Now Bihar turns its gaze: towards its towns!
Patna: the Gandhian quote ‘India lives in its villages’ is now obviously not applicable to the country any more with larger villages acquiring urban characteristics and the small towns turning into neglected slums. This is especially true for Bihar, a society with an inbuilt cultural bias in favour of the rustic. Verily, the towns of Bihar nowhere figured in this village-oriented thinking best represented by Laloo Yadav whose social vision if anything favoured ‘ruralization’ of even the biggest towns in Bihar. The current government’s focus on urban planning in recent times represents a cultural shift and a growing concern for the regulation of urban chaos and indifferent lifestyle associated with Bihar towns which seemed to carry the worst traits of both the village and the city.
Now the thinking in the government circles has made a radical shift!
This is why the latest reports that the urban development department of the Bihar government has now brought together a development plan for 28 towns of Bihar is especially welcome. Along with this the government has also formulated a Bihar State Slum Policy-2011 document aiming to provide basic civic amenities the slums of Bihar. The amenities included are proper roads, community water supply, sewage clean-up, toilets, street lighting, storm water drainage, collection and disposal of solid waste.
Speaking on the occasion, state urban development department minister Prem Kumar told the press ‘Bihar is probably the first state in the country, which has its official slum policy that defines future strategies for slum improvement and poverty alleviation. The policy has been developed with regional consultation from stakeholders like elected representatives, officials of urban local bodies and community groups in the slums.’ The minister also added ‘In the first stage of implementation of the policy, we would issue tenders for development of total 56 slums in 28 cities in January next year.’
Thus far a proposal to develop 56 slums in 28 towns has been finalised and tenders would be floated soon to invite bidders for these projects. Laying down the available data, the minister said that there are 1845 slums within 139 urban municipal bodies in the state. In the second phase the state government has decided to develop 500 urban slums.
A significant announcement with implications for small traders and the state of urban traffic came when the minister mentioned the problem of unregulated hawking at public places. The state government will soon finalize a vendor policy and a pilot project will be launched in Patna and Begusarai. Along with this a policy on maintenance of public parks was under preparation and the same will be announced soon