What's changed in Bihar

With the current elections in Bihar, multitudes of people are debating and talking about Bihar, some for Nitish, some against Nitish. I did come across one such post in one of the forums and couldn't stop myself from giving my two cents on it.

When I think of Bihar and read more and more reviews of what people are saying, I am more and more convinced that Nitish Kumar has done a lot of work of Bihar and has achieved more than what most erstwhile chief ministers have achieved in the last 60 years... He has done two major things for Bihar

1. Set the ball rolling for Development: Whatever anyone does or whoever comes to power, he will have to follow a development agenda. People in Bihar have, for the first time in many years started hoping... Hoping for a better and developing Bihar. Nitish has given people hope.
2. Got people to think beyond caste considerations: This was not easy and in the last 60 years most elections were won only along caste lines and leanings. It is after a very long time that we see people visibly talking of development cutting across caste or community lines. Many people in Bihar are now  talking about development which they were not doing before.

These are by no means easy feats to achieve in 5 years time, so much so that other important larger than life politicians are also talking of development and promising development.

But these are not the mere achievements. There are many others to quote:  like better law and order, a governance in place, better roads, more teachers, better education data, a sub-nationalism that has not existed for a long time, brought some pride to Biharis, etc. I also think, getting the whole bureaucracy to start working and thinking of development, itself, would have been a mamoth task and would have taken time and very difficult to achieve.

Hence we can all debate on what good has been done or what is still pending; what development has been done and what has not been done BUT Bihar has started rolling on a path of good: a path of development and the credit goes to Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi. Today we all are debating and we are debating because Nitish has given us a reason to debate, a reason that was not present before.