Thursday 31 March 2011

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

US business houses heading to Bihar

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 09:38 AM PDT

Guess where US businesses are turning to now for new opportunities in India: to Bihar, the new turnaround success story, and, depending on the outcome of the coming elections, West Bengal. “We would like to meet Nitish Kumar who has just won a sweeping mandate in favour of progress,” Ron Somers, president of the United States India Business Council (USIBC), told.

US is one of the largest foreign direct investors in India. The total US investments till July 2008 were $7.96 billion. FDI inflows from USA are about 8% of actual FDI inflows into India in rupees.

The USIBC, which is the leading advocacy organisation for promoting business ties between the two countries, believes the time has come for exploring business opportunities in the hinterland of the two countries.

Bihar and West Bengal are a part of this same narrative.

Somers said the interest in India is also moving to traditionally less enthusiastic states in the American heartland. “I have just come from Ohio, where a conference on business opportunities in India was attended by companies from all over, including Indiana,” he said.

“There is a yearning and a hunger for doing with business India,” Somers said, “across American and in parts of the country that have not had the benefit of being exposed to the India story.”

In 2011, the USIBC, will redouble its efforts in reaching out across America and touch the hinterland. “As part of that effort,” Somers said, “we have already launched a major initiative on the Capitol Hill (the US Congress).”

Armed with nothing more than a one-page brochure — just right for the attention span on the Hill — Somers has been meeting new senators and members of the House of Representatives, selling the India story.

If a company in your district wants to invest in India, he tells them, the USIBC will be happy to help. “And if an Indian company comes knocking at your door to invest in your state, be ready for that too.”

“Last year, Indian companies invested more in America than American companies did in India,” said Somers, reeling off the investments: Reliance “up and down the East Coast” and Essar in Minnesota and in Virginia.

“And I could go on…”

“Ours will be the first business delegation from the US to visit Bihar,” he said, adding, “likely in the second half of the year.” The intention is to expose US companies to business opportunities in a state that would welcome them, he said.

This is sure to come as a boost for Kumar, who has of late been showing up at all the right places — the Pravasi Divas, for instance — to woo businesses much as the chief ministers of historically more aggressive states have done.

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Bihar first to grant voters the right to recall corporators

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 07:37 AM PDT

The Nitish Kumar-government has decided to empower the voters of the urban civic body polls to call back their elected representatives if they are not satisfied with their performance.
The state cabinet has agreed to the ‘right to recall’ proposal in this regard by giving its nod to the amendment to the Bihar Municipal Act.

It will enable the government to remove the elected representatives of the municipal corporations – Nagar Parishad and Nagar Panchayat -if two-thirds of the voters of their constituencies submit a signed petition to the urban development department against them. The department will look into the merit of the petition and take steps for the ouster of the councillors if it is convinced that they have lost the confidence of two-thirds of the voters.

The next urban bodies’ polls are due next year. Earlier, the Act had a provision for the removal of a councillor only if two-thirds of fellow councillors filed a written petition against him. But now, the government has vested the power directly with the voters.

There is already a provision under the Panchayati Raj system in the state for the recall of elected mukhiyas (village headmen). It will now be applicable to the elected representatives of the urban civic bodies as well.

It was the late Jayaprakash Narayan who had first given a call for the right to recall the elected representatives on November 4, 1974 during his Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution) movement against the Congress government headed by Indira Gandhi at the Centre.

But he had raised this demand to enable the constituents to recall the MPs and MLAs on the basis of their performance.

The state government has apparently taken this decision to make the elected representatives in the urban civic bodies accountable to the people in keeping with the spirit of JP’s call.

But the government’s decision has met with scepticism from majority of the corporators.

“The voters should also be given the right to recall the MPs and the MLAs who are the lawmakers. It would be better if the voters got the right to recall them,” Patna’s mayor Afzal Imam said.

Imam said JP had given a call to give the voters the right to recall the MPs and MLAs.

“The councilors or corporators are small fry compared to the MPs and MLAs,” he said.

“I think this provision should be introduced from the higher level to the lower level and not vice- versa,” he added.

Imam said in any case it would not be easy to implement this law.

“How will the government determine whether the petition submitted to it for the recall of the elected representatives carry the signatures of the genuine voters? How will it be ensured that the signatures of such a large number of people have not been forged?” Imam asked.

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Bihar and UP-The journey of brotherhood

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 05:37 AM PDT

LUCKNOW: UP and Bihar — for long, the two states have been like country cousins, remembered in the same breath as models of underdevelopment; home to corrupt politicians and babus and, as exalted members of Bimaru states, symbols of everything that ailed the Indian economy. But then one man was introduced in the plot, as if by divine intervention. And the script changed. As the chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar tried to pull Bihar out of the clutches of backwardness. Biharis raised a toast to his genuine attempts and he was given a rare second term with a historic mandate.

So, is Bihar developing so fast that it will leave Uttar Pradesh behind in the next few years? The Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) data between 2000 and 2009 categorically shows that Bihar has kind of outpaced UP in terms of growth indices in the last decade (pointedly since Nitish Kumar took the rein), triggering all-round appreciations from economists and public.

Although stats hardly present the real picture from the grass–roots, for the record sake, Bihar’s net state domestic product (NSDP) at constant prices grew by 68% between 2000 and 2009. The same for UP is 50%. In 2000-01, SDP for Bihar was Rs 53,656 crore. That went spiraling up to Rs 90,566 crore, a jump of 68%. On the other hand, UP had a NSDP of Rs 1,60,015 crore which rose to 2,40,039 crore, a rise of 50%. No wonder, Bihar is now considered to be the second fastest growing state after Gujarat.

In fact, in June 2009, the World Bank reported that Patna was the second best city in India to start a business, after Delhi. Between 1999 and 2008, state GDP grew by 5.1% a year, which was below the Indian average of 7.3%. However, in January 2010, the Central Statistics Organisation reported that in the five-year period between 2004–05 and 2008–09, Bihar’s GDP grew by 11.03%, which made Bihar the second fastest growing economy in India during that five-year period, just behind Gujarat’s growth of 11.05%.

Another survey conducted by Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) and National Sample Survey Organisation, showed that Bihar had 14.80% growth in factory output in 2007-08, which was slightly less than the Indian rate of 15.24%. “Bihar did not have a proper and systematic governance for many years. That affected its socio-economic development. Now, with a stable governance the state is showing a miraculous change,” said Shaiwal Gupta, member secretary of Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI).

Bureaucrats in Uttar Pradesh however are not so impressed by the Bihar story. “Bihar was so backward that it started from negative growth. So, even small development looks significant,” says senior IAS officer Sailesh Krishna.

Gupta, too, admits that Bihar had a low base. “And therefore any significant change shows up,” he says. The sectors powering growth in the state are construction at 35.8% growth per annum in the five-year period starting 2003, compared to 8.4% growth in the previous five years and services at 11.5% compared to 5.4% previously.

Significantly, it’s the service sector (banking, insurance) that provides the maximum push to Bihar’s growth. The sector grew by a whopping 117% as against 106% in case of Uttar Pradesh in the last decade. Bihar’s service sector contributed Rs 28,804 crore in 2000-01. By 2008-09 this scaled up to Rs 62,518 crore. UP, on the other hand, too performed well but not as good as its counterpart, at least in percentage terms. The state had its service sector contributing Rs 79,691 crore to the NSDP in 2000-01. By 2008-09, this figure notched up to Rs 1,64898 crore.

Notably, UP does well in the other two sectors — primary and secondary sectors. While UP’s primary sector, essentially agriculture, grew by 18.7%, in Bihar it grew by 11.6%. In case of secondary sector UP registered a growth of 187% while Bihar’s industrial growth remained at 20.3%. “The two states are alike and yet completely different,” says Arvind Mohan, an economist and a professor at Lucknow University. “Any investment in Bihar would mean a lot. That may not be the case with UP which has seen a sustained if not a sharp growth trajectory for the past many years,” he said.

Mohan, however, maintains that the annual growth rate of Bihar in past five years has been good enough to give UP a run for money. Economists point out per capita income (PCI) as another base to assess the socio-economic growth of a state. According to CSO data, Bihar’s PCI was Rs 6,197 at current prices (which takes into account inflation) in 2001-2002. This rose to Rs 13,663 as against the national average of Rs 37,490. In other words PCI of Bihar registered a growth of 120%. UP’s PCI was Rs 9781 in 2001-2002. This has now gone up to Rs 18,710. Or, a rise of 91%.In fact, in 2007, Patna recorded a per capita income of Rs 31,441. This was even higher than Bangalore orHyderabad, which are both leading centres for global software development. This also reflects how much the Bihar growth story is centered around the capital city. Says Gupta: “It was essentially because of the fact that Patna is the city which has attracted maximum investment.” He said that if one takes the case of UP, the state has its western part growing at a rapid pace. “There is NCR region which provides a growth impetus,” he says. This is the area which contributes maximum to UP’s industrial growth.

Despite a phenomenal growth in the past three-four years, there are two major areas where Bihar still lags behind – literacy and per capita power consumption. In fact, the total power demand in Bihar is almost as much as Gurgaon’s and its per capita income is still one of the lowest in the country. And as one travels through Bihar, one may not find a dramatic change in the lives of the people in general, but what has certainly changed is how the rest of India perceives Bihar now. There are stories galore of Bihari NRIs coming back to their roots to start a business; India Inc suddenly seems overtly interested in the pariah of the past and our finance minister makes in glowing terms a special mention of the once-most backward state in his speech. Even if one doesn’t go by stats, have we in UP witnessed any of such positive signs of late?

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UP taking healthy lesson from Bihar

Posted: 30 Mar 2011 09:32 PM PDT

LUCKNOW: Rising from ashes, Bihar is India’s newphoenix. Recently it impressed the World Bankresulting in an aid worth several hundred crores for development of the state. And it has a number of lessons for neighbouring UP. In 2002-03, when census data was notified, UP fared better than Bihar. But, now the tortoise (read Bihar) has metamorphosed to hare, leaving UP behind.

Consider figures from the National Rural Health Mission. Number of institutional deliveries – the chief tool to curb infant, neonatal and maternal mortality rates – in Bihar stood at 2.37 lakh in 2005. Five years since, a five-fold increase has been recorded for the state. In UP however, the progress hasn’t been much. Compared to a figure of 19.22 lakh in 2005, number of women delivering babies in recognised health care centres didn’t even double by 2010. Laggard state of routine immunisation could also be exemplified. As of now, four out of five children in UP aren’t fully immunised. In Bihar, the ratio of children protected with that of unimmunised is 2:3. What needs to be underlined is the progress made by Bihar on the front. Figures show that Bihar’s rate of immunisation stood just 10% during the first National Family Health Survey which grew to 33% in NFHS-3. In UP, 19.8% were fully immunised during the time of NFHS-1 while the figure rose to 23% in NFHS-3.

There could be many more examples. But more importantly, findings reasons behind the trend is needed. A former director general of health services, says that UP is the only state in India to have overridden NRHM’s guiding principle which relates to converging health and family welfare to effectively implement schemes.

”But here, first the ministers separated which was followed by principal secretaries and DGs. Last year, the division percolated to the level of chief medical officers. There is utter chaos,” he said. Associated with social work through Unicef in India especially UP and Bihar, Augustine Veliath held missing ‘M’s responsible for poor state of affairs in UP. The first ‘M’ is mindset while the second is motivation.

”In Bihar, the general mindset is that we can do it, but in UP everything looks unachievable. Lack of motivation discourages even more. Sometimes, I wonder what makes some policy-makers start all over again,” he said adding that frequent transfer of collectors doesn’t give them enough time to work for a cause, assess results and improve.

Patna based Asian Development Institute of India’s director Shaiwal Gupta, is hopeful of UP. ”Things may not be moving in the right direction as of now. But there is hope for UP on account of its robust institutional base. The only ingredient needed is strong political will and its effective implementation down the line,” he said.

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