Management Institute at Patna - A dream becomes reality

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

The glue of culture

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.

No offence meant

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

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

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.

A very humane Chief Minister

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

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.