Gentlemen, to your left is Bihar; and to your right is Jharkhand. (The case for smaller states).
This is an interesting sidelight of my trip to Jharkand and Bihar. On the last day of the trip, we drove from Jharkhand’s Deogarh district (where I was staying) to Banka district in Bihar. As we started the journey, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the narrow, straight road was in very good shape. Conditioned by my recent experience with rural roads in Western Orissa, I had anticipated a rough, bumpy ride, but this was different.
The first hour was wonderfully smooth…..until we reached Bihar!
The same straight road suddenly turned unbelievably pot-holed, and I could not but resist capturing this contrast, for posterity.
Apart from the superior condition of roads, I also saw and heard other evidence in Jharkhand that the government machinery does deliver results. One such example was the Dairy initiative being run by the Tribal Welfare Council which grants a shed and two cows to tribal families, thereby enabling them to earn an additional income of over Rs 1000/- p.m.
Notwithstanding political jugglery and the usual kinds of administrative corruption, Jharkhand seems to be delivering better governance than its elder sibling, Bihar.
Couple of years ago, my friend Shankkar Aiyar (Managing Editor, India Today) did a path-breaking feature on India’s 100 most-backward districts, and asked whether smaller states were the answer. He wrote, “In recent times, politicians such as Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and former finance minister P. Chidambaram have argued passionately to reorganize states in smaller sizes so that those left behind in the maze of development can be helped……. But will creation of smaller states help? On paper it seems so, since smaller states have done better. But the acid test would be a study of Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand. The jury is still out on that”.
In my view, the verdict seems clear. Jharkhand has made progress beyond what Bihar offered. Unless Nitish Kumar does a brilliant job, and Madhu Koda messes things up, it is likely that the junior sibling will keep moving ahead.
