THE significance of the electoral verdict in Bihar in November 2015 cannot be missed. Various columnists have hinted at its chastening effect on the political dispensation at the Centre and in various other states. Some have also found and detected its impact and reverberation on our international relations. In fact, the prime minister’s electoral campaign in Bihar was followed and mediated by many diplomatic visits abroad. An assertion that the electoral results of the state will also change the complexion of coalition politics is likewise being reiterated and underlined by political commentators.

But this moment of significance also compels us to look into Bihar’s history to understand its descent into backwardness. Why has the backwardness of Bihar become proverbial and perpetual? Can the origins of its backwardness be traced back to the colonial context in which the separate province of Bihar was created? What was the significance of the colonial and subsequently national policies? Is the nation even alive to the perils and problems that the polity and economy of Bihar faces today?

Even a cursory historical analysis of the evolution of the polity and economy of the region in the last 150 years reveals that Bihar was continually at the receiving end; it was a loser, both in the era of colonialism and nationalism. Barring the 30 odd years, i.e. the initial post-independence decades (late 1940s to 1960s) coinciding with the Nehruvian era, the state largely remained a backwater with regards to the obvious advantages of nation building. In later years, with the bifurcation of Jharkhand, Bihar’s industrial inheritance built in the earlier decades was lost to the former. It inherited liabilities while Jharkhand the industrial assets.

Today, contrary to the contingent euphoria and well intentioned hopes generated by the positive impact of the Bihar electoral results, the development scenario in the state continues to remain bleak. All indicators show that backwardness has acquired an endemic status in the state, placing limits on its political dynamism. In some contexts, it has not only given rise to regressive politics but also arrested the development of a long-term vision.

For Bihar to leapfrog from this state of backwardness to claim parity on parameters like employment, literacy and industrialization, as in the other flourishing federal units of the country, a different set of challenges needs to be addressed and developmental agendas pursued. Contending political parties in Bihar, blindfolded by their current obsession to succeed in the electoral process, seem unprepared to take on these challenges. Contrary to the need to celebrate Bihar by foregrounding the political maturity of its electorate, the greater need is to initiate and mediate a political dynamism that will allow basic land reforms and industrialization to at least begin in a planned and phased manner. The nature of land reforms and its linkages to industrialization must come to the centre of political debate both within and beyond Bihar.

 

Bihar as part of the erstwhile Bengal presidency was carved out as a separate province after the infamous division of Bengal. Much before the realization of the Curzonian partition of Bengal in 1905, the administrative logic predominant in government circles was to unburden the Bengal bureaucracy by chopping off the Chittagong division from the presidency and adding it to Assam. A parallel administrative view that also emerged among colonial official circles was that instead of removing Chittagong division it would be more prudent and pragmatic to remove Bihar along with Chota Nagpur division from Bengal. Bihar’s emerging elite, reacting to the perceived Bengali hegemony in education and employment, further reiterated this administrative logic through the press to make a case for a separate province.

The group of British administrators at the helm of affairs then was sympathetic to this political articulation. In the ensuing debate in the press, the argument to include the Banaras division in Bihar was advanced, as this region was contiguous with the larger Sahabad district. The cultural contiguity and consistency of these adjoining regions was also understood as a reason for this appeal. Moreover, since the Banaras division too was under Permanent Settlement, from an administrative point of view, these were reasons enough for Banaras to be made part of Bihar.

Bihar was made a province in 1912 though the Banaras division did not become its part. Neither did Sasaram and Buxar meet and merge in Banaras, nor did Banaras become the gateway of and for Bihar. The cultural contiguity and consistency of revenue settlement notwithstanding, the ambit of Bihar could not expand. The Chunar region of Sher Shah and Mughal Sarai too escaped being clubbed with the new province. Instead, the Banaras Raj was allowed to evolve as a buffer between Bihar and the United Provinces. On one side was Bengal and, on the other, the favoured and buttressed Banaras Raj, though a part of the United Provinces, was to act as the buffer. Thus, a landlocked enclave called Bihar was born.

 

In the backdrop of the upheaval of 1857 in this region, a redrawing of the landscape with the creation of a new configuration of power definitely suited British rule. It is as part of this reordering that Banaras Raj was allowed to evolve as a buffer and the power of the Raj Darbhanga was contained within limits. Due to the ensuing discussion on the carving of a separate Bihar province carried out through Hindi, Urdu and English newspapers and the manifest British sympathy towards this demand for a separate province, the Swadeshi movement in Bihar remained rather lukewarm. It was definitely not as intense as in Bengal proper, though Bihar was then part and parcel of the Bengal presidency with Calcutta as its nearest and biggest metropolis. In April 1912, the Bihar and Orissa provinces came into being, almost immediately after the Bengal partition was annulled in December 1911. The emerging aspirations of the various regions and categories were to face such reordering and reconfigurations from the British time and again.

 

In the 1930s, during the high noon of nationalism, the provincial Congress ministry was formed in Bihar. In the post-independence era, the Congress ministry at the Centre and in Bihar, functioning within the rubric of nation building and principles of party consolidation, while initiating a partial industrialization of the state, by the same logic, also nationalized its resources. The policy of freight equalization ensured that even as raw materials were sent to various hubs of capital accumulation and industrialization, there was little capital accumulation and industrialization in the state. The profile of the nascent industrialization which was incubated and nurtured in Bihar remained concentrated in the geographical region of what is today Jharkhand.

With hindsight it is clearer that unlike the formation of the separate province of Bihar in 1912, the emergence of Jharkhand was the outcome of a thick and long drawn movement. But once it was realized in the year 2000, the industrialized part of Bihar automatically became the industrial base of Jharkhand. This is not to undermine the basis of the new state of Jharkhand. It is being invoked to underline the repercussions of this division as a fact of history. Consequently the enclave called Bihar became even more tightly landlocked. Today, a ruralized and agricultural Bihar has in essence become a supplier of unskilled labour for the country. In the absence of industrial capital investment in Bihar, its labour force has been nationalized at minimum wages or at competitively low wages. Keeping the fast changing technological and economic scenario in mind, for Bihar to sustain itself as a labour force supplier, state-led skilling of the productive population is a sine qua non.

Avenues for skill development have to be found both within and beyond the moribund twenty odd traditional universities of Bihar. Low cost rural universities on the pattern of Gandhi Gramam Rural University at Dindigal in Tamil Nadu can serve as models to be innovatively and creatively adapted. The absence of industrialization and overdependence on agriculture has propelled the recent phenomenon of one-way migration that is depleting the state of its young human resource.

 

Bihar today is largely rural and agricultural, with 70 per cent of the population dependent on the primary sector. However, despite physiocratic romance and optimism, agriculture has its limits. Technological solutions to enhance agriculture also have their limits. Moreover, such solutions have to work within the semi-feudal production relations entrenched within the agricultural sector. This further limits the potential of the technological solution at hand or being offered. The kind of developmental model will depend on the nature of symbiotic equation that the state wants to work out between agriculture and industry. Further, the nature of agricultural sector and the type of industrialization to be ushered in is intimately linked to the nature of institutional land reforms that are yet to be initiated in right earnest. Institutional land reforms in the sense of recording entitlements to land, tenancy reforms, and policies for consolidation and distribution of land have to be worked out, keeping in mind the type of industrialization the state wants to initiate and usher in.

On these critical and vital questions, political parties and political leaders must reinvent their role and purpose. Both the reports and recommendations of the Bihar Land Reforms Commission and the Amir Das Commission have been consigned to the back burner. None of the major political parties are ready to deliberate and debate on their recommendations. The clout of the new kulaks is formidable, and its impact on electoral results militates against the agenda of land reform. It is unlikely that the model of development and governance which the new dispensation may pursue will convincingly argue and mediate for land reforms.

As the nature of land reforms is intimately linked to the anticipated industrialization, the absence of the former may not allow a clear and consistent policy for the latter to emerge. Piecemeal and ad hoc industrialization may only further complicate the situation. The role of politics and political parties is not just to represent but also to mediate and negotiate between the contending class and castes, and also between land, labour and capital. And by this token, the ruling dispensation must at least present a white paper on its industrial policy and land reforms agenda.

 

Is the national political class willing to share responsibility for reforms in Bihar? It is true that reforms must emerge from within Bihar. But, going by the politico-economic requirements of a federal polity, are the new leaders of dominant industrial capital and the government at the Centre ready to assist in realizing the twin aims of basic industrialization and fostering agricultural growth? Through land reforms and initiation of basic industrialization, an ambience of entrepreneurship and skill development eeds to be fostered. It is here that a state-led resurrection of the educational sector also becomes crucial and empowering.

The primary asset of rural and agricultural Bihar is its fertile land. The fetters of semi-feudal agricultural production relations need to be altered to generate an entrepreneurial class both in agriculture and industry. But the political class in Bihar does not seem to be ready for the appropriate gestation, and have placed their stakes on shortcut industrialization by inviting capital that wants to grab huge swathes of land. In this context, the land question has also acquired a new avatar. The disproportionate land grab agenda of industrial capital and the state playing its handmaiden will only further mortgage the state and its people.

 

Today’s Bihar – landlocked between Jharkhand, the Poorvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, Nepal and Bengal – has become a co-sharer of their backwardness. Bihar is not at the vanguard of these regional polities; it is not even first among equals and is increasingly seen as their backyard. The pulls and push of this region, instead of galvanizing the state’s economy and polity, has impeded its natural positive synergy. Bihar’s socio-political and economic relationship with these surrounding regions stands skewed to the obvious detriment of the state and its people, though these regions that surround the state of Bihar per se are neither at fault nor to be blamed for its present dismal state.

Whatever had to happen in Bihar electorally has happened. The state has delivered its message to the nation and acted with immense democratic responsibility. The demands of federalism and federal responsibility compel other federating units of India to keep Bihar and Biharis in mind. Is it not the duty of the nation to think for this economically languishing state – a state that has contributed to national development by sharing and bearing the cost of development? It is to be underlined that any national assertion of growth and development miracle must be tested by juxtaposing the same with the realities of Bihar – the state being a test case for both federalism and nationalism.