highways are the only means of transportation. If these highways do not serve the population centres, why build them?

Bihar became self sufficient in food in 2004 – fabulous example of a green revolution without Centre's investment in irrigation or any others. Bihar is expected to become food surplus in a couple of years. Properly aligned roads are a must to transport the produce to the markets for adequate returns. But we wait to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory to demoralise the farmers!

Bridges over Ganga

Another example are the bridges over Ganga. The river divides truncated Bihar into two roughly equal halves and inadequate communication across the river has hampered economic growth for centuries. The length of Ganga in UP is 1170 km and Bihar is 445 km. Bihar has more population density along Ganga and therefore the bridges would serve more people. Let's ignore the population and just go by the river length. UP should have a maximum of three times the number in Bihar. But what is the reality?

There are just three bridges in Bihar: at Bhagalpur, Mokama and Patna. There is another one at Buxar which starts in Bihar and ends in UP. That makes it three and a half. And the number in UP? Over fifteen! Delhi, divided by Yamuna, has a mind-boggling 8 for a river length of maybe 50 km!! Indeed some are born with a silver spoon. This cannot but leave one numb at the extent of discrimination.

Surprisingly, there has been no informed debate about these at any level. A mention of these has been conspicuous in any media: press or television - by its absence. Let the readers draw their own conclusions about the underdevelopment of Bihar.

Connecting Population Centers of Bihar & Jharkhand by the new highway projects (First published Sept 2005)

2007-04-22T21:24:00.000+05:30

As you are aware, a new highway project has been under construction in India for the last few years. There are two parts to it: The golden quadrilateral which would connect the four metros and the east-west, north-south corridor.

Inevitably, good portions of it would pass through Bihar and Jharkhand also. However, sadly, the alignment of these highways have been so made that they would leave most of the major population centers of Bihar and Jharkhand un-served.

None of the major cities or towns in Bihar and Jharkhand would be connected by the new highways envisaged by the mandarins of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) - not Patna, not Ranchi, not Gaya, Chapra, Bhagalpur, Harazibagh, Bokaro, Dhanbad or Jamshedpur. Muzaffarpur is the exception to prove the rule. Perhaps we, the up country cousins from the "backward" states are considered unfit to be served by such wonders of modern development.

Please see the map of these highways:

http://www.nhai.org/nhdpmain_english.htm

I dont know whether it is the a deliberate mischief or just plain colonial mind set that the planners at Delhi seem to have inherited, no thought appears to have gone in making these useful for the people of Bihar and Jharkhand. Our state is a land locked state. These highways are the only means of getting connectivity for our farmers and agro industry producers. Surprisingly, the 'national' press, which is always so vocal about the negative stories from Bihar, has chosen to be totally indifferent to this criminal negligence on the part of the national planners. A mention of this has been conspicuous in any media: press or television - by its absence. All the "rudali" types ready to demonise Bihar and Biharis have chosen to ignore this gross injustice .

If we are able to connect the major population centers to these highways, this would bring tremendous benefits to the people of our benighted state. For example, Bihar became food sufficient in 2004 - the only example of a green revolution without any major investment from the government in irrigation or any others. I expect Bihar to become food surplus in a couple of years. Properly aligned roads would be the minimum required to evacuate the food economically or else there would be a glut leading to the agriculturist not getting adequate returns. This would result in demoralisation and the gains that our hardworking farmers have achieved would receive a setback.

The issue is, what can we do about it? I propose a four point agenda:

1. Get a small action committee - five to ten people who feel really passionate about it. This group could get started maybe this weekend and meet every weekend over chat or google talk / yahoo talk. Others would be free to join, but this group takes a real active role in taking this forward.
2. We define what we wish to achieve - say x cities get connected so that we can celebrate we have achieved what we wanted to.
3. Create awareness about the issue by enlisting help from the favourable press - One suggestion is journalists from Bihar, the recent generation who have passed out places like IIMC, Jamia, JNU etc. Other is to present our point of view to decision makers like Road department bureaucrats, planning commision, politicians. We can discuss this more.
4. Use the coming elections in Bihar to extract some promise from decision makers. We still have sometime before the elections and with proper planning, it should be possible to achieve this.

I would like to invite all like minded people to come and join in this fight.

While my hearts still bleeds this republic day (Jan 26 2007)

2007-04-22T21:22:00.000+05:30

On republic day last year, I had expressed my angst at the unfair treatment being meted to Bihar and Biharis in Patna Daily. Since then, Bihar has moved forward. There are signs of positive change, for example an IIT for Bihar, higher planned allocation for development and the improved conviction rate of criminals.

Yet my heart still bleeds this republic day. There is the most unfortunate killing of our labourers in Assam who still have to go to that inhospitable land in search of livelihood. From Rajdeep Sardesai using Bihar as a negative adjective to the children of migrant labourers dying inhuman deaths in Nithari and Muktsar, Punjab, unable to even have their cases registered with the police, there are any numbers of injustices meted out to Biharis. In spite of the increased allocation to Bihar for development in the last one year, it continues to languish at the bottom in terms of the per capita allocation by the planning commission. There would still be no IARI lab in Bihar though it is an agricultural state. But there seldom has been any protest against these. What could be the reasons for this?

Bihar is at a cross road where we have to try to consolidate the gains of the past year and try to analyze what has held it back for so many years. Why is it that when a Lalu Yadav starts a Garib Rath for Bihar or a Nitish Kumar starts the HQ of a railway zone in Bihar, there is widespread criticism, but when a Chidambaram and a Maran join hands to ensure 90% of all mobile phones for the booming market gets manufactured in Tamil Nadu, nobody raises an eyebrow? Why do many of our own Bihari brethren think asking for equal right for Biharis or development in Bihar is akin to rebelling against India?

The backwardness of Bihar and the ill treatment meted to Biharis, to me, appears rooted in psychology - both our own as well as those of non Bihari Indians. Let me try to delve a little deeper into the psychological make up and see what lies there.
As a school student in seventies, I heard the proposed Ganga Bridge at Patna was refused funding by the central planning commission. I wanted to write a letter to newspapers criticizing the decision. But seniors around me, at school and at home, restrained me, saying people at Delhi must have taken all issues in consideration before taking this decision. I wanted to protest the freight equalization scheme, but found little understanding of this sentiment around me.

What holds us back from asking our share? What is it that makes us believe the central government would always be fair?” Why do we hesitate to question its actions in a logical manner? Why the hurry to give away our share so readily? What is it that makes giving away the strategic advantages of Bihar so attractive for our leaders?

Is it lack of understanding of Bihar’s strategic advantage that causes it’s leders to give it away so easily? That would be really sad for the land of Chanakya. Does Bihari culture over romanticize the act of giving? Or is it the colonial hangover which makes us believe some distant master would be fair to us and set our house in order?

Fact is, even a mother does not lactate unless the child cries.

The second negative trait that I see is debating the wrong question. For close to four decades, the three issues that have been bandied about as the reasons for Bihar’s backwardness are: Casteism, Lack of land reforms and criminalisation of politics. This endless debate has taken us nowhere. Meanwhile so many other relevant questions have not even been debated. For example, why are there only three and a half bridges over Ganga in Bihar whereas there are over fifteen in Uttar Pradesh? Why is the most comprehensive irrigation system in Bihar still the British built Son Command Canal system? Why is there no protest when Patna Rice is registered as a trademark in US while there is such a hue and cry over Basmati? Why is there no comprehensive dialogue with Nepal for flood control? Why does the national integration song “Mile Sur Mera” have no Bihari symbols? I could go on and on, but the point I want to illustrate is that we have been asking the wrong questions for decades without any tangible gains in terms of the economic uplift of our masses.

Let me move to the next negative psychological trait, the inability to hail true success. Mr Neelkanth Prasad, the brilliant engineer, kept the dream of the Ganga Bridge at Patna alive and managed to get it built in spite of severe resource constraints. But does anybody remember his outstanding contribution? Rajkumar Shukla brought Gandhi to Champaran and made him the mass leader. Do we ever pause to think of his massive contribution? And thereby we fail to consolidate success and encourage desirable behaviour.

Take the recent case of an IIT in Bihar. When I hailed in Patna Daily MA Fatmi's promise to bring IIT to Bihar, several people implied I was naive to believe Fatmi. Now when he has actually delivered, one would expect some kudos for him. But no, now there is another set of pessimists saying bringing IIT to Bihar has no relevance!!! Govt of Bihar has been trying to bring a semblance of order for the last year. There are enough statistics to suggest Bihar has improved. But read the pessimistic comments. Police solves the case of kidnapping of a twelve year old Kankarbagh boy and nabs the killer even while he was preparing to strike again. CNN IBN gives it a negative twist. We seem to have an inability to celebrate success. Worse, an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!!

Another is self flagellation or the self blame even for things that are not in our own hand. Like a raped woman, somehow, when things go wrong, we tend to blame ourselves, not realizing there are situations where the blame lies outside. And the outsiders, particularly the 'national' English language press from Delhi and Mumbai, like the moronic UP police, lay the blame on the 'provocative' dress or other such imagined 'crime' for the situation. The labourers get killed in Assam and we blame Bihar’s backwardness. Did the labourer cause Bihar’s backwardness? Is he wrong is seeking a better livelihood for himself? How come the same trait of seeking a fortune in another land in a Punjabi or a Marwari is hailed as a positive trait? This is not to deny responsibility for own's action. For example, if a student at Gaya does not study hard, he is not going to get into an IIT. But if some idiot at JEE committee feels there is something wrong just because there are too many successes from Gaya and cancels the centre, the only fair solution is to expose that idiot and set things right, rather than blame ourselves.

After all, Bihar is the heart of India, appropriately placed a little to the left of centre in the upper part of the map of India. Today, a lot of people are asphyxiating the heart not realising the whole body would be dead if the heart stops functioning. We have to ourselves believe and make others realize that it is quite possible to be pro Bihari and yet be pro India. But unfortunately, the voice of reason and logic that can make it happen is lost in the din of self serving media. When Nitish Kumar calls up Manmohan to seek justice for the slain Biharis in Assam, ‘national’ media calls it ‘chita ki aag mein rajnaitik roti sekna’. And in the process, unfortunately, time is running out.

Thus to me, the backwardness of Bihar and the ill treatment meted to Biharis appears rooted in psychology - both our own as well as those of non Bihari Indians. Till we can zero in on the underlying reasons and take corrective action, things are not going to change fast enough.

Cultivation of Patna Rice

2007-04-22T21:07:00.000+05:30

Rice has been cultivated in the Gangetic plains of India for millennia. The cultivation of rice here is not just any other grain cultivation, but it's a process that has moulded the culture of the people like no other. There are songs specific for each activity - ropnigeet, katnigeet; there is merriment, there are festivals, in fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole life of people revolves around the cultivation of rice.

The process of cultivation of rice starts around the first week of June when the harsh Indian summer is at its peak. The last feasting of the lagan (marriage season) is over and the summer has left everyone exhausted. The seasonal high points of summer, the mangoes, the lichees, and the kharbujas and tarbujas have all come and gone. Even as the sun is still mercilessly beating down on the Gangetic plains and heat waves have parched the normally humid landscape totally dry, sucking out the last drops of water from every crevice, the cultivator starts to bring out his implements - his plough, chaas, and other implements. Taking stomach full of traditional drinks made from ground gram (sattu) and occasionally saunf, and keeping full onion in his pocket, he has to leave the cool environs of his thatched hut and start venturing into the unforgiving hot and dry weather. Functional literacy, handed through word of mouth over generations has taught him how to survive the extreme weather with minimum of appurtenances.

Pre-cultivation

He takes his implements to the village artisans - the blacksmith and the carpenter - to make them ready for the busy season ahead. He knows that once the rains fall, there would be no time to tend to his implements. It is also the time to spread the cow-dung, which was allowed to rot in ditches for the whole year. Unlike the other fertiliser, this manure has to be spread on his best field, as he knows that there is no manure better than this organic manure for his tender seedlings.

Spreading the seedlings

The first drops of rain fall around mid June heralding the monsoon. The first rain is normally accompanied with strong cool winds and sometime also hailstorm. As the first drops of water quench the thirst of the parched earth, it oozes an intoxicating earthy (saundha) smell that can be found in only this part of the world. The earth acquires a greenish hue - it is as if the no nonsense tomboy has turned all feminine grace on getting married.

Now there is no time to loose and the cultivator has to quickly plough the Beehan Kiyaris (Seedling fields) where the manure has already been spread. In less than a week, those fields have to be ploughed, seeds spread and flattened again for the seed to start germinating in the hot and humid soil just under the surface.

Ploughing the Land

Once the seedlings spread, all the agricultural fields in the village good enough for rice cultivation have to be ploughed. It would be barely six weeks when the seedlings would be ready for transplantation and the ploughing has to be accomplished in this period. By this time, the monsoon is in full flow and the urgency of the first few days has given way to the humdrum of the busy agricultural season. There are still not enough hours to do all that needs to be done, but life assumes a routine.

Transplantation

The humdrum of ploughing follows the extreme physical activity of the transplantation phase. Transplantation is a very intricate process that has to be accomplished very quickly. If the seedlings are allowed to get over-ripe before being transplanted, it would be very harmful for the quality for the rice. No cultivator has the resources to accomplish this alone and all of them have to depend on others to achieve this. This is the time when old rivalries and petty differences have to be forgotten as this once in a year opportunity cannot be missed. All able bodied men and women are out in the field. Elderly help with household chores like cooking and children help by transporting the meals to the field as there is no time to loose in commuting between the field and the house. Men may not rest for days and children may bunk school. Even the teachers may leave the school to give a helping hand during this crucial phase.

There is some respite from hard physical labour once the transplantation is done, but no time to be lax. Now is the time to tend the field and protect it from all enemies, both natural and human. Machan may be put in the field to keep a watchful eye day and night. The male members may not have a chance to come home for weeks. There has to be just enough water in the field for the rice to grow; if you don't drain the excess water, it would become flooded and destroy the crop. If water is less, the paddy may start to die.

The same village neighbour who had helped him in the crucial transplantation phase may now not hesitate to leave his cattle loose for grazing in an unattended field. If the neighbour had not helped when all were watching, the animosity would have come out in the open; in the cover of darkness, one can always settle a few scores without too much damage to one's reputation. In any case, the petty differences, probably festering for generations, were merely papered over, not by any means settled.

Mid season Break and the festivals

Around October, the paddy has grown to waist height and needs less tending. Monsoon has somewhat slackened and there is festivities everywhere, for now is the festival (puja) season. : Dushshra, Divali and Chath are celebrated in this period. The all round greenery adds to the festivities. Other than keeping a watchful eye to keep the cattle and the thief away, which brothers and friendly neighbours can take turns to do, it is a time of comparative physical rest but mental alertness.

Harvesting

Harvesting starts as soon as the last araghya to the Sun god has been given. This is another period of intense physical activity when the paddy has to be harvested and transported to the Kharihaan for processing. When we see Indian software professionals slogging during crucial phases of a project like go live or testing, and barely managing to keep office timings during "normal" office days, one cannot help thinking if they have got it in their genes from their agriculturist forebears who had to work seasonally like this. It is this perhaps which helps him in his direct march from the agricultural age to the information age, bypassing the evolution of the industrial age and its clockwork precision.

Processing

As the temperature starts to dip with the onset of the winter, the processing of the grain starts in the Kharihaan. After the first offering to the gods - the gram devi (village deity), the fruits of the labour is ready to savour. Certain varieties of rice may be boiled with the husk to prepare the parboiled rice. After this, the rice husk is removed in the wooden "dheki", a process greatly enjoyed by the ladies of the house and accompanied with much merriment.

Rice has always been a symbol of plenty in Hindu tradition. According to the custom, married women in India are honoured and wished a life of plenty by presenting them with a handful of rice, turmeric and grass saplings (Khoincha) on all festive occasions. The throwing of rice is associated with all pious Hindu rituals include weddings.

Patna Rice, the king of all rice, comes to you from the intricate handcrafted process described above, perfected over generations.

The 'Babu-ization' of Bihar Education

2007-04-22T20:40:00.000+05:30

At the time of Indian independence, the schools and colleges of Bihar were largely privately run. There was the system of the Zila School which were like the benchmark of quality education. There were the British Govt established institutions like the Patna Science College and Prince of Wales Medical College. But for every Government run institution, there were scores of privately run as well. This system got a fillip in the period after independence when philanthropists and other public minded individuals were encouraged to take these up since the government of the day had limited resources and did not wish to restrict the march of progress. These schools were built on land donated by the much maligned Zamindar families of Bihar. They had trusts running them.

Later, some of the new private institutions that came up were by politicians and started getting misused as an instrument to distribute favours. However, the number of institutions run by professional politicians were limited and the private educational institutions were largely well run.

In the mid seventies, with a stroke of pen, all of them except those run by the minority community were nationalized. In one stroke, the chairmen and secretaries of these school committees who were men of eminence from the local area and had a stake in the continued welfare of these institutions were replaced with nameless and faceless babus who had no aptitude, training, interest or time for such activities. In a sense, the babu-ization of the educational institutions had started a little earlier when an IAS, was appointed OSD for Bihar University superseding the bodies of academics who were perhaps too independent minded for the rulers that be. The hunger for power was only matched by an arrogant belief that cuture and intelligence are alien to the native Bihari and he has to be kept under constant vigil as he cannot but be corrupt.

In the event, the stifling control killed all initiative. The result was a steep decline in the education standards all round. Teaching, which was regarded as such a noble profession in the land of Nalanda, Odantpuri and Vikramshila, became a chore. Is it any surprise that the only schools which escaped this period with their reputation intact were the Xaviers and Convents of this world?

The second is the privatisation of the medical colleges. Several private medical colleges were started in Bihar in the sixties and early seventies: NMCH, SKMCH, MGMCH, Patlitputra MCH, Magadh MCH. They quickly built good infrastructure and a name for themselves. For example, Nalanda Medical College and Hospital at Patna had an enviable infrastructure, excellent faculty, highly dedicated trustees and very well maintained book of accounts open to public scrutiny. Again, babudom felt threatened by the power wielded by those who were running these institutions as they were unfettered by the chain of command of the bureaucracy. They managed to convince the well meaning Karpoori Thakur to nationalise these in the name of "merit". In the process, what could have been the template of an educational revolution ahead of the Karnataka model was nipped in the bud. One can only imagine what kind of engineering and medical education infrastructure would have developed in Bihar had they been allowed to thrive.

I myself, having secured admission through IIT JEE at IT BHU, had been so brainwashed about the misplaced 'merit' theory that I thwarted the attempt of many a cousins who aspired technical education in the private colleges. I realised my mistake years later when I had to depend upon the masses of the Karnataka style private college graduates while managing large scale software dev factories. Where had Bangalore been without the benefit of these huge masses of engineers? Conversely, where would Patna had been with the steady flow of engineers in such large numbers?

I dare say that Patna and not Bangalore would have been the centre of science and engineering if these early leads of Bihar were allowed to flourish. Alas, that was not to be. Today, the state of Bihar with a population of over eight crore has less than five engineering colleges and maybe six medical colleges. Courses like MCA and BCA are conspicuous by their absence. The admission to these limited number of technical institutions is against very stiff competition. However, the reputation of these institutions, inspite of having first rate students is so bad that they have to really struggle to get a job. Things like campus placement are virtually unheard of. A large number of Bihari students have to migrate to the southern states and Maharashtra for basic engineering, computer science and medical degrees. Needless to add, this is at a great cost to the students and their families of the economically deprived state. One economist even assessed that the total inflow of remittance from the roughly one crore Bihari labour force working outside is almost equalled by the outflow required for the fees and provisions of the several lakh students studying outside.

Do hope decision makers would go by common sense rather than misplaced idealism and allow private educational institutions to thrive in Bihar

Journalists and Bihar Bashing

2007-04-22T20:32:00.000+05:30

(This article is in response to an article by Rajdeep Sardesai raising Bihar bashing by the mainstream media to a new level. Here is the link)

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something" - Plato

Bihar has been the favourite punching bag of the Indian English language journalist community, actually not just the journalists but many English speaking "elite" of India. We see the parody of Bihar bashing being played out everyday. Sometimes one feels upset, sometime angry and sometimes pities those indulging in this. If one had hoped that with the end of the Lalu raj in Bihar, Bihar bashing would stop or at least abate, well nothing of the sort has happened.

What is it that makes Bihar bashing such a favourite pastime? Actually, it is not just a pastime, but a vocation or "dhandha" for a certain class of the journalist brethren, as we shall presently see.

History

Come to think of it, the rusticity of Lalu was just another ruse to denigrate Bihar and Biharis. Making fun of Bihar has existed for much longer than that.

There are unsavoury references to Biharis since the early days of journalism in Bengali. I remember seeing a black and white Bengali film whose protagonist was a thief who gradually reforms himself to become a saint. This person starts as a Hindi speaking guy when he is portrayed as a thief, but gradually starts to speak Bangla – his fluency in Bangla language keeps improving as he reforms himself. There is also the oft repeated joke about the Bihari who was counting the floors of a tall building at the Chowringhee. A policeman catches him asking how many floors he had counted. Our rustic replies 8 floors and the policeman asks him to pay a fine of Rs 40 for having counted those floors without permission, Once the policeman departs, our man mumbles to himself, but I saved thirty rupees as I had counted fourteen floors by then!

Though not in a very good taste, this was something that one could live with, even make fun when interacting with one's Bengali friends. To be fair, Biharis gave it back to them as well with equally comical stories about the lack of courage of the Bengali and the score was more or less even.

There were also fulsome praise of Bihari leaders like Dr Rajendra Prasad and Syed Ali Imam. Hence one may conclude that the fun poking was done with sensitivity, a bit like sibling leg pulling and without much malice.

Post Independence India

However, Independent India brought in its wake competition amongst the states for development funds. That unfortunately proved to be the undoing of Bihar as Bihar bashing was raised to a different level. There was only so much fund for irrigation and one who could project the image of a more progressive administration could walk away with the cake. There were only five IITs that had to be located amongst the various states, So states started to enlist the services of the journalists to project their image so that you could win. And Bihar govt did nothing of the sorts. Though Bihar started to lose at this stage, the damage was still controllable,

The image started to take a battering of a vicious kind sometime in the sixties when the examinations of the universities started to get delayed due to student agitations. In the state elections, the socialists came to power. Whatever be the merit or otherwise of his policies, Mahamaya Prasad Sinha became a favourite whipping boy of the so called establishment oriented newspapers. The political situation was complex, and it required a very sensitive portrayal by the press. Unfortunately, they chose to play their own game. It did not help matter that there were no media barons who were native of Bihar. If anything, the situation became worse due to lack of press empathy with the ground situation and non-sensitive portrayal.

Days of JP's Movement and Janata Party Days

The situation somewhat improved when the Congress came to power and the "National" press held its gun back. But that proved the legendary lull before the storm. With JPs movement, all the media guns started to blaze in full glory, demonising Bihar to ingratiate themselves to the powers that be. This is the time when MV Kamath, then editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, wrote his infamous "Biharis are not fit to rule Bihar" essay. In many ways, this essay may be called the turning point in vicious journalism for the portrayal of Bihar. It was to the utter dismay of the public of Bihar that no non-Bihari journalist of any standing deemed it fit to rebut Kamath. It was left to the speaker of the Bihar legislative Assembly to issue a rejoinder. Due to the lack of fluency in English, the rebuttal, even though of very sound logic, could not be very forceful and the journal of the powerful editor even used the rebuttal to further demonise Bihar.

It was expected that with the coming to power of the Janata Party, the situation would improve. However, Morarji Desai, suffering from a strange complex, soon sought to assert his 'authority' and distanced himself from JP. I still remember his totally unprovoked speech at Daltongunj asserting JP is not the Government of India as if Jayaprakash Narayan was interfering with the working of the government!!

Somewhere around this time, the Bhagalpur blinding incident was reported by the Indian Express and the 'national' press got a ready handle to start cursing Bihar. It is to the perpetual discredit of the editors and journalists of the time that none of them tried to see the other side of the picture. The same journalists who had earlier defended the police action against Naxals in Bengal or later went out of the way to defend KPS Gill, found absolutely no merit in the police officers who had sought to cleanse the riverine area near Bhagalpur of crime. In their hurry to denigrate Bihar, they refused to examine why the local people of Bhagalpur were so supportive of the police action. In a throwback to the colonial hangover, the 'national' press sought to portray this support of the local masses as some kind of innate love for crime by the Bihari people. There was hardly any mention of the fact that some of the criminals so blinded had committed up to 40 murders and the criminal justice system had utterly failed to bring them to justice. It was left to the deft hands of Prakash Jha a couple of decades later to give us a sensitive portrayal of the build up to the blindings in his movie Ganga Jal.

Sometime later, Belchi happened – an opportunity seized by Mrs Indira Gandhi to ride back to power. Again, the unfortunate caste killings were sought to be portrayed as the innate weakness in the character of the Bihari public. No serious debate on the socio political situation ensued, only denigration of Bihar. Alas, this shortcut has resulted in many Belchis since. It is a result of the limited intellectual capacity of the journalists and the social scientists that to this day, the increase in caste violence is portrayed in the simplistic term of the empowerment of the hitherto un-empowered. Nobody has ever sought to seriously examine the increased social rift and its causes.

Bihar portrayal in eighties and nineties

In the eighties, every Bihar ill was attributed by the 'national' press to Casteism and Land Reforms. I did not observe any journalist of the national press examining the serious under- investment in the agriculture of Bihar. Nobody ever sought to question why there has been such rural prosperity in Punjab and Himalayan UP (now Uttaranchal) where there is no land ceiling. Nobody sought to question why our Ministry of External Affairs had failed to engage Nepal for any meaningful solution to the floods of North Bihar. The column-centimetres devoted to Bangladesh's flood problems and India's role in it in the 'national' newspapers would be order of magnitude more than to our own North Bihar's problem!!! There are no central universities, IITs, IIMs, CSIR labs or DRDO Labs in the land of Nalanda and Vikramshila. Yet the 'national' press has failed to see the injustice of it all. The modern highways of the Golden Quadrilateral and the East West corridor would avoid each town and city in the twin state of Jharkhand and Bihar like plague. Muzaffarpur is the only exception to prove the rule that the planners at Delhi consider each Bihari population centres unfit to be served by these modern means of communication. Yet these have never been sought to be highlighted by the 'national' fourth estate.

I have reasons to believe that the national planning commission refused to clear the Ganga Bridge at Patna in late sixties saying it is economically unfeasible. These so called journalists who are so vocal in seeing each transfer and posting done by Govt of Bihar through the prism of caste considerations have never sought to question this. From the power enjoyed by the son of Jagjiwan Babu to that of Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav and now by the family of Lalu Yadav, the national press has always highlighted how Bihar is the fountain head of dynastic politics. Yet they refused to acknowledge the contribution of the brilliant engineer Neel Kanth Prasad, son of former CM KB Sahay, who kept the dream of the Ganga Bridge alive in spite of very limited resources in extremely trying circumstances and managed to execute it successfully. This great hero of Bihar finds no mention in any 'National' press.

In the nineties, the newsmagazines and the electronic media started to gain prominence and the importance of the Old lady of Boribunder and the Virgin Spinster of Chennai started to loose their importance in the National media. For sometime, there was relief as the new media barons sought to portray new ground. However, this was a short-lived honeymoon. Soon the new media discovered the power of denigrating Bihar to further their financial success. If one examines the news related to Bihar in the 'national' English press of this period, one would instead find the three issues of Land Reforms, Casteism and Criminalization of Politics. Like a broken record, each of these three issues was repeated to death. The portrayal became so hackneyed and to a script that one could almost predict the 'news' without going through it. Many journalistic careers were launched over the debris of Bihar by the tried and tested formula of raising these triple issues. Soon they found the success educated Biharis were seeing in various competitive examinations like civil services and officers of the bank and the issue of the corruption in education was added. Among these four, you could cover by far the majority of the articles on Bihar in the 'national' English media. I sometimes wondered if there was a special subject in journalism to indoctrinate the budding journalists in them.

Sometime around this period, the National media discovered Lalu and his rusticity and they had a new stick to beat Bihar. Mind you, Lalu was introduced only as a character in the script, the issues remained the same. None of the issues that Lalu stood for ever got a column centimetre of space. No consideration was spared for what Lalu meant to his constituency. It was either hate Lalu or love Lalu. If the journalist hated Lalu, he lamented what Bihar had become thereby giving full verbosity to his bile. If he loved Lalu, he would lament what Lalu had inherited, again repeating the same three or four points that I have mentioned above. Either way, Bihar came out as the living hell that the two types of journalists took turn to describe. And thus we stumbled into the twentieth century. If this were a joke, one would have had a hearty laugh. Unfortunately, this was the question of the future of so many youths from Bihar who would be joining the job market in days to come.

Modern Times Bihar haters

In this media savvy age, image is as important if not more important than the real stuff. We just can't afford to ignore the image anymore. With the objective to get a fair coverage to Bihar and Bihari, I would now try to analyse the characteristics of the modern Bihar bashers who increasingly operate in the interactive and instantaneous mode. The modern mainstream media is largely TV led since the channels are the ones with the power of money. The visual impact scores over every other way of reaching out to the audience.

The instantaneous nature of coverage by TV ensures there is little time to verify what is being reported. The visual appeal ensures that anecdotal evidence scores over well researched material. The debate format of coverage ensures that one can use casual language to bring home one's point. This also affords the opportunity to hit below the belt and draw instant conclusions.

This then brings us to the examination of the types of the modern era Bihar bashers whom I prefer to call the Oye Bihari Brigade or OBBs for short.

The most influential of the OBBs are the pseudo liberals. They are very fluent in English and are educated at a particular college of Delhi University. Many of them also have a degree from UK. They are a throwback to the days when going abroad itself was an achievement. Acquiring a degree abroad was the equivalent of being blue blood, even if the degree was in some obscure subject from some obscure university. They use a language that is quite peculiar, let us call it OBBLISH. It has heavy usage of terms like Biharisation, or Biharism as if these have already replaced terms like hopeless, dregs of the society and uncouth from the lexicon of English. It is as if the editorial board of the Oxford English Dictionary had already adopted this OBBLISH term into its latest edition.

Then comes the OBB category of the Bully. They are the unabashed Bihar haters. Not very sophisticated, the intensity of their hate is the highest. They were probably beaten by a Bihari in whatever pursuit they had undertaken in their younger days and carry that to this day. They are most likely to have a Bihar connection, though the connection is often tenuous, like marriage to a Bihari or posting of the parent in Bihar when they were kids. Short on self confidence, they have to denigrate something to feel better, and Bihar and Biharis are the easiest targets. Usage of OBBLISH is the highest in this category since they are always in the race with the pseudo liberal described above. They are also the easiest to spot. Due to the high intensity of their hate towards Bihar, they lose their influence pretty fast and are consigned to the dustbin of history. However, there are always new ones joining rank ensuring an unbroken chain of this variety.

The next category is of the prodigal child – he comes in two varieties: One who altogether denies his Bihari roots and clings on to his Cal/Noida/Mumbai/UK/US education or upbringing. In the Delhi Univ of the seventies, they were called the Harrys. The second variety of the prodigal son is loud in his proclamation of Bihari roots, but feels if he can be equally stringent in his criticism of Bihar, somehow the 'sin' of his Bihari roots would be washed away. Insensitivity to Bihari sensitivity is rather conspicuous in his demeanour as he is well aware of the Bihari sensitivity in the first place. A variant of this type is the eternal moralist who was born to find fault in the Bihari culture. From usage of Khaini to consumption of Sattu, he can find fault in the most innocent of situations. He can always find an explanation as to why Biharis are not doing well. If you want to provoke this type, criticise someone who is criticising Bihar and watch the fun.

Radio Raghav - Illegal Yes, but Who is Culpable?

2007-04-22T20:30:00.000+05:30

On March 27th 2006, a team from the I&B ministry accompanies by local district authorities swooped down at Mansoorpur and closed the three year old FM radio station run by Raghav Mahto. The community radio station which was spreading socially useful messages like Pulse Polio programme besides providing entertainment was shut down.

A grassroots innovator had nurtured a dream in spite of very severe lack of resources and not having much formal education, improving his radio station month by month, where it could be heard in a radius of up to sixteen kilometres. He could have been a role model for innovation and social entrepreneurship. However, our system chose to condemn him to illegality.

A reading of the Indian broadcasting law indeed renders the running of the radio station illegal. The moot question still remains, who is culpable?

Low cost FM broadcasting technology suited for community radio service that can be used over a small local area has been available for decades. However, how many FM stations do we have in India outside major cities? Absolutely none. It is a tragedy of unparalleled proportions that in spite of almost sixty years of democracy, elitism of the “Dilli Darbar” coupled with a totally misplaced sense of national good has prevented our masses from benefiting from such technology. Gandhiji had said that ‘The soul of India lives in its villages’. Our rulers continue to destroy that soul with an impunity that would have done the former colonial rulers proud.

Alas, we have several parallels of equally misplaced priorities and ill conceived policies. If we wind back to the eighties, older readers would recall how much of a hassle getting a telephone was. One could easily have to wait for up to five years to get one. Rulers of the day felt telephone was a luxury and hence made inadequate investment into it. Private parties were not allowed to invest in it. When Sam Pitroda tried to revolutionise the telecom sector, he had to face many challenges. Ludicrously, when he came up with the idea of public call offices (PCOs) so that hee could take the benefits of whatever infrastructure was there to the masses, responsible guardians of the society actually opposed it saying criminal and antinational activities may go up! Life was made so difficult for him that he had a heart attack and ultimately had to leave India a second time sometime around 1990.

Mercifully, the wireless revolution happened in the telecom sector and now India can boast of the cheapest telecom service anywhere in the world.

Television was kept in a similar vice like grip. A large state like Bihar was without a single full fledged television studio (or Doordarshan Kendra) during the heydays of Doordarshan. To be honest, the situation was somewhat better because of the farsighted I&B minister Vasant Sathe who had ushered in the low power transmitter (LPT) revolution during the Asian Games of 1982. The successor of Sathe, Ajit Panja thought it fit to vandalise the Upgraha Doordarhan Kendra, Muzaffarpur when he wanted a “Metro” studio at Calcutta. Equipment and staff were transferred out without any regard to the local sentiments.

The revolution happened when STAR (Satellite Television Asia Region) of Hong Kong started beaming four free to air channels to India via satellite. Soon we had indigenous programming by Zee TV due to the vision of Subhash Chandra and a new industry was born. Again, Indian cable TV is the cheapest in the world where we get more than 100 channels for the princely sum of Rs 200 per month. Sadly, till date, terrestrial television continues to be a preserve of the government machinery and therefore continues to languish.

Twice within twenty years, technological innovation came to the rescue of the masses when the elitist “Mantralayas” of Delhi tried to stifle progress. Is it too much to expect that the ministry concerned shows better sense this time around? Can we expect some changes in the laws which make community radio stations like Radio Raghav legal and commercially viable? We had learnt at school that Democracy is a government by the people, of the people, and equally crucially “for” the people.

With an economist as a PM and a good man as a CM, let us hope we would be third time lucky.

Patna Rice, a Killer Geographic Indicator

2007-04-22T20:27:00.000+05:30

Rice is the most popular grain in the world, even more than wheat. It is consumed by most of Asia as the main staple and is used as a side dish in Europe, Africa and America. Thus it is a commodity with tremendous potential in world trade. And Patna Rice can be a huge geographic indicator with tremendous business potential.

For the purposes of all the readers, let me explain the term Geographic Indicator or GI for short. GI is used for produce of a particular geographic area. For example Champagne for the sparkling wine from the eponymous district in France or Scotch for the whisky distilled in Scotland. Near home, we have Darjeeling tea and Basmati rice. Over a period of time, the term gets associated with high quality and sells for a much higher price than a similar produce from another area. For example, world renowned sommeliers admit on record that sparkling wine from other areas is equally good, but Champaign continues to demand a premium pricing. These geographic indicators are guarded very zealously and produce of other place cannot use the name.

Readers would recall the controversy over Basmati rice that erupted a few years back and the Government of India and Pakistan got together to thwart the attempts of Texan farmers to use the name. Thus now only the rice grown in the foothills of Himalaya can be sold by the name of Basmati rice. While it is commendable that the Govt of India took this step for Basmati, it is really sad Patna rice as a GI continues to languish.

Like so many other good things from Bihar, I myself was unaware of it till quite late in my life. Though having been born and brought at Patna, I heard about it for the first time in Germany. For me it was a wonderful experience to be associated with an exotic merchandise rather than the patronising attitude that one faces within India when one utters the word Patna.

To tell a little bit about rice, there are some 40,000 varieties of rice under the same botanical species: oryza sativa. The most common classification is by the length of the grain: Long Grain, Medium Grain and Short Grain.

Long-grain rice, as the name suggests, is long and slender. The grains stay separate and fluffy after cooking. This is the best suited for rice served as a side dish, or as a bed for sauces.

Medium-grain rice is plumper and the grain is shorter. It is considered good for paella and risotto.

Short-grain rice is almost round, with moist grains that stick together giving it a gooey appearance when cooked.

The terms "Indica" and "Japonica" could be taken to mean "long grain and non-sticky" and "short grain and sticky" respectively and represent the two ends of the spectrum. The westerners, either in America or in Europe including UK, find long grain rice suitable for their style of cooking. Within these broad categories there are innumerable varieties and I would deal with some of them in this article.

The western cook books usually mean American long-grain rice when they refer to long-grain rice. Carolina Rice is considered the best among the American Long Grain. Intriguingly, rice is no longer grown in Carolina. The name indicates to a past when the British gentry wanted to savour rice but found it rare and expensive. Some British merchants dealing in Patna Rice took the grain from India to Carolina which was then a British colony and grew it there. They made a rather decent job of it. To this day, the best American rice is called Carolina rice though its cultivation was ceased there at the end of the American Civil War. Most of American long grain in now grown in Arkansas, California, Texas or Argentina and Brazil in South America.

When I recently did a search on Google for Patna Rice, I was pleasantly surprised to find a very large number of hits at fairly credible sources. A similar search on Basmati rice had fewer results and there were almost none for Dehradun Rice or Doon Rice.

In Bihar, we use terms like Parimal or Rani Kajal and Badshah Bhog for good quality rice. However, a wonderful opportunity awaits us by way of the name Patna Rice which has instant recognition the world over.

In popular global perception, Patna rice has a robust, long and narrow, opaque grain that keeps its shape well for curries. It has a mild fragrance and has been grown for millennia. Basmati rice is found referred to as a close relative of Patna Rice, having a nutty taste and a stronger aroma.

Botanical.com describes Carolina and Patna rice as “the most esteemed in England and the United States. The grain of the first is round and flat, and boils soft for puddings; the latter has a long and narrow grain that keeps its shape well for curries”

Website : http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/r/rice--15.html

Authentic “Patna” is considered the king of rice. It is described as “The most expensive long-grained Indian rice, aged for two years to enhance its fragrance and texture. Worth the extra money.”

Source: http://gourmetclub.signonsandiego.com/20030129-9999-rice.html

Westerners erroneously do not differentiate between Carolina Rice and Patna Rice and use the term interchangeably. Please see website :

http://www.harvestfields.ca/CookBooks/001/04/27.htm

American long-grain (which includes Carolina rice) has a somewhat bland flavour. The popularity could be due to the price and availability since long grain from India is rather rare and expensive. The situation should be considered analogous to Wine. While Wine from say Napa Valley is quite good, it is not quite the same as the wine from France.

Patna rice is considered the best for use with curries. (http://funkymunky.co.za/currytips.html)

The craving for genuine long grained rice with decent flavour that a westerner feels can be gauged from the question put up by an expatriate British in Thailand:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=44562

Observe the surprise of a gourmet when he finds the rice he is served is authentic Patna “It's really Patna!"

http://www.montrealfood.com/restos/bistroavenue.html

There are so many legends that exist around Patna rice that a nice story can be woven around it.

The earliest written reference to the rice grown near Patna is in the Buddhist literature at the time of Gautam Buddha himself. Rice gruel is referred to as offerings to Lord Buddha when he went around asking for daily alms. Reference can also be found about varieties of rice being superior and inferior quality.

There is reference to the rice from the region in the travelogue of Hiuen Tsang, the seventh century Chinese traveller to India. He spent considerable time at Nalanda. He was served a strain of Patna rice called Mahasali rice. He describes it as “grain was as large as a bean, and when cooked, was aromatic, and shining like no other rice”
Source : http://www.indiasite.com/bihar/nalanda.html

Yet another reference to the rice of Patna is in Ain –I-Akbari written by Abul Fazal, the court historian of Mughal king Akbar. He collected various strains of rice grown around Patna and reported that even if one grain of each strain was taken, it would fill a large vase.

Europeans took to the rice of the region in a big way in the seventeenth century. Fortunes of several merchants were built by dealing in Patna rice. The most celebrated is the case of William Fullarton of Skeldon UK. Having made his fortune by dealing in Patna Rice, he returned to the UK. He started a coal mining business in Scotland. He felt so obligated to Patna that he named the hamlet he built for his miners as Patna. To this day, this town in East Ayrshire, Scotland is called Patna.

Source: http://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/comser/my area/patna.asp

There was a town in US also which was called Patna but the name has now been changed. I have not been able to authenticate whether that also has a rice connection, but I suspect it would be so.

Since at one time, most of the rice sold in Europe came from this region, Patna Rice is also sometimes loosely used to mean any long grain aromatic rice.

Let me end with a poser: What can we as a community can do to unlock the value of this goldmine of a Geographic Indicator? Can we attempt to come up with an action plan?

Why My heart Bleeds this Fifty Sixth Republic Day (26 Jan 2006)

2007-04-22T20:23:00.000+05:30

I sit at home to watch the 56th Republic Day parade, I await patiently for the float from Bihar. Somebody had told me the newly formed government of Bihar so keen to showcase itself would be putting up a Chhath float. As I wait in vain for the elusive float, I am reminded of Rajkumar Shukla – the forgotten hero of India’s struggle for freedom. For those whom the name does not ring a bell, he was the peasant leader from Champaran who had requisitioned the help of Mahatma Gandhi to launch the struggle against the Indigo farmers. Even as the Mahatma emerged from that movement as the great mass leader of the subcontinent and Champaran became the very symbol of India’s freedom struggle, we as a nation chose to consign this fearless hero to the dustbin of history. No text book talks of him, there are no memorials for him; but for a very small group, nobody knows the role pioneering role he played in India’s freedom struggle.

The neglect meted out to Rajkumar Shukla, alas, symbolizes the neglect of Bihar since Independence. Look at the list of the Padma awardees and you would find Biharis rather conspicuous – by their absence.

In his book “Integration of Indian States”, VP Menon writing about the administrative challenges of the new nation, narrates how the robust Bihar administration was used for training the bureaucrats from other parts of India. In 1952, Prof Appleby had rated Bihar as the best administered state of India. Prince of Wales Medical College of Patna was among the first to start the post graduate medical education in India. Patna Science College was the best the country had to offer in Science education. Those early leads somehow appear to have sowed the seeds of petty politics at the central government level which has brought the state on its knees.

It started in a small way when the Agricultural University at PUSA near Samastipur was shifted to Delhi. When the credulous Bihari in the newly independent nation took this in his stride thinking it is for the national cause and did not protest, we soon we had the wily Dr Bidhan Roy outwitting the scholarly Sri Krishna Singh in snatching the IIT from Sindri to Kharagpur. Arguably the biggest body blow to the state was the ill conceived Freight Equalization Scheme.

Look at the priority of the central government and you would find the attention of the foreign ministry riveted with empathy for the pro democracy movement in Nepal; but deafeningly quiet about the plight of the Bihari peasants who have to bear the brunt of the annual floods as the Himalayan rivers thunder down to the plains every monsoon. It is a matter of public record that in each of the five year plans since independence, Bihar’s per capita share has been the lowest. What are not so well known are such sordid incidents of petty mindedness. To narrate just one incident, the late sixties was a period of political turbulence when Congress was loosing power to coalitions of socialists. In this period, when Karpoori Thakur wanted to start the Ganga Bridge project at Patna, the planning commission rejected it saying it had no economic justification!! It is another matter that when Bihar Govt anyway went ahead with it from its meager funds, it had the fastest payback for any infrastructure project that I know of. These shameless babus continue to draw their ill earned pension. Maybe they are reaping the reward for planning the backwardness of Bihar so perfectly!

To come back to the present, the area of Bihar had two of the three greatest seats of learning in ancient India – Nalanda and Vikramshila (the third being Taxila, now in Pakistan). Today it has no IIT, IIMs. no IIITs, no RECs, no central universities, no centre of higher learning for medical education, no CSIR laboratory, and no DRDO laboratory. Absolutely not even one centre of higher learning which is funded by the central government. And one thought it was the job of the government to invest in the less developed areas of the country.

Now there are reports that the central government is going to start four “National Institute of Science” in the country. Inevitably, not one of them is planned to be in Bihar.

Will it be too much to expect the central government to allocate one of them to Bihar this republic day so that Bihari sub-nationalism continues to breathe in synch with the Indian nationalism.

Open Source

2007-02-12T02:08:00.001+05:30

Careers in Mass Media

2007-02-12T02:01:00.000+05:30

Careers from HR perspective

2007-02-12T01:55:00.000+05:30

Career Advice for MBA aspirants

2007-02-12T01:47:00.000+05:30

Gauravshali Bihar

2007-01-24T09:04:00.000+05:30

Gauravshali Bihari' was launched by our Deputy Chief Minister, Sri S.K.Modi ji on 19th January at Hotel Maurya during the recently concluded NRB meet at Patna. Also we got Gauravshali Bihar T-shirt launched with the rich legacy of Bihar graphically printed in the form of the bodhi tree, deeply rooted in the soil and psyche of Bihar. The T shirt is based on the design from Mayank Krishna Ji..and has beautifully depicted what Bihar is all about.

We would like you all to read the book...and wear the T-shirt. The book contains articles on the people who brought glory to the state of Bihar and have enriched the live of millions across the globe. It covers the time span of almost 3000 years, from Viswamitra to Satendra Dubey.

The book was written by 21 eminent authors at various places in the country. And in order to support the economy of Bihar, this world class book was also printed in Patna (we were very determined about this). The book is dedicated to one and only example of undying human spirit & courage, conviction and resilience of Bihar in the form of Sri Dasrath Manjhi who cut open a 350 meters long mountain to make road thru it.

We have tried to bring together the hero's of our beloved state in this small effort of ours. We want us to know our history, our heritage, our legacy. Things that we had started to forget.
We want to rekindle our sub-nationalism, to be proud to be a Bihari.

It has been a memorable journey for us, researching about our mother land, and we feel nice that we could complete what we had set out to do.

But the real satisfaction will come only after you have read this book, and send us suggestions about how we can improve upon what we have just finished. We do look forward for your feedback, its invaluable to us,. to improve upon and polish what is our baby step towards highlighting the positives of this great state of ours...and along the way making the world aware of Bihar's contributions to the human society on a whole.

You can order the book & the T shirt by sending us a mail at order.gauravshalibihar@gmail.com, or by calling (91) (612) (6450916), out Patna Office number.

Launch of Gauravshali Bihar

2007-01-24T08:58:00.000+05:30

IT as a Career Choice

2007-01-17T10:16:00.000+05:30

This article was published in Times of India on 15th Jan 2007.

What kinds of students are best suited for IT courses?

The best thing about IT as a career option is that anyone can make a career out of it. The day when a guy had to write in assembler language for simple instruction and only IIT toppers joined computer science stream is now well and truly over. Today, it is open to a large number of people with a very wide variety of aptitude. The question is not so much what kind of students is suited for IT courses as much as what kind of an IT course suits one's aptitude and join that.

From the labs of IT firms where operating systems and systems software is written which are suited for the likes of engineering toppers to web site designing which is suited for artistes, a whole spectrum is available for people to choose from.

In this FAQ, we shall deal with jobs related to application programming in detail and others in brief.

Application Programming – the preferred segment for Indian middle classes

Let us focus on application programming, the fastest growing IT job segment in India and the current favourite of the Indian middle classes. For this segment, a typical IT pro is from among the thousands of engineering graduates coming out of the multitude of private engineering colleges of Karnataka, AP or Maharashtra. However, there are an equally large number joining after doing MCA courses from govt universities and doing as well if not better than the private engineering college walas.

Anyone having good analytical skill, logical thinking and with a creative bent of mind is suited for such IT courses. To be a good IT professional one needs to have a good aptitude for problem solving, willingness to learn and adapt to constant change. Good learning ability, process orientation and penchant for quality work can take one far. One can compensate for the lack of any formal degree by simply having these competencies and getting practical exposure to on job training.

IT career has various streams like system analyst, technical architect, software coding, application maintenance, among others. There are about 2 lacs jobs every year in this segment alone.

International Careers in IT and the thrills of the job of an IT Pro

Many of the IT companies abroad do not even ask for a formal degree in IT while hiring. However, formal education helps one to assimilate and organize ideas and add more process orientation and improve the quality of work. While Aptitude and Attitude are not related to any stream or does not require any formal education the skills can be built by different means like classroom training, crash courses, distance learning etc.

Some of the best icons of the IT industry don't even have a formal degree or dropped out of college.

One must also understand that it is fascinating work on cutting edge technologies, interaction will people from different cultures and places, globetrotting and fast paced life but behind all this, one needs to be really persevering, ready to toil and adapt to difficult situations to make a mark in the field of IT.

Technical Skills are going to be more important as Indian IT industry moves up the value chain. Basic data structure and algorithms knowledge is good for Product Companies but Services companies do not emphasize it much. Also as one moves up in the IT career one needs to have good people management skills and ability to handle diverse situations and multi-cultural team members. Technical ability helps one grow in the initial 1-4 years of the career but as one starts playing the role of team or module lead, ones ability to manage teams and meet expectations from various stakeholders becomes critical.

So once you decide the choose IT as a career, one need not just look at skills and competencies required to get into IT as a career option ,but also as a long term career choice which must be taken after analyzing one's interest and future of the Industry.

Do all courses involve mathematics?

Knowledge of I.Sc level mathematics is desirable for the IT pro type of job described above. However, there are many types of IT related jobs which require very little knowledge of mathematics. Some of the roles in IT do not require complex mathematical skill. IT career has various streams like software development, technical architect, application maintenance, voice based operation, package practices, research associates, quality, sales and marketing. Some of the streams like research require understanding of complex mathematical functions like Algebra, set-theory, calculus. For Application Programming, basic mathematics is always helpful for becoming a good programmer but it does not need advanced mathematics.

How does one choose a course?

Course selection requires a desired match of one's expectation, interest area and market/industry requirements. One needs understand the variables which will ensure right selection of courses. If one is pre disposed towards a particular domain like telecom, embedded systems, banking or product development then the course selection must be based on current industry requirements. However some of the courses like Java and .Net are mostly required by IT companies and one need not have niche interest areas to undertake these courses. Choosing a course just because someone likes it or there's a huge market demand but no personal interest could lead to faculty selection of course. It's important that a right balance exists.

What kinds of courses are available [ref Bihar...]

Various graduates, under graduate and masters levels programs are being offered by IGNOU, Patna University, and other Magadh university. We also have lot of courses offered by autonomous and deemed private universities through associates who conduct various IT related courses under the banner of different universities. Some of the details of these courses can be found at the link given below. http://gov.bih.nic.in/depts/HigherEducation/Invitation.htm

What is the scope... what are the jobs one can get... what sort of money [low end and high end..]

Scope of IT related jobs..

IT industry is witnessing a phenomenal growth in the last decade and the current trends are indicating a very robust growth at least for the next 4-5 years. We are witnessing the same kind of employment generation in IT as we have seen it in the field of agriculture in the agrarian society, manufacturing in the industrial society and now IT in the information society. One of the best things about IT industry is the varied and diverse talent pool required for development in various fields. So be it a technical writer, creative writer, design artists, research scientist or a gaming expert, the opportunities are multiple from diverse fields and background.

On what kind of jobs one can get..

Till last year most of the IT jobs were primarily offered to engineering graduates,BCA and MCA students of someone who has been trained in the IT domain or has some certifications. The situation is changing drastically now with the huge demands of IT professionals in India. This year Indian IT industry is going to generate around 7 lakhs new jobs and the current talent pool is inadequate to meet this huge requirement. So now we are also going to see B.sc, and M.sc graduates being employed in the IT industry for entry levels jobs. The starting compensation for an engineering graduate will range from 2.5 lakhs to 4 lakhs per annum at entry level Software engineer role.

How does IT fit into Medical field, Management field?

IT is an enabling tool for all the different career and industry streams, be it Agriculture or medicine, manufacturing or entertainment industry there's a huge demand for IT skilled workforce in different streams. The emergence of IT power has transformed the landscape in the fields of medicine research, bio technology, information management, financial trading, communication and infrastructure, banking and commerce. There's no part of Human life which has not been touched and transformed by the use of IT enabled services. Different fields of study have integrated use of IT as a means to bring greater precision, reliability, speed and efficiency in its operations and project execution. Infact we can assume that IT is a common thread which will find its prominence in each and every sector. So be in management or medicine IT services are critical lifeline which supports business and all related transactions and process.

Scientific Foresight 2006 - Day 1

2006-12-23T22:47:00.000+05:30

Hi All,

While a majority of world population is busy celebrating Christmas,a lot of young technology enthusiast had a chance to witness one of the most valuable scientific event of the year at Patna. Here is the highlights of Day 1 of Scientific Foresight 2006:

- We had more than 700 participants on Day 1 of the Event.
- The event was Inaugurated by Dr Anil Kumar S & T minister, Govt of Bihar.
- Function started Right on scheduled Time at 10.00AM
- Good contribution on presentation.
- The participants were enthusiastic about the event and this was evident from the presentations and the response it got from the audience.
- Total Submission exceeded 200 out of which 40 best presentations were selected for the event. Quite a few of them made it today and rest will be presented tomorrow.

There were a number of really outstanding presentations made by the eminent guests and the participants today and equally relevant presentations are slated to be presented tomorrow.

We would publish the details about these presentations as soon as we receive them from the 'The scientific fortnight' team.

We would like to congratulate all the people associated with this wonderful initiative and wish them all the best for tomorrow.

Have a good and safe holiday season.

Open Source - What is in it for Developers?

2006-12-16T19:25:00.001+05:30

In previous post we discussed What is Available in terms of tools and technologies which is open source. Also we discussed Where the World is Heading in terms of Open Source.

But then the question comes is what does it provide to the developer community? What is in store for developers?

1. An Opportunity to Harness their Skills. This gives a chance for a developer to utilize the skill they learnt in past. This is one of the best way to keep updated with the skill set we are not using full-time.

2. An Opportunity to be part of World Class Product / Software Team. Being an Open Source developer one an submit changes / bug fixes to an already established software like My SQL, Eclipse etc. After few successful commits (submission) they do get chance to work as part of the team, which is very difficult otherwise.

3. An Opportunity to Learn new Skills. Most of the developers take up Open Source projects as a way to learn new tools, technologies etc. This way they get chance to do some live project in the new skill-set rather than doing some dummy project.

4. An Opportunity to Do Something for the World rather than for living. Most of the Open Source developers do it outside their working hours. They don't get paid for this work and they do it just because they want to do it. Its something they do as a matter of their commitment and dedication towards the developer community not driven by the salary or any other thing.

In a nutshell, Working on Open source is a passion. We developers do it not for living but for our own satisfaction. It is purely driven by our zest to do something different.

Until Next Time.. :)

Open Source - What is Available?

2006-12-10T17:25:00.000+05:30

At times I have to face this question as What is available in Open Source World. People who dont know much about Open source ask what kind of Softwares I can find there? Initially when it all started there were not many softwares available as Open Source but today we have whole bunch of softwares available as open source.

Operating System:
Linux : Does not need any introduction.
JNode : A Java based Operating system. This is a work in progress and once completed will run the JVM upon boot. More information can be found at http://www.jnode.org/

Office Suite:
Star Office: One of the best alternative to Clumsy MS-Office. More information can be found at http://www.staroffice.org/

Dev Tools:
Eclipse : One of the Best Java IDE available today. Check it out at http://www.eclipse.org/

Free Pascal: The Pascal Compiler for Cross-Platform development. Visit http://freepascal.org/

Lazarus: The Open Source Delphi IDE Check it out at http://www.lazarus.org/

(R)DBMS:
MySQL : One of the best RDBMS available today. Check it out at http://www.mysql.com/

Application Server:
JBoss and TomCat are two most famous Application Servers in Developer Community.

Utilities:
DVDShrink is one of the utility to copy DVDs. Check it out at http://www.dvdshrink.com/

This is not the comprehensive list of Softwares available in this world. The list is very long and there are couple of sites which has lots of Open Source projects for one to look at and start participating. One such site is SourceForge.net.

Have a good time in the World of Open Source :) There is more for you to take from here than you can carry.

Until Next Time..:)

Scientific Foresight 2006

2006-12-03T14:57:00.000+05:30

A group of people representing Academia and Industry in India and USA, have come together to organize a symposium called “Scientific Foresight 2006” on 23rd and 24th of December 2006 at “Indira Gandhi Science Complex – Planetarium” in Patna. More information can be found at www.scientificforesight.org.

With support from One-Bihar group (A conglomerate of like minded individuals interested in development of Bihar), this is an effort to provide an impetus to the scientific research and development activities in the state and to bring in a focus towards academic excellence. This will also provide an awareness of career options available in India and abroad to the participating students. Electronics, Computer and Information technology are the major focus areas.

This event would present a platform to the scientific community of the state, particularly senior science and technology students to put forth their ideas and innovations, who can rightly be assessed and guided by a battery of qualified and established professionals. The event calls up on scientists, academicians, researchers, and students to participate in:

Research Paper Presentations,
Project Demonstrations,
Poster Presentations,
Panel Discussions.

This event will be a landmark event and the forum will play a vital role in development of electronics, computer and Information technology related activities, and awareness among students, academia and the government.

People from outside India will be participating in presentations and question-answer sessions through real time video conferencing. The entire proceedings will be available online through Internet web casting.

The event aims at sending out a clear message about Biharis being at par with the technology know-how and its applications. The idea is to show case the capital of qualified human resources Bihar has. This aims towards generating more awareness among the academic bodies and student communities about technology domains and opportunity areas. At the same time it will be a confidence-building step for industry and investors.

People from almost all engineering and major science colleges in Bihar and Jharkhand, having Electronics or Computer science in curriculum are participating in the event.

The event has support from Hindustan Himes as media associate. IEEE and NASSCOM are likely to be joining.

Support Needed:
We need more popular participations, and right people to come forward for presentations. Please suggest popular and influential profiles in business and technology domain to be invited for talks and discussions.

We need sponsors and representatives from industry. People working in various organizations can also come in their individual capacities. This will work in inspiring faculty members and students, and help them in getting right information and approach.

We need to make it more popular so that it reaches to the right people in industry and government corridors. This will also help in improving the image of our beloved state, Bihar.

Contact:
Please forward your valuable feedbacks to scientificforesight@gmail.com or pramraj@gmail.com.

Let us join hands and make it a great success.

Open Source - Where the World is Heading?

2006-12-02T19:29:00.000+05:30

Last week I discussed about the Why we need Open Source touching various aspects of Open-Source softwares. This week we will discuss where the world is heading to in terms of Open Source.

Recently there've been many activities in the IT Industry especially companies working on Open-Source softwares.

1. More and more Companies are moving to Open Source Softwares. There is a saying in IT Industry "Check for Open Source, Before you Build it". These days more and more companies are following this principle. They look for open source software which meets their requirement before they decide to build it.

2. Expanding Domains: Earlier Open Source were limited to utilities, components etc. But these days almost any kind of software is available as open source. At times the number of softwares are so many that one got to choose which one to go for and which one meets the requirement most. Isn't that a good thing to be :)

3. Increased Reliability: The open source softwares are more reliable these days than the Properitory softwares. The big example is more and more companies adopting MySQL database over Oracle, MS SQL Server etc. The usage of open source is not a scare anymore.

4. Adopted by big Corps: Eclipse project is adopted by IBM and they use the eclipse for their flagship product WebSphere Application Developer Studio. Eclipse project which is an open source project is funded by IBM is one of the best and most liked Java IDE today.

5. Becoming Popular Choice: It was couple of weeks back at our workplace we were discussing about a codec to stream media files over internet and we came across an Open Source software which is much more powerful than any other licensed software we evaluated. Also for all the real-time and mission critical applications we are using Unix and MySQL database in our global server network. We are not the only one. There are many companies around the globe who are looking at Open Source as their option when it comes to choosing a software.

Next week we will discuss about what is available in this open source world. Though the list is very long, I will put my best effort to give a snapshot of what is available.

Until Next Time...:)

Hindustan Times coverage of One Bihar initiative

2006-11-30T23:56:00.000+05:30

HT coverage in its Patna city 'Short Takes' section, dtd. 28th Oct'06

Open Source - Why Open Source?

2006-11-25T21:35:00.000+05:30

Last week I touched upon the Introduction of Open Source. We discussed what Open Source Software is all about. This week in continuation to the same we will talk about why do we need open source.

Personally when I am working on a Software Project the Time is the most critical factor there. The time

To Delivery
To implement a new Change Request
To Test

and many other factors which affect project schedule. While doing that we as a project team have to choose between whether to go for a properitory solution or an equivalent open source solution. While Properitory solution works in few cases well, Open source takes precedence most of the time. There are various reasons we choose open source as our way to go:

1. Choice of Vendors: Today there are many development teams develop similar kind of utilities, component, softwares etc. So when we find that one software or component is not meeting our requirement we always have an option to try out other one.

2. No Hidden Agenda or Features: Rarely I came across an open source software which has some sort of hidden agendas or features. Privacy is the bigger concern in the development and user community these days. The open source softwares have nothing to hide and one can easily find if there are any hidden code in the system. Normally there are none and if they are, they are well documented.

3. Access to Source Code: Every developer has a wish to see the source code which performs a complex operation or excutes in an efficient way. In open source we are supplied with the source code. So one has complete access to the source code and can always

4. Free to Customize: More often than not we come across a software component which meets 90% of our requirement but requires some sort of customization. Since the source code is supplied with an Open source software, we can easily customize it as per our needs. The only thing we need to keep in mind not to forget giving credit to the original author. The GPL (GNU Public License) asks us to give the original author the credit for the work they've done. See its so easy :)

5. Fast Turnaround time: If the software component is having some bug then one can file the bug report in their bug tracking system. Most of the time the patch is made available within a week or so. As many people work in a team and they are so passionate about their work (Open Source) that they take the bugs logged as top priority and make the fix available overnight (at times). I bet one can't expect a fast response time like that from a properitory software vendor.

There are quite a few reasons why we go for open source softare. In next Blog we will discuss where the world is heading in relation to Open Source.

Until next Time..:)

Open Source - An Introduction

2006-11-18T17:21:00.000+05:30

I am sure many of the experience IT professionals are familiar with what the Open source but there is still a majority of Computer Enthusiasts who are not very familiar with the Open Source Concept/philosophy. In this series of Blog on Open Source I will be giving a brief overview of what the Open Source Philosophy and Software is All about.

In this blog, I'm going to write about what the Open Source is which will be followed by few more blogs on Open Source and later will take to the world of Open Source:

Open Source is:

Source Code available with Working Software. So we not only get the executable but also the Code so that if required we can build our own executables.
Available at No Cost to the user. This does not cost a penny to the user. All binaries and code are available for free.
One can Modify the code as per their requirement and nobody raises a finger on it. But it is reccomended that if you modify the original source code, give some credits to the original author as a gesture of courtsey.
No Licensing Agreement Required. GNU Public license which talks about giving credit to the original author and is very simple to follow. No complex legal issues involved.
User can be part of Development team too. If you can come out with new ideas, fix the existing bugs, that's all it takes to rub shoulders with the developers who created the software originally.

We will discuss more on open source in coming blogs.

Until Next Time...:)

One Bihar Shines

2006-11-04T12:51:00.000+05:30

The festival session in Bihar saw an initiative of a new kind when a few Biharis from across the world converged in Patna to demonstrate the power of knowledge and collaboration in a flat world.

For the first time, students from Patna saw a team of committed and experienced professionals from world's well known organizations and having collective expertise in diverse areas ranging from management to technology coming on a single platform under the One Bihar Initiative. "A New Awakening" was palpable as the sons of the soils came together for sharing their experience of corporate worlds and giving a realistic picture of various career options like IT, Management, Media.

The event was organized in B N College Seminar hall and it was kick started with the inaugural speech of Dr Sukhda Prasad, Principal Magadh Mahila College, who shared her thoughts on the untapped talent pool which Bihar has. She stressed the fact that despite the best of Human Resource talent available in the state, Bihar has not been able to develop up to its true potential. She was enthused by the kind of commitment which the One Bihar team has shown in giving back in terms of helping the students to achieve the potential in the best possible way. Dr. Ramesh Prasad, Principal BN College, also graced the occasion. The One Bihar team acknowledged and thanked him for his kind support.

The first presentation of the seminar was on Careers from Human resource perspective by Ajit Chouhan from Infosys HRD team. He shared some facts and analysis on how our talent pool has not been able to keep pace with the growing demand of IT and ITES professional. He stressed the fact that only 25 % of the total engineering graduates in India are employable. The talent crunch is likely to be serious bottleneck in the growth of Indian economy and the ITES services in the country. And here students from Bihar can tap the opportunity.

The next presentation was on various options available for Management students and this was jointly conducted by Atul Kumar, an IIM Ahmadabad Alumnus, Mayank Krishna, an alumnus of IMT, Ghaziabad, and Rajiv Vidyarthi, an alumnus of IIM Lucknow. The interaction was focused on the different aspects of Management education, the types of institutes, on factors which one must weigh before opting for management as a career. A realistic perspective with focus on practical aspects of management education was discussed in detail. They also spoke about the different streams of management such as finance, marketing and Information systems with inputs on real life job scenarios and practical applications. The team shared its learning as professional working in different organizations and exhorted students to focus on their strengths and work around their weaknesses in their endeavour to strive for excellence.

Samir Mishra, an IT consultant based in Australia, spoke on the various options of Higher Studies which were available for students who intended to go abroad. He spoke about the various processes and steps involved for getting into the top institutions outside India. Samir shared his experience of getting the requisite clearance and his academic experience in Australia. He also spoke about the new trends like open source and usage of IT in acquiring the right information for seeking career opportunities aboard.

A presentation on career opportunities Media was presented by Frank Krishner. The presentation was contributed by Sweta Singh, Program Coordinator with Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication. The talk was focused around the opportunities which media and mass communication provides to the students. Students were informed about the different course and institutes which are offering these vocational courses. Frank used his journalistic experience to demonstrated the realistic aspect of a career in journalism.

Chandan Singh from the One Bihar team and a key proponent of the Patna rice project shared the experience of the group which worked as a virtual team from all over the world .Chandan with other members shared the experience of working as 24*7 team for this event organized under the One Bihar platform. Rahul Barnwal of Seimen's Power, anchored the event with great aplomb. The event was also addressed by Dr. P C Verma, an economist and professor of Patna University. He gave his thumbs up to the new initiative where people of Bihar were coming back to help their fellow Biharis in achieving career objectives. He also stressed on the need for sharing their corporate experience with institutions in Bihar to create more market and industry friendly academic atmosphere in Bihar.

After the program, the charged up students interacted individually with members of the One Bihar team and discussed their individual queries, doubts, and any other thing that was on their mind related to career. The One Bihar team also committed to students that they could seek their help anytime in future through e-mail ( one.bihar@gmail.com) and they would be glad to help students with their career related queries.

One Bihar:A New Awakening

2006-11-04T12:49:00.000+05:30

Bihar – our motherland – has gone through a very difficult phase in last few decades/centuries. We have moved from the glorious days of being at the heart of the ancient Indian Civilization, Education & Economy to periphery significance. While Biharis have done exceedingly well in traditional careers like Civil Services (IAS/IFS/IPS), Banking, Medical & Engineering, and recently Management related careers, Bihar hasn’t seen many opportunities within Bihar in non-Govt. careers. As a result, in the last 30-40 years, we have seen Biharis migrate across Globe and within India for education, career and other reasons.

We might be spread across world or remote corners of world but our hearts still lie in our motherland. Wherever we are, we miss the warmth of our Bihari culture and regret the untapped potential of Bihar’s Talent Pool and resulting under-development of our motherland. We do pay occasional visits to meet our families, for festivals, social occasions etc. but feel that we can and should do more. No matter how well we do in our personal careers & life, we will never feel proud unless and until Bihar – our “extended family” – does well.

Bihar has to change for the better and needs some payback from it sons & daughters. To create awareness towards this purpose, there are various online groups, which are active in different areas. Some of the online groups on yahoo are Bihari, Coolbihari, Biharbrains, WorldBihariForum, NonResidentBiharis, BiharisInMedia, Golghar and many more on Orkut.

Between Diwali & Chath many of the non-resident Biharis will converge in Bihar from across India and world. They have planned an informal career seminar in Patna with help from all online & offline groups. Primary agenda is to provide an opportunity for students of +2 and higher level to get some insights from people who are already in Industry and to provide an opportunity to ask career questions in an informal and friendly setting. Depending on response to this initiative, we can make it a half-yearly or yearly event on a grand scale. We also plan to come up with an online discussion forum so that students have access to experts from across the Globe on a real time basis.

Venue: B N College, Patna Date: 25-October-2006

Agenda

10:00 - 10:15 Introduction and What the whole event is all about
10:15 - 10:45 New Career Paths from HR Perspective
10:45 - 11:30 Career Paths in Management / CAT-XLRI-ISB and beyond
11:30 - 12:00 Higher Studies options abroad
12:00 - 12:30 Careers in Media and Mass Communication
12:30 - 13:00 Open Source Software Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
13:00 - 13:10 Introduction to the Career Brochure prepared by Bihari Group
13:10 - 13:15 Closing Note
13:15 - 14:00 One to One Interaction with Students
14:00 Wind – up

Look forward to an invigorating day with you!

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Profile of the One Bihar Team

Ajit Chouhan: Ajit is working as Business Partner-HR with Infosys Technologies Limited in Mysore. Ajit has a Post Graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management from XLRI and also has a Master’s degree in PMIR from Patna University. He is one of the founder members of the core group of Patna Rice Project. Ajit's expertise lies in Performance Management, Career Development, Talent Retention, and Human Resource Information Systems. Ajit is owner of the Cool Bihari group and also Cool Bihari blog ,the first blog dedicated to Bihar. Ajit is a member of Patna University PMIR Alumni Group, and XLRI Alumni Network. He is the owner of an International HR group, HR Funda, having over 800 members from HR Fraternity. He also writes an HR focused blog, HR Funda .He hosts “The Job Shop” that is dedicated to listing of HR opening in India. Ajit is also involved with Local Bihar level NGO’s which are actively working with destitute children’s and slum dwellers.

Atul Kumar: Atul is AVP at Genpact located in Danbury, CT. Atul did his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Prior to his current role, Atul served in various roles with GE Commercial Finance, and GE Capital International Services. He has significant work experience in Europe. He is one of the founder members of the core group of Patna Rice Project. Atul is a member of World Affairs Forum, IIMUSA and IIMA and various Bihari groups including AN College Patna Alumni group. He is also associated with Bihar and Patna focused developmental/education projects. Atul also blogs at www.atultech.blogspot.com

Chandan : Chandan is working for Tiger conservation project with WWF and Greenpower Canada. He is presently based in Patna.

Mayank Krishna: Mayank is Sales Manager at Pidilite Industries Limited. He did MBA from IMT Ghaziabad. He is one of the founder members of the core group of Patna Rice Project. He was awarded CRISIL Young Thought Leader award in 2003. Mayank is a prolific writer and has some published articles in publications like The Economic Times, Times of India, Indiainfoline, etc. He also writes a business management blog, Logical String, at http://www.mayankkrishna.blogspot.com/. He is an active member of the Cool Bihari group.

Rahul Kumar Barnwal: Rahul is Manager at Siemens Power Engineering Limited in Gurgaon. Prior to his current role, Rahul served as Executive Engineer at Larsen & Tourbo Limited in Baroda. Rahul has a B Tech from NIT, Surat and his core expertise includes Power Plant Engineering co-ordination & management. Rahul is one of the founder members of the core group of Patna Rice Project.

Rajiv Vidyarthi: Rajiv is a senior consultant with Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd. Rajiv completed his B Tech from IIT Delhi and MBA from IIM Lucknow. Rajiv's expertise includes business analysis, proposal preparation, project bidding, market research and new product development. Rajiv is a moderator and core group member of the largest Bihar based groups "Bihari".

Saroj Kumar: Saroj is Senior Consultant at Satyam Computers located in Fremont, CA. Saroj attended Regional Engineering College, Trichy where he studied Production Engineering and earned a Bachelors degree. Saroj is moderator of the Bihari group. Web:http://bihariworld.blogspot.com/

Samir Misra: Samir is with IBS SafeWorld and based out of Australia. Samir has over 10 years of experience in IT and Technology solution in reputed organizations like Cognizant Technology Solutions, PSI Data Systems Limited, iGate Global Solutions, etc. Samir is a member of various groups like IT Pro Australia, Bihari, Bihar Brains, Patna Rice.org and Cool Bihari group. Samir is a Master’s in Computer Science from IGNOU. He blogs at www.semanticdb.blogspot.com.

Sweta Singh: Sweta is Program Coordinator with Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication New Delhi. She is an alumni of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. She has worked as reporter with Doordarshan News and Aaj Tak in New Delhi. She is also the moderator of a couple of online groups, the most active being the “biharis in media” group on Yahoo.

Thakur Vikas Sinha: Thakur Vikas is a Sr. VP at Polaris Software based out of Mumbai. He in an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur and B Tech from IT BHU. Prior to his current profile, he has served in senior level position in reputed IT companies like Mphasis, and CMC Ltd. He is one of the founder members of the core group of Patna Rice Project and currently its chairman. He is a member of Bihari Org. He is a prolific writer on Bihar related issues and his articles are regularly published on the Patna Daily (http://www.patnadaily.com/) and the Cool Bihari Blog (www.coolbihari.blogspot.com).

Hindustan on One Bihar

2006-11-04T12:32:00.000+05:30

Times of India on One bihar

2006-11-04T12:26:00.000+05:30

Career seminar pictures.

2006-11-02T04:43:00.000+05:30

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

One Bihar.. a new awakening.

2006-11-02T02:15:00.000+05:30

First career conference held at B N Collage, Patna on 25th Oct 2006