Elections will test if the people of Bihar have moved on from the politics of caste, N K Singh, former bureaucrat and JD(U) member in the Rajya Sabha, tells Saubhadra Chatterji
Many believe the ongoing elections in Bihar will determine if the state has adopted the politics of development or still wants to vote along caste lines.
It will be a laboratory which will test the changes in the state’s electoral psyche, if the voters have made a transition to the new Bihar. Old Bihar had a highly-stratified social order and loyalty was based on caste considerations. The new Bihar has left behind that stratified order and the average psyche has changed. The new Bihar wants better life, education, health services and roads. It wants not an entitlement-driven but a performance-driven government. The election will test if Bihar is coming out of that old, feudal agrarian economy to the new market-driven economy.
From that point of view, the campaigns of Lalu Yadav and Ramvilas Paswan are still largely appealing to the old Bihar. Lalu is still looking at a specific vote bank, perhaps the earlier combination of Muslims and Yadavs, while Paswan is eyeing a larger group of schedule castes. Nitish Kumar is seeking votes on the basis of substantial fulfillment of electoral promises he made during the 2005 Assembly and the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, to give a better life to the average Bihari and a more optimistic future.
Your government has failed to attract private investments, thus creating very few job opportunities.
Yes, you don’t see big-ticket private investments in Bihar. The reason lies in the economic liberalisation by Manmohan Singh (who was then the finance minister) in the early 1990s. As the economy was opened up, private investments bypassed poorly-governed states. Actually, the divide between the rich and the poor, urban and rural India got wider. When I was doing planning for Bihar as the head of the state’s planning board, it was clear to me that private investments would remain shy of coming to Bihar for some time. The initial kick to restart the economy has to come through public investments. The public investment has risen from around Rs 4,000 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 21,000 crore last year. Within this, there has been a 2.5 times increase in the Plan outlay. This has resulted in Bihar growing over 12 per cent on an average over the last five years. Even though we have not met our population stabilisation targets, this growth has resulted in an almost eight per cent increase in the average income. This has led to economic resurgence and an increase in purchasing power of the masses. There is a housing boom in Bihar. Also, people are purchasing more consumer durables. Agriculture has grown seven per cent. So, there has been all-round growth to Bihar.
These changes have led to implementation of spending decisions that people were earlier postponing — like building/repairing a house or buying a car. The aggregate micro-level decisions have changed the picture. But I am confident that in the next five years, large private investments will come.
What gives you this confidence?
There are three-four reasons. Private investments follow improved infrastructure. In Bihar, the bulk of infrastructure is in place. Second, it also follows what the Japanese call hard instincts. Onkar Singh of Apollo tyres told me 10 days ago that was expanding in Bihar. Anand Mahindra told me that Bihar is the the fastest-growing market for Scorpio. The Unilever chairman tells me the company finds Bihar as a growing market. Sunil Mittal (Bharti chairman) said a huge number of his sales were in Bihar. I told him that is because Biharis talk a lot (laughs). The fact remains that the captains of industry feel there is a momentum and this will bring private investments in Bihar.
I also think the private players are waiting to see if this change in Bihar is a flash in the pan or sustainable. If they see Nitish Kumar returning to power, they will undoubtedly come with big-ticket investments.
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But you need more power to support economic growth and more industries. At present, Bihar has a severe power shortage.
I can understand people playing politics of development but I feel sad to see people playing politics with development. I say this with a lot of remorse because I accompanied the chief minister several times in meetings with top central government decision-makers to sort out the issue of coal linkages for power plants. We have several good proposals, both from the private and the public sector. The Goenkas of Kolkata, for example, want to set up a mega power plant, but we need coal for that. During bifurcation of Bihar, most power plants went to Jharkhand. We will aggressively pursue this issue with the central government as soon as the new government is formed.
The same happened with the ethanol industry. There were a number of proposals but the Centre stopped us from setting up ethanol plants. They imposed a condition that Bihar must first produce sugar. This affected us badly as sugar production was going down and ethanol production was on the rise. We passed an Act but its ratification is being held up by the central government. But we still have the objective of 10 per cent growth for the next 10 years.
But how will you overcome the power shortage if the Centre continues to deny coal linkages?
We must aggressively sign power purchase agreements with other states. We are looking at all new power installations which are coming up. For the government, the cost of costly power will be less than the cost of having no power. Second, I would urge the Bihar government to look at some of the old agreements related to central PSUs producing power in Bihar. Earlier, the government didn’t demand a larger share of power from these units, but now we need to get our dues as we provide many basic infrastructure facilities. The expansion of Muzaffarpur and Barauni thermal power stations should be completed at the earliest. Renewable energy sources will be tapped.
But the Congress leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are accusing your government of shoddy implementation of the schemes. They say never before has Bihar got so much money from the Centre and that you are unable to spend the money properly.
I am sorry but central funds are not a largesse. The state has a constitutional right and has not been given anything more than that. The allegations of improper use of funds or the claim that most of these works are done through the central funds is misleading. The Congress should not forget that we live in fiscal federalism and devolution of funds to the states is methodically determined. In fact, I have a serious charge against the Centre that during the past five-six years, it has tried to destroy this fiscal federalism and tried to impose its schemes on the states.
The Centre should first look at its own projects that have been delayed and are leading to huge cost overruns. We never say everything is fine in Bihar. A lot needs to be done and there are serious challenges ahead of us.