Develop Bihar mane ka!!! Development means what? Or, What is development? Sorry I am new here, but I guess we should first have a clarity on this question itself. Is it 'growth rate’? Ask Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh and our own samajwadi CM, Nitishji, they are all not just happy with the growth rate rate of the economy, but this seems to be one point agenda of the Indian state at the moment. Keeping the rate high, reaching back to 9% and touching double digit as soon as possible. This years union budget also makes this holy goal as its main objective.
But what about the people! And the answer now days is we are talking about the inclusive growth. We seem to have admitted that growth so far has not been inclusive. So why are we still crazy about it.
Big dams, wide roads, big factories, big cities, multiplexes, shopping malls, and a consumer culture... This is what we have with high rates of growth. And we also have unemployment, poverty, starvations, urban slums, farmers’ suicides, devastation of our forests, water and land, pollution, climate change...
Can we think of people, men, women and children and trust tehir abilities. Instead of corporations, and engineers, managers, economists, if we let the people lead the development it would be perhaps more 'inclusive' than the so called inclusive growth. We have hopes in panchayats, but the money and the imagination of all big things in development have really corrupted the minds of our elected representatives in panchayats. And, even if a few of them think about people and their development, the BDOs, the gram sevaks, the engineers, the MLAs and MPs would not let them work with honesty. We have more than half of women mukhiyas in Bihar today and a sizable number of mukhiyas are from the marginalized communities like dalits, OBCs and minorities. Can they work honestly for the development and not growth. Would our babu log, our netaji log and our police let them work honestly? Or have they been corrupted already by the greed of money and imagination of all big-big development and growth.
Nesar
