Dev N Pathak
Dear home: Letters from an NRB
Naya Bihar-A Note on the debatable model of Development
By Dev N Pathak
As an ordinary individual in Bihar, I am fond of Nitish Kumar’s politics. He is politically shrewd; he is personally suave; he is instinctively sober; he is no- nonsense man; he is interested in working; he wants his mandarin to be efficient and proactive; he does not like the notoriously corrupt and callous babudom; he wants to ensure that his people enjoy the luxury of unhindered electricity supply; he is uncomfortable with the feudal-mafia-contractor regime. So on so forth. A huge number of us in Bihar can emit nice feelings about Nitish ji. We have hope because we have him at the helm of affairs. And perhaps this is why a huge number of us in Bihar do not shy away from expressing our discontent. We know that Nitish ji is susceptible to ethical dilemma, and thereby rethinking his actions, which is so rare of Indian politicians. For, we suffered a serious lack of such prerequisites in earlier regimes for decades in the past. Mishra and Yadawas rendered us terribly hapless. So we value Nitish ji. And thus we critique his actions.
When the reports of the cases of fishy deals, of land allotments to might and selectively bright, hogged media-scape, as usual our antenna received only the reported notion of corruption. The bottomline- they are corrupt too. Or for that matter, when we hear of the police brutality in Forbesganj, we get nothing other than a usual feeling that Bihar is no exception as far as anit-people policy is concerned. The new forms of corruption is global, hence is has local occurrence. The anti-people executions of the state has been pan-Indian, hence it has local occurrence. While this reasoning helps in understanding the problems, they also limit the same. To put simply, it is restricted to formalism. The forms of corruption or state sponsored violence become more important than a deeper truth. The structural causal factors underneath the model of development are reneged hereby. The conceptual tools that the state use in perceiving development and the same that ‘we the people’ of Bihar use in understanding the cases of corruption or state repression of agitations, are similar and flawed. Neither comes to term with the very paradigm that is anti-people and thus agent perpetuator of unethical practices.
It is the same model of development about which a badly made film, though awarded the best film in Hindi for the year 2010 by the Government of India, Do Dooni Char (two into two makes four) speaks of critically. In the worst possible way of story-telling, with a single-point agenda of making people laugh, the film tries to recreate the effect of another such erroneous attempt Peepli Live. The concern in these films were not really to tell a tale of the anti-people implications of the model of development. It was more to get fun out of the misery of the victims than make sense of the seriousness of the issue. It was aimed at packaging the characters in salable forms for the consumption of the classes of audience. However, by the very necessity to tell even the flawed tale, the background of these cinematic narratives have a moot point on the model of development. The latter is too dominant today to be questioned. Who in Bihar will hate a shopping mall, after all!!
Very recently a kin from Bihar, like a thousands or more who board the trains to and fro, came to Delhi for some odd reason. He desired to visit a mall. His desire (to be read with a capital D) must be considered a slice of the contemporary aspirations of people from Bihar. And upon visit, his astonishment found weird expressions as if he were right in the middle of heaven. His continuous refrain all the while was- Biharo mei hoga, jaldi hi hoga, Nitish ji kar rahe hain (this will be in Binhar too, and very soon, as Nitish Kumar is already upto it)!
A little more revealing kind of expression was when I came across a parent who recently accompanied their daughter to Delhi. The daughter was to get enrolled in a college. On my curiosity as to why Delhi colleges have become such an absolute thing for the well-to-do parents and their highly scoring children in Bihar, the parents asserted in unison- Mahol achcha hai (the surrounding over here in the colleges of Delhi University and in Delhi is compatible for the growth of the students).
I was not very surprised to see the advertisement of a school in a relatively bigger city of Bihar. It highlighted some of the reasons why any child (and of course the parents) in Bihar must ‘drool’ to join. It has a swimming pool, an air-conditioned bus to ferry children, all state-of-the art facilities et cetera. To top, it promises to make a child Indian idol (or be on one of the TV shows).
Questioning the logic of prosperity has been like a killjoy. Anybody doing it, for any other purpose than attacking the corruption in the backdrop of it, will be butt of ridicule. Hence I refuse to give a plain hint of disgust on the changing topography with a sleek mall coming up in the city-scape of Bihar. However, I would not be able to ignore the links these developments have with rise of anti-people sentiments amongst the class of consumers. Passing by a Goshala (shelter for cattle) or spotting a cow on the roadside immediately causes a sense- Bihar is so underdeveloped! Is it not due to the seductive model of development that disables us toward understanding the notion of plural existence? While Bihar apes rest of India we need to be asking unsavoury questions.
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Dev N Pathak, a visiting Faculty at the Centre for Culture Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, is among our panel of columnists. He writes his column ‘Dear home: letters from an NRB’ exclusively for bihardays on Saturdays.
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Uneven patterns of development have been the cause of the mass migration of biharis to delhi,. or in fact, from most parts of the country to delhi. the fact that alternative poles for white collar employment do not exist in bihar, also explains why biharis exhibit a distinct desperation to clear the civil services in this country. so I do not see why the parent’s answer is a revelation to you. delhi has been a the gravitational centre for higher education for decades now. the recent absurdly high cut off undergraduate studies is the surest sign of that. Secondly, are you suggesting that the the ‘mall’, which is the people-who-love-the sickle favourite hate-site to pour out ‘anti-liberalism’ slogans, should not be built in bihar? if you are worried about the malls changing the landscape, factories and high stories buildings out to be banished too. finally, to expect Nitish operate in a clean and sanitized structure is being politically naive. I would rather applaud him for the measures he has taken to encourage young women to study.
thanks Miss Priya for your nuanced comment; however, i really wish it were really based on a proper understanding of what i meant in this article. to put it simply, i do not intend to tell a simplistic tale of anti-mall or anti-development. in fact, to reiterate, i mean that none of us can escape the logic of development. we all aspire to high GDP and GNP. each state is ambitious about it. so much so that Gujarat is a model of emulation. still worse, that Haryana is a model every state wants to copy. i would like ourselves to think of alternative models whereby anti-people tendencies are not encouraged. any violence is not devoid of developmental logic. take nay example from the world over, we know that the state justifies violence against people on the pretext of either governance or progress. Singur and Nandigram were the best examples closer to Bihar. Orissa is brewing up too.
However i would like to thank you again for leaving your comments.
Fantastic prose. i wish the proof reading could have been slightly better. typos irritate. otherwise, i have come to believe that you are a cool story teller, which we lack in social science writings. also, your self-critical bent appeals. but then, i am unable to understand your soft positions. even from your reply it shows, that you tend to be liberal- persuasive kind. why can we not think of radical overthrow of global capitalism!!