By Anjali Mishra
“Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much, recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man/woman whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him/her. Will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then your self will melt away.” – Gandhian Talisman
Any effort to understand India must begin by acknowledging the existence of not one but many Indias. The country is home to over 1.2 billion people spread across 3.3 million square kilometers of land. India’s population resides in a variety of geographies and is characterized by diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious affiliations.Well-being and prosperity vary widely across the country.
States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh are keeping India backward. This was one of the most straightforward assertions that NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant has made in the recent past. Kant said, “Eastern part of India particularly states like Bihar, UP, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is keeping India backward, especially on social indicators.”
‘BIMARU‘, an acronym, formed from the first letters of the names of the Indian states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh coined by Ashish Bose in the mid-1980s was popularly used to refer to the poor economic conditions within those states.
In the recent years, this concept has reemerged due to faltering growth rate of the states. Here we will be comparatively studying the growth and development of two of these state, one Bihar which still is attributed as the core contributer in the term ‘BIMARU’ whereas another, Madhya Pradesh which has been the first state that attempted a lot to drop out its part from being ‘BIMARU’.
1. Bihar
Bihar is located in the eastern part of India. The state is surrounded by Nepal in the north, West Bengal in the east, Uttar Pradesh in the west, and Jharkhand in the south. Contemporary Bihar, in terms of levels of output, has been one of the smallest among all the major states in India. Not only in terms of economic output, but also in terms of almost each and every indicator of relevance, the Human Development Index, access to infrastructure, healthcare, education, law and order, the gap between Bihar and India’s achievements have been so large that from the mid-1980s, many have institutionalized Bihar’s status as a `basket-case’ with little expectation of growth through much of the latter half of the 20th Century. However, Of course, slower growth does not mean complete stagnation. Nor does it imply a lack of structural change.
On Public Service Delivery
A World Bank report dated 2005, identified three important challenges for Bihar. These were poor growth, strengthening social service delivery, and strengthening public administration and governance. Social service delivery and public administration and governance jointly reflect the ability of the state government to provide high quality public services in the state. There was gross negligence from that front.
Infrastructure
Access to infrastructure within Bihar differs vastly from place to place, and many districts are easily identifiable as being much worse than the others such as, Patna and Samastipur with others like Araria and Banka,on different infrastructural dimensions, such as water supply (piped water, toilets and drainage), health infrastructure, education infrastructure (primary schools, middle schools, higher secondary schools and higher education), transport facilities (all-weather roads to health facilities, all-weather roads in general, national, state and district highways, distances to railway stations, bus stations, etc.), communication (post, computer kiosks, community TVs, STD booths, etc.), energy (percentage of villages electrified), and banking facilities.
Power
Secure, easily accessible and cheap electricity is an important catalyst for industrialization. But One of the consequences of the bifurcation of the erstwhile Bihar into today’s Bihar and Jharkhand, is that while 70% of the power generating capacity went to Jharkhand, about 70% of the demand comes from Bihar. For the last ten years, Bihar has been operating with only two old thermal plants with diminished production capacity; the state needs to purchase 90% of the power to meet its requirements from central utilities.
Social and Human Indicators
The NITI Aayog Health Index 2019, titled “Healthy States Progressive India”, Bihar has not just got a low score but is marked as having “deteriorated.”
Health & Education plays crucial together consitute an important part of development of any state. The district hospital of Muzaffarpur, 100 km north of Patna, Bihar’s capital, is struggling with a shortage of doctors. With 160 beds and an estimated inflow of 500-600 new patients each day, the hospital should have 48 full-time doctors and 52 nurses, said one of its administrators. What it has, instead, is 12 full-time doctors, 24 part-time doctors and 28 nurses. The Intensive Care Unit should have four doctors but has just one. The unit for newborn babies, which should have four pediatricians, is managing with just one.
Given such understaffing, the hospital doesn’t meet the district’s healthcare needs. That is the story across Bihar.
Seventy years after Independence, the state’s healthcare infrastructure continues to be grossly inadequate. Seventeen of the 38 districts in the state have no more than three government doctors for every 0,000 people. One district, Siwan, has just one doctor for 100,000 people. The highest, Sheikhpura, has eight doctors per 100,000 – or one for every 12,500 people. To put that in perspective, the WHO-prescribed level is 1:1,000.
In the same way, while the Right To Education law mandates student-teacher ratios at 30:1 in primary schools and 35:1 in upper primary, the ratio in Bihar districts hovers between 43:1 and 96:1. As a result, learning outcomes are poor in the state.
In the forthcoming observations, we have tried to rationalize some of the grounds that are held responsible for the backwardness of the states of Bihar that can be categorised into historical, geographic, caste based politics in state, anti development mindset of government in power, political instability and leadership crisis, demographic dividend etc.
Causes for Underdevelopment
Underperformance on these fronts till 1990 is easy to explain. Bihar was ruled by politicians and bureaucrats from the so-called upper castes, which were both socially and economically powerful by virtue of controlling the state’s land and resources. But from 1990, Bihar’s political spaces began to get more democratic. First came the government of Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Janata Dal, later rechristened Rashtriya Janata Dal, which gave political power to the backward castes, also known as Other Backward Classes. The situation improved further in 2005 when Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) stitched together an alliance between the upper-caste support base of its ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the extremely backward castes.
Despite more than 25 years of rule by backward caste leaders, who have risen to power by appealing to the poor, why is Bihar’s track record on crucial issues that most affect the poor underwhelming?
The baggage of history
Bihar’s underdevelopment is rooted in its colonial history. The British used different tax collection mechanisms in India. In southern and western India, under the ryotwari and mahalwari systems, they conducted regular surveys to set the annual tax that peasants would pay them directly. But in eastern India, they signed Permanent Settlement with Zamindars in 1793 in Bengal presidency which included present states of Bihar, Jharkhand , West Bengal, Odisa and Bangladesh at that time which gave landlords perpetual and hereditary rights over land, collect taxes, maintain law and order, and pay the British a fixed tax each year regardless of even natural calamities of drought, flood etc. The settlement was blamed for oppression of peasants.
It was a consequential choice that has shaped how people in these areas experience the state till today. In post-Independence Bihar, the landowning elite – Bhumihars, Rajputs, Thakurs and Brahmins – came to control both the state unit of the Congress and the bureaucracy. Unsurprisingly, land redistribution did not take off, despite both peaceful movements like Bhoodan and violent uprisings like Naxalism.
In independent India , The policy of freight equalization had played a big part in inhibiting the development of India’s eastern region, said former President Pranab Mukherjee. He further accentuated that under the freight equalization policy, 1952, the Centre subsidized the transportation of minerals to a factory set up anywhere in the country. The policy hurt the economic prospects of mineral-rich states like undivided Bihar, its successor state Jharkhand, created in 2000, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh (including present-day Chhattisgarh) and Odisha. The policy weakened the incentives for private capital to establish production facilities in these states. As a result of the policy, businesses preferred setting up industrial locations closer to the coastal trade hubs and markets in other parts of the country.
Due to such events crimes , caste politics, corruption, possibilities of naxalism were high in Bihar and due to dissatisfaction, tribal communities in Southern Bihar demanded for a new separate state for themselves. After bifurcation of Bihar in newly emerged state of Jharkhand, Bihar had not much left in terms of minerals and resources.
Another reason for its backwardness could be attributed to geography. For the development of any of state : either Ocean or mineral or tourism are essentially important and Bihar has none. Bihar is a land locked state with agriculture economy, tourism sector is also not much development in the state. After bifurcation, it has not much in terms of minerals. In this parameter also Bihar lag behind than any other state in the country.
The political leadership, corruption, leadership crisis also costed Bihar resulting in change of twenty three (23) times of chief minister in just 70 years of past. Demographic dividend in terms of rising population also causes resources scarcity in the state.
Moreover, Caste sway the mainstream politics in Bihar. Caste politics was in rise during 1990s in Bihar when the period of Economic Liberalization was just emerged in India and other state like Bengaluru emerged out as a hub of Information Technology, Chennai as a hub of car manufacturing, Mumbai as financial hub/ economic capital and Gujarat emerged out as a manufacturing capital whereas Bihar was indulged in communal violences, caste politics . At that time no attempts have been made to attract foreign direct investmens, industries, multinational companies. The leadership were very suspicious of business and industries and caste remained the main issue for them.
Recent Developments
However, In the present time, The state enjoys a unique location specific advantage because of its proximity to the vast markets of eastern and northern India, access to ports such as Kolkata and Haldia, and to raw material sources and mineral reserves from the neighbouring states.
Bihar is one of the strongest agricultural states. The percentage of population employed in agricultural production in Bihar is around 80 per cent, which is much higher than the national average. It is the fourth largest producer of vegetables and the eight largest producers of fruits in India. Food processing, dairy, sugar, manufacturing, and healthcare are some of the fast-growing industries in the state. The state has planned initiatives for the development of other sectors such as education and tourism and also provides incentives for information technology and renewable energy.
The state has a large base of cost-effective industrial labour, making it an ideal destination for a wide range of industries. Key Industries are Food and beverages, rubber and plastics, transport equipment, chemicals, tobacco, textile, leather and dairy. Thus , when unemployment rate is at the raise in the state , It came a no surprise when we see #industryinbihar trending at number One on Twitter. It was a small but crucial milestone to put forward the aspirations and demands of the youth in state of Bihar.
Whereas another ‘BIMARU’ state, Madhya Pradesh was recognised as one of the BIMARU states for its economic ‘sickness’ and backwardness. Those days now seem far back in the past, as the state has made giant strides in improving its economic health.
2. Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh is located in central India. The state is bound on the north by Uttar Pradesh, on the east by Chhattisgarh, on the south by Maharashtra, and on the west by Gujarat and Rajasthan. It is among the fastest growing states in the country.
This dramatic change of fortunes for Madhya Pradesh has been almost completely driven by a spurt in agricultural growth. At an estimated population of 75 million, Madhya Pradesh is still predominantly a rural state. The 2003 assembly election came to be as a defining election. The problems boiled down to infrastructure – bijli, sadak, paani – which became the thrust of the Uma Bharti campaign. Shivraj Singh Chouhan became the chief minister in 2005, two years into the assembly term.
Agriculture & Irrigation
He started to take on each of the deficiency areas which formed inputs to Madhya Pradesh’s agricultural economy. The Chouhan government then started focusing on the financing of the cultivation process. New schemes were launched to provide interest-free loans with liberal principal payment terms for farmers. Chouhan also extended targeted subsidies for various factors of agricultural production, like seeds, fertilisers and farm equipment. The state government worked in parallel to solve the irrigation and water availability problems to risk-proof farmers from the vagaries of monsoons.
The results of this improvement in infrastructure was visible in 2011-12, when Madhya Pradesh replaced Punjab as the grain bowl of India, producing almost 20 million tonnes of grains. This achievement was recognised by the then United Progressive Alliance government, awarding Chouhan the ‘Krishi Karman’ award for the year. The Narmadapuram division formed in 2008, comprising the districts of Hoshangabad, Harda and Betul, is now the national hub for wheat cultivation, also benefitting from the administrative freedom it got after being recognised as a separate division.
Power Generation
When Madhya Pradesh was bifurcated to create Chhattisgarh in 2000, almost all the power generation assets of the undivided state went to Chhattisgarh. The state government worked on increasing the power generation capacity within the state, tapping not just coal-based mega power plants but also commissioning hydro and renewable projects at scale. The state today accounts for 6 per cent of India’s installed capacity, bettered only by Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Madhya Pradesh today is a power-surplus state, and has used this surplus in innovative ways for agriculture.
Between 2009 and 2013, Chouhan worked on signing advance power purchase agreements to be used only for the wheat crop, which has a cycle of 110 days in the winter months. The state today accounts for 6 per cent of India’s installed capacity, bettered only by Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Madhya Pradesh today is a power-surplus state, and has used this surplus in innovative ways for agriculture.
Transforming connectivity
In the early 1990s, if one travelled from Maharashtra, Gujarat or Rajasthan to Madhya Pradesh, one would know that the state boundaries had changed as soon as the ride became bumpy. The Madhya Pradesh roads – or rather, whatever existed of them – were hardly motorable. Chouhan invested in creating a network of 80,000 km of all-weather roads across the state in the last decade. This area is still work in progress, but the state aims to connect every village with a motorable road, extending the benefit of connectivity to the rural populace.
Strong labour force
Madhya Pradesh is also not short of farm labour. In fact, the state sees rural population migrating in search of farm jobs regularly every year. The number of these job-seekers far outstrips the number of landowners, who are looking to rent their land or employ available labour during the cultivation season.
Recent Developments
Madhya Pradesh is rich in natural resources – fuel, minerals, agriculture, and biodiversity. It is also the only diamond producing state in the country. Diamond production in the state stood at 38,437 carats in 2018-19.
The state is rich in natural resources, fuels, minerals, agriculture, and biodiversity. Upcoming theme based special economic zone (SEZs near Jabalpur, industry parks in Indore and food parks at multiple locations aim to promote sectoral growth. The state is rich in minerals and has the highest stone, diamond and copper reserves in India, notwithstanding noteworthy reserves of coal, coal-bed methane, manganese, and dolomite. Further, the state is home to over 280 pharmaceutical units operating in the industrial areas of Dewas, Indore, Pithampur, Mandideep and Malanpur.
To attract investment in the textiles sector, the Government provided an interest subsidy for five years at the rate of 5 per cent for textile projects and 7 per cent for composite textile projects. Furthermore, the Government provided 100 per cent assistance in plant and machinery for eight years under Industrial Investment Promotion Assistance Scheme 2015-20.
Below are some of the major initiatives taken by the Government to promote Madhya Pradesh as an investment destination:
- During 2018, foreign and domestic tourist arrival in the state reached around 0.37 million and 83.97 million, respectively.
- MP is emerging as a solar power hub with an installed solar power capacity of 1,882.32 MW as of October 2019. In December 2019, the Government announced setting up a 2,000 MW Solar Power Park in the Bundelkhand and Chambal regions.
- From April 2019, Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Limited (RUMSL) in Madhya Pradesh started providing 27 MW of solar power to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
- The state is home to five operational SEZs, six notified SEZs, and 12 formally approved SEZs. Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, and Jabalpur are the major locations where SEZs have been approved.
- By end of 2020, Habibganj railway station in Madhya Pradesh will become Indian Railways’ first airport-like hub.
Key Industries of the states are Auto and auto components, textiles, cement, agro-based industries, forest-based industries, pharmaceuticals, mineral-based industries, manufacturing, tourism, IT and ITeS, logist
State of Madhya Pradesh is doing exceptionally well in terms of overall economic growth and Per-capita state domestic products. The rate of growth has been steadily above the rate of growth of India in average. It has done outstanding work with respect of agricultural growth, irrigation and its contribution to the state’s economy. The average growth of agricultural and allied sectors has been more than above 6 percent, whereas the national average in these sectors is around 3 percent. The performance of Madhya Pradesh in Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna is above the national average in both rural and urban areas.
Out of the Eight Aspirational Districts in Madhya Pradesh, Singroli, Khandwa and Vidisha have been done encouraging results with respect to their human development index. Every corner of Madhya Pradesh is working to chart their own destiny. India’s development story has historically been studied at the national and regional levels.
Long Way to Go
India and the certain states, in particular, have done remarkably well on the Ease of Doing Business Index. However, we need to repeat this on the Human Development Index.
Several districts of India remain backward on human development indicators because of legacy issues. India is on a high growth trajectory that is expected to lift millions out of poverty. However, presently the quality of life of many of its citizens is not consistent with this growth story, a fact reflected in UNDP’s 2016 Human Development Index wherein we are ranked 131 out of 188 countries. A closer look at the data reveals high heterogeneity in the living standards in India. There are significant inter-state and inter-district variations. By uplifting the districts which have shown relatively lesser progress in achieving key social outcome, India can move ahead in the human development index.
Global Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index 2018 has ranked MP the fourth poorest in the country, with Alirajpur the poorest district in India — with the almost same parameters as Sierra Leone in Sub-Saharan Africa, it says.
The report — based on data from 2015-16 — says Bihar is the poorest with more than half of its population living in poverty, followed by Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These four states hold 22% of the country’s land area and 34% population but account for over half of the country’s poor — a whopping 196 million of the 364 million — says the study. What’s more, 50% ST population in these states is still poor despite decades of welfare schemes and reservation in education and jobs. India and the certain states, in particular, have done remarkably well on the Ease of Doing Business Index. We need to repeat this on the Human Development Index.
Thus NITI Ayog’s LIST OF ASPIRATIONAL DISTRICTS tries to overcome the situation to provide these states level playing field for their own and country’s development.
- Bihar –Araria, Aurangabad, Banka, Begusarai, Gaya, Jamui, Katihar, Khagaria, Muzaffarpur, Nawada, Purnia, Sheikhpura, Sitamarhi
- Madhya Pradesh — Barwani, Chhatarpur, Damoh, Guna, Khandwa (East Nimar), Rajgarh, Singrauli, Vidisha.
The Government is committed to raising the living standards of its citizens and ensuring inclusive growth for all – “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas”. To enable optimum utilization of their potential,this program focuses closely on improving people’s ability to participate fully in the vibrant economy. Health & Nutrition, Education, Agriculture & Water Resources, Financial Inclusion & Skill Development, and Basic Infrastructure are this programme’s core areas of focus. Districts are aspiring to first catch-up with the best district within their State, and subsequently aspire to become one of the best in the country, by competing with, and learning from others in the spirit of competitive & cooperative federalism and by a spirit of mass Movement.
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