Connected Biharis

I was recently going through the various groups related to Bihar on the internet, specifically the yahoo groups and google groups (i.e. egroups). However, I couldn't not find many Bihari groups with more than a thousand members. If I put together all the Biharis in the various groups, I would say that all the groups put together there will not be more than 5000-6000 members in all these groups who are interested in Bihar. I also believe that there would be some of us who are members of multiple groups and thus, I do not think there are more than 3500-4500 unique members in all the groups put together.

This is a very small set of Biharis who are connected to each other specially when one considers the population of Bihar and the number of Biharis who can possibly become connected. I am even more surprised when I see groups from other smaller states that have memberships of more than 10,000 members.

There could be multiple reasons for the current situation

1. Most Biharis are not aware of the existence of these groups that connect each of us together.

2. Most Biharis who are outside Bihar are not aware of the activities of these groups.

3. Often, looking at the appalling condition of the state in the last 20-30 years before 2005, people from Bihar were sometimes subject to jokes and ridicules at the hands of other Indians. Disenchanted by the despicable state of Bihar where they did neither find a source of livelihood nor saw any improvements or development, the people got disconnected with Bihar as they did not have any hopes from Bihar. The result was that many people from Bihar hid their Bihari identity and disassociated themselves with anything related to Bihar atleast publicly. So often a Bihari would claim to be from Delhi or Mumbai or Chennai and make no mention of Bihar. Thus even though there are many renowned Biharis in various fields, they are not connected with Bihar.

4. Many Biharis outside Bihar do not know about the changes that have come to the state in the last 4 years. Many of them do not know that Bihar has changed from being a Bimaru state - a failed state to a developing and progressing Bihar.

It is important to get all these people who have their roots in Bihar to get connected back to it. Many of these people would be in a position to influence and can help in expediting the growth and development of Bihar, be it financially by investing in the state, or intellectually by providing their thoughts, suggestions and ideas.

We all happen to know other Biharis who are not connected. Hence in my view, we should convince all these people to get connected and be involved in the growth of Bihar. Let all these people start by becoming members of any of the groups that might meet their views and needs:

Bihar-Network, biharbrains , Bihari , worldbihariforum , coolbihari, Progressivebihar : These are some of the groups that come to my mind.

Nitish Kumar ji: I don't know if there is any database or registry that tracks the Bihari people. It might be a good idea to establish a database of Biharis all over the globe. It could be a database probably on the http://gov.bih.nic.in/ site where people could come and voluntarily register themselves. We can promote this database and get as many people as possible to register. I think people power can be a catalyst in speeding up the investment process in Bihar which will result in its development. Hence the Information Technology department of the state should analyze such an option and initiate the creation of such a database. Another benefit I see is that the Bihari population will feel more connected with Bihar. This can also serve as future communication tools for connecting to various people from Bihar.

Promotions for this database would be required and I think that can be done by advertizing about it on newspaper sites like Timesofindia.com and rediff.com, etc. Besides the various people in our groups can help by passing on the information to the other Biharis that they might know.

This is an initial thought and I think there can be other advantages for creating such a registry or database.