Literacy rate in Bihar has consistently been the lowest in India and it has been responsible for the state being a laggard in all developmental indicators. Education in Bihar is characterised by poor quality of infrastructure, lackadaisical attitude of teachers, rampant corruption in student welfare schemes, teacher absenteeism and chronic session delays. As a result many students migrate out of the state for higher education. Migrant bihari students have even become the main stay of several private professional colleges nationwide. Anyone who has had the discomfort of traveling in Bihar during examination or interview dates, when entire trains are taken over by examinees, would also be witness to the longing and yearning of students who wish to flee the clutches of poverty on the wings of education.

Another manifestation of this hunger for education is the widely acclaimed Super 30 which is a free residential JEE coaching program for extremely poor students that has turned out 100% success rates in last two years.

When Nitish Kumar took office, mending education was one of his key priorities. To fix the prevailing teacher student ratio of 73 : 1, he plunged headlong into recruitment of 2.35 lac school teachers at one go. Such a scale of recruitment was previously unheard of. Simultaneously he also reserved 50% positions for women and decentralised recruitment down to the panchayat level. The ensuing period has been anything but smooth, with systems creaking under record 10 million applications, post offices running out of stamps, fake degree rackets being busted, charges of corruption at ‘mukhiya’ levels, court cases being filed by disgruntled candidates, protests, ‘dharnas’ et all. Yet unfazed, the government has recruited more than 2 lac school teachers in the last 4 years and is still trying to recruit many more. While it is true that quality has given way to quantity and the endemic problems of teacher absenteeism, inadequate infrastructure etc are yet to be addressed satisfactorily, the resolve and priorities of the government have shone through. Another key development has been the realisation that gender differential (large female illiteracy) is the main culprit behind the abysmally low literacy rate in the state. Hence a number of schemes specially targeted at girl students have been launched. These include a free dress scheme & a popular bicycle gift scheme for every girl student (recently extended to boys too), ‘Hunar – a vocational training program for girls from marginalised community, and a scheme to improve sanitation facilities (Poor or lack of sanitation facilities forces many girls to drop school out of shame) in schools.

The success in higher education has been more visible. Within 6 months of coming to power an MOU with BIT, Mesra (the Private Engineering College that ceded to Jharkhand during bifurcation of state), which was hanging fire for a couple of years was signed promptly. The first batch of students will pass out in 2010 from its spanking new campus with adjoining housing facility for staff and students. Its . Another two new impressive institutions were started by the state government, albeit from temporary campuses. One of them is Chanakya National Law University that provides an integrated 5 year degree course in Law. Another one is the Chandra Gupta Institute of Management that aspires to model itself on the IIMs pattern. More good news followed when IIT and NIFT started functioning from Patna in quick succession last year.

The dream project of Nitish Kumar is however the Nalanda University. He has roped in two distinguished patrons to pilot the project – Nobel laureate Amartya Sen & Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The project has also attracted funding interest from several budhist circuit countries . Once it comes to life, it will transport Bihar back to the glorious days at the dawn of civilization when it was a global center of learning. Other notable institutions that have begun operations in Bihar are Amity Business School & ICFAI Business School. Yet others in pipeline include AMU, IGNOU Regional Office, Aryabhatta Knowledge University etc. However not everything has worked out well . AIIMS type institute that was promised long ago has failed to take off. There are no other new Medical Colleges that are coming up. Even existing Medical Colleges are being threatened of de-recognition by MCI for lack of facilities. In case of Engineering & Management institutes too, the demand far outstrips supply. Also, most of the new institutions are operating from temporary premises. Soft infrastructure such as housing and entertainment for staff and students is still missing.

To put things in perspective, whereas during the earlier regime ‘Lathi Ghumawan, Tel Pilawan’ rallies ( Oil and wave the stick, ostensibly to ward off communal forces) were the order of the day and teachers & educationists were treated with scant respect, today education is the crown jewel of the government strategy to put the state back on track . The battle on the education front is far from over but at least it is moving in the right direction.

Part: 1 2 3 4 5

Out of the many advices that Gandhiji gave to the nation, none has been turned on its head more completely than his three monkeys sermon. His three monkeys symbolised the purity of inner self with ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil’ . The bureaucrats and the politicians have conveniently taken two of his three advices to their hearts - See No Evil and Hear No Evil.  That is what prevents them from seeing any corruption or hearing about any either.

Governments routinely go about their work with blinkers on, paying scant attention to the rampant corruption all around them. While government can’t find corruption, people can’t seem to lose it. A common man meets corruption everywhere. To him, government itself has become the fountainhead of corruption. Wherever citizens come in contact with government, corruption potentially happens. The incidence of corruption is so pervasive in the day to day life that it is ironical that government vigilance departments have to work so hard to nail corruption. When corruption is present everywhere, all one needs is the determination to confront it. Yet the charade of catching and releasing culprits goes on, while the malady of corruption festers and grows by the day.

If the government is serious about confronting corruption, first of all, it needs to get its head out of the sand and boldly acknowledge the existence of the problem. Any solution can only emanate from there. The government can then begin its war on corruption by holding ‘Anti Corruption Weeks’ for promoting awareness and informing about future corruption control methods.  This should be followed by ‘Corruption Audits’ of departments for both the people as well as the processes. The aim of these audits should be to locate those departments that can be easily rid of corruption and used as models for the rest of the departments. The audits should review official documentation and the procedures that are being followed, especially with respect to common citizens. It should also review the financial status of the officials to match their known sources of income. Most importantly public comments should be invited to gauge the perception about the department. Wherever feasible social media should be used for the purpose. The audits should certify certain departments as ‘Corruption Free’ based on their findings. The rest of the  departments should be asked to draw a migration plan for being certified ‘corruption free’ after repeat future audits.Once certified, the departments should be subject to even higher standards of accountability and any transgressions should be severely punished. All this may seem like a fairy tale but a driven person like T. N. Sheshan or A. P. J. Kalam, as our ‘Corruption Czar’ can quickly turn fairy tales into reality.

Part: 1 2 3

Guru Nanak had once famously remarked to his disciples – Tell me which direction there is no God and I will point my feet there. Corruption  too has acquired similar proportions.  There is nowhere to hide from Corruption. It is becoming omnipresent.

The next time you happen to pass by a roadside Traffic Police ‘May I Help You’ booth, on way to your office in the morning, look closely.

You just might see the Traffic Policeman doing puja with ‘Aggarbatti’ (incense sticks) in his hands. No! he is not merely being religious. He is also acknowledging the fact that apart from this being his duty station, it is also his seat of business. He is beginning his workday like any other shopkeeper by propitiating goddess Laxmi.  He then proceeds to be on the lookout for candidates to extort money from. The more entrepreneurial of the lot, even hire an assistant at their cost to receive bribe money on their behalf. This is to protect themselves from getting caught red handed. Is it any secret then, that many of these booths at strategic locations are prized possessions and transfer postings to them take place after considerable sums of money exchange hands.

continue reading »

A recent CAG sample survey report stated that only 3.2% of the target households of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have benefited from the scheme. This means that 96.8% of the corpus spent on this most ambitious social sector scheme launched in Independent India’s history, might be going down the drain. Even though it was only a sample study and its results can not not be uniformly extrapolated, the statistics are still staggering. Decades after the famous confession of the then neophyte Rajiv Gandhi that for every Rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reaches its intended recipients, things have only gotten worse. Subsequent studies have shown that the average utilisation figure may be still lower at around 6% only. Slowly but surely, the veneer of public good that’s draped around all government schemes is now coming off and the ‘emperor stands exposed with no clothes  on’.  All the rhetoric about caring for the poor is just that – rhetoric. These schemes are nothing but ingenuous machinations of the politicians, by the bureaucrats for their cronies. Government spending in India has become the fountainhead of corruption and any benefits to the needy sections of society is largely cosmetic and unintended.

If things have to improve, more and more technology needs to be brought into the distribution process. Technology can be used to better target subsidies and ensure transparency. continue reading »

Have you ever tried pouring water into a narrow test tube from a bucket? Surely! You must have never tried such a thing and there is actually no need to do so even now. It is just that successive governments in India have attempted to do the just that with subsidies. That an overwhelming majority of subsidies are wasted is now an accepted fact. But yet, the enormity of this waste as well as the public apathy to such a waste is appalling. The consequences of this waste go much beyond wastage of public money. It has created huge inefficiencies in our systems that prevent the debottlenecking of our true potential.

Take the case of petroleum subsidy.  There is hardly a justification for the large differential between international and domestic prices for the entire population. Neither is there a logic for the artificial differential in the prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene. Just because the government is unable to target subsidies to the ‘needy segments’ of the populace it has opened the flood gates for everyone. But the resultant price subsidy is giving rise to monumental inefficiencies while providing very little succour to the marginal sections of society.  In case of kerosene subsidy, it is well established that the bulk of the subsidy comes to rest in the pockets of the black marketers and the corrupt officials from the lowest to the highest levels. Even the neediest sections of the society are unable to escape paying a premium above the government administered price for any extra kerosene beyond their limited quota. continue reading »