Law and order, power top list of challenges for new government
“Law and order will be our biggest priority if we come to power,” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Modi has said. “It has to be the priority of any government.”
Modi’s reference point, naturally, is the period when he and Nitish Kumar ruled Bihar. “Law and order is our USP. People are deeply disturbed that the same jungle raj that prevailed when RJD was in power will return if the grand alliance is voted to power.”
The sentiment has been echoed elsewhere in this city, too. “I was in college 10 years ago and went to driving school. Obviously, you had to go to the outskirts to avoid the traffic on Patna roads. If I returned late in the evening, my mother scolded me bitterly. Staying out after dark was prohibited,” says a local reporter. He cites an incident when the brother of his domestic help was abducted in the village. “They asked for a ransom of ~3 lakh. After a week, they released him for ~2,500. You could contract a murder by paying ~500,” he adds.
But that isn’t the only priority of a new government in Bihar. While roads have been built, power continues to be an issue. Sushil Modi says in Bihar, it is a bitter reality that land is hard to get. “We have to consider what to do. It is true that land acquisition is difficult. In that situation, should we reinvent the wheel by putting up our own power plants? Or should we simply buy power, even if it means paying more?” He adds there could be separate agricultural and domestic power feeders with different payment slabs. After all, a farmer doesn’t need water 24 hours a day. And, the Gramjyoti Yojana provides limited power 24x7, he says.
With 80 per cent of the state’s population engaged in agriculture, Modi says any government will have to find ways of augmenting income in this sector. This involves building food parks, providing health and education, and focusing on the agrarian reality. The crises before the state are manifold. The first is disparity between contract teachers and teachers employed by the state government. To overcome a shortage of teachers, the Nitish Kumar-Sushil Modi government had empowered panchayats to employ teachers. However, the disparity between in the incomes of state government teachers and
panchayat teachers is about ~20,000 a month. Now, contract teachers are demanding parity. And, because of the huge scale of employment, the village teacher is more or less the fulcrum of all economic, social and political activity in the village. A senior bureaucrat in the state government said regardless of the colour of the government coming to power, it will have to adopt a development model that was peculiarly Bihari. “We will never have big-ticket industry; we cannot compete with other states that are way ahead of us in infrastructural development. So, what can the government do? It must develop skills; it must develop tourism and promote Bihar as a knowledge hub. That means developing educational opportunities, teaching new things and preparing Biharis to go outside the state and grab jobs. What a Bihari should be able to do is what Indians do when they go abroad — take up jobs that locals are unwilling or unable to do.”
He endorses Sushil Modi’s view that Bihar need not produce electricity when it can buy it. “Our cost of production (of electricity) will have all kinds of hidden components such as the prohibitive cost of land. The cost of delivery is also very high. Private sector power is much cheaper.”
There are several liabilities. The state is yet to pay compensation to those from whom land was acquired for power plants; the sum could stand at ~1,000 crore. The liability on account of wages to teachers could run into lakhs of crores.
Several bureaucrats worry about the implications of the land acquisition law. “Nobody wants to sell their land. And, getting consent is very difficult. So, if we want industrialisation, it could only be on the basis of sectors that don’t need huge tracts of land, such as IT or electronics manufacturing. I don’t think Bihar could ever think of big manufacturing plants,” says a bureaucrat.
He adds Bihar needs more bridges over the Ganga. The Gaya bridge, built in 1982, has run its course and has several engineering flaws. But, he says, the first thing to do is change the way the state and the bureaucracy think. He cites the example of a major industrial house that had planned to set up a 1,000-Mw power plant in the state. After extensive research and several hundred manhours, officials from the company met the chief minister, who assured them their project would be cleared. “To show their seriousness, they even prepared a bid document. But the state bureaucracy thought ‘why get into trouble’? The project was given to NTPC. It is still hanging. The private sector investor wasn’t even informed.”
“People fear that the same jungle raj that prevailed when RJD was in power will return if the grand alliance is voted to power”
SUSHIL MODI
BJP leader