Sunday, May 17, 2009

Bihar Assembly seeks special category status for Bihar

Does anyone have the text of the Bihar Assembly's unanimous resolution demanding special category status to Biahr? It was passed on April 4, 2006.

One must admit that the
report/book titled "Special Category Status: A Case for Bihar" makes a compelling case for special category status to Bihar.

There is statistical evidence to show that Bihar did not become backward, it was made backward. There has been a deliberate effort that
in terms of economic and social indicators of development, Bihar remains below all-India averages in most respects of human development.

Raekha Prasad reporting in May 2006 for The Guardian from Khagaul, her father's home town wrote, "The state of Bihar contradicts modern India's optimistic vision of itself। "Bihar" has become an expletive, a butt of derogatory jokes made by people in certain metropolitan circles who have never visited the place। Underlying the ridicule is a potent fear in the minds of many Indians that Bihar is a template of what this ascendant economic power could yet become. For India's burgeoning middle classes, Bihar is a byword for everything they most fear: feudal and caste cruelty, criminalised politics and grinding poverty." Backwardness of the state is at the root of the crisis that has been underlined.

While special category status to Bihar merits attention, does anyone know about the fate of the Bihar's Common School System Commission that had submitted its 313-page report in June 2007 calling “for a legislation underpinning the Common School System.” If this is done Bihar can show the right path especially with regard to education to the whole country. Has Bihar Government acted on its recommendation?

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