Rs 15,047 Crores - State's budget allocation for Education in Year 2012-13

With a focus on improving the literacy rate of Bihar and empowering the people of Bihar with knowledge, the state government of Bihar has allocated Rs. 15,047 crores for education in this year's (2012-13) state budget.

The approximate breakdown of the allocation is as follows:

1. Rs. 9,093 crores for primary education
2. Rs. 3,201 crores for secondary education
3. Rs. 2,497 crores for college and university education
4. Rs. 255 crores for adult education

Besides this, the annual plan outlay of Rs. 28,000 crores for 2012-13 also provides Rs. 3,670 crores for education.

Educating the people in Bihar is the only way for sustaining a long term Bihar growth strategy, empowering people, improving their lifestyles and reducing the stigma of casteism that plagues Bihar. Thus a good step in the right direction.

This and more details can be found in the Times of India article "State committed to achieving news heights in mass literacy: Dy. CM Sushil Kumar Modi"

Strengthening Tourism in Bihar

The Bihar government will invest Rs. 300 crores to strengthen its infrastructure to attract more tourist to the state. These investments are for setting up the Ramayan and Sufi tourism circuits and the work on the infrastructure has started.

The Ramayan Circuit will cover the following places:

1. Tar in Bhojpur
2. Ahirauli in Buxar
3. Pretshila Hills in Gaya
4. Ramachura
5. Panth Pakar
6. Valmiki Nagar

The Sufi Circuit will cover the following places

1. Biharsharif
2. Manersharif
3. Munger
4. Phulwarisharif

The tour packages for these circuits will be announced in sometime. The BSTDC (Bihar State Tourism Development Corporation) also plans to promote its traditional circuits in South East Asia.

There are also plans to develop tourism activities centered around river Ganga. The current offerings include

1. A Floating restaurant 
2. Cruise services from Patna to Kolkata, Varanasi and Faraka 

The new offerings around river Ganga will include

1. Ganga River Island which will offer camel rides and food courts
2. Aqua tourism for domestic and international tourists.

This and more details can be found in The Economic Times article "Bihar Tourism to spend Rs. 300 crore to ramp up infrastructure"

Happy Bihar Diwas Day 2012

I want to wish all my friends a Very Happy Bihar Diwas Day.

Bihar Diwas day is being celebrated in a grand way as it is also the 100th year of the formation of Bihar.

Ex-President Kalam donates Rs. 25 Lakhs to serve Bihar's student's cause

Ex-President A P J Abdul Kalam donated Rs. 25 Lakhs for the cause of propagating scientific knowledge amongst children studying in the rural schools of Bihar. The money would be utilized in launching two mobile science laboratories. The Rs. 25 Lakhs comes out of the Rs. 1 crore that he had won as part of the S. R. Jindal award . The S. R. Jindal award was given to him for his "Exemplary service to the mankind in the area of science and technology".

Hats off to Kalam, our Ex-President.

More details can be found in the Times of India article "Kalam donates Rs. 25L for mobile labs"

100 Richest Indians - 2011

Around the same time two years back, I had posted  an analysis of the Forbes 100 richest Indians in year 2009. I revisited the list of the 100 richest Indians in  year 2011 to see the trend and some observations are as follows.

1. The richest Indians continue to be based out of a similar number of cities like before (100 Richest Indians - 2009). 
2. The new addition to the list is Bhopal and Ramesh Agrawal of Dainik Bhaskar is the new entrant to the list of the 100 richest Indians from Bhopal.
3. Bangalore, Bhopal, Delhi, Kolkatta, and Singapore now boast of an increase in the number of people in the top 100 richest Indians list.
4. Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Gibraltor showed a decline in the number of people figuring in the top 100 richest Indians list.
5. The oldest person in the 100 richest Indian list is 88 years old.
6. The youngest persons in the 100 richest Indian list are 40 years old.

Cities	2011	2009	Change
Ahmedabad	5	5	↔
Bangalore	12	9	↓
Bangalore/Delhi	1	1	↔
Bhopal	1		↑
Chennai	4	5	↓
Delhi / New Delhi	21	20	↑
Dubai	1	1	↔
Hisar/Delhi	1	1	↔
Hyderabad	3	5	↓
Kolkata	4	2	↑
London	2	3	↓
Mumbai	35	37	↓
Mumbai/Belgaum		1	↓
Mumbai/London	3	2	↑
Pune	5	6	↓
Singapore	1	1	↔
Singapore/Delhi	1		↑
Gibraltar		1	↓
Grand Total	100	100

Anil Agarwal, based out of London and hailing from Bihar, is the only person from Bihar, figuring in the 100 Richest Indian list and has moved down 5 notches from number 11 in 2009 to number 16 in 2011.

The list of the 100 Richest Indians in 2011 is as follows:

Rank	Name	Age	Hometown
1	Mukesh Ambani	54	Mumbai
2	Lakshmi Mittal	61	London
3	Azim Premji	66	Bangalore
4	Shashi and Ravi Ruia	-	Mumbai/London
5	Savitri Jindal	61	Hisar/Delhi
6	Sunil Mittal	54	Delhi
7	Gautam Adani	49	Ahmedabad
8	Kumar Birla	44	Mumbai
9	Pallonji Mistry	82	Mumbai
10	Adi Godrej	69	Mumbai
11	Dilip Shanghvi	56	Mumbai
12	Kushal Pal Singh	80	Delhi
13	Anil Ambani	52	Mumbai
14	Shiv Nadar	66	Delhi
15	Uday Kotak	52	Mumbai
16	Anil Agarwal	58	London
17	Malvinder and Shivinder Singh	-	Singapore/Delhi
18	Rahul Bajaj	73	Pune
19	Micky Jagtiani	60	Dubai
20	Anand Burman	59	Delhi
21	Brijmohan Lall Munjal	88	Delhi
22	Subhash Chandra	60	Mumbai
23	Kalanithi Maran	46	Chennai
24	Pankaj Patel	58	Ahmedabad
25	Indu Jain	75	Delhi
26	Cyrus Poonawalla	70	Pune
27	Desh Bandhu Gupta	73	Mumbai
28	Rajan Raheja	57	Mumbai
29	Sudhir and Samir Mehta	-	Ahmedabad
30	Yusuf Hamied	75	Mumbai/London
31	Chandru Raheja	71	Mumbai
32	N.R. Narayana Murthy	65	Bangalore
33	G.M. Rao	61	Bangalore
34	Venugopal Dhoot	60	Mumbai
35	Gautam Thapar	50	Delhi
36	S. Gopalakrishnan	56	Bangalore
37	Nandan Nilekani	56	Bangalore/Delhi
38	Ajay Kalsi	49	Delhi
39	K. Anji Reddy	70	Hyderabad
40	Vikas Oberoi	41	Mumbai
41	Niranjan Hiranandani	61	Mumbai
42	Rakesh Jhunjhunwala	51	Mumbai
43	Ajay Piramal	56	Mumbai
44	Harsh Mariwala	60	Mumbai
45	Jaiprakash Gaur	80	Delhi
46	Balvant Parekh	87	Mumbai
47	Shyam and Hari Bhartia	-	Delhi
48	Ashwin Dani	69	Mumbai
49	Vijay Mallya	55	Bangalore
50	M.G. George Muthoot	62	Delhi
51	Kapil and Rahul Bhatia	-	New Delhi
52	Bhupendra Kumar Modi	62	Singapore
53	Murali Divi	60	Hyderabad
54	Mangal Prabhat Lodha	55	Mumbai
55	Murugappa Family	-	Chennai
56	Brij Bhushan Singal	74	New Delhi
57	Rajesh Mehta	47	Bangalore
58	Ashwin Choksi	68	Mumbai
59	K. Dinesh	57	Bangalore
60	Abhay Vakil	61	Mumbai
61	Baba Kalyani	62	Pune
62	S.D. Shibulal	56	Bangalore
63	Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw	58	Bangalore
64	Benu Gopal Bangur	80	Kolkata
65	Mofatraj Munot	67	Mumbai
66	Devendra Kumar Jain	82	Delhi
67	Shobhana Bhartia	54	Delhi
68	Anand Mahindra	56	Mumbai
69	Gracias Saldanha	73	Mumbai
70	Hemendra Kothari	65	Mumbai
71	Ramesh Chandra	72	Delhi
72	Sanjiv Goenka	50	Kolkata
73	Analjit Singh	57	Delhi
74	Tulsi Tanti	53	Pune
75	Harsh Goenka	53	Mumbai
76	Radhe Shyam Agarwal	65	Kolkata
76	Radhe Shyam Goenka	64	Kolkata
78	Virendra Mhaiskar	40	Mumbai
79	Anu Aga	69	Pune
80	Habil Khorakiwala	69	Mumbai
81	T.T. Jagannathan	63	Bangalore
82	Keshub Mahindra	88	Mumbai
83	Anand Jain	54	Mumbai
84	V.G. Siddhartha	52	Bangalore
85	Ramesh Agarwal	66	Bhopal
86	Karsanbhai Patel	67	Ahmedabad
87	Irfan Razack	58	Bangalore
88	Vivek Chaand Sehgal	55	Delhi
89	Prathap Reddy	79	Chennai
90	Shishir Bajaj	63	Mumbai
91	L. Madhusudan Rao	45	Delhi
92	Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi	82	Delhi
93	Kishore Biyani	50	Mumbai
94	Balkrishan Goenka	45	Mumbai
95	B.G. Raghupathy	58	Chennai
96	Naresh Goyal	62	Mumbai/London
97	Atul Ruia	40	Mumbai
98	Qimat Rai Gupta	74	New Delhi
99	Bhadresh Shah	60	Ahmedabad
100	G.V. Krishna Reddy	74	Hyderabad

The list of the 100 Richest Indians in 2009 can be found at "100 Richest Indians - 2009"

The data and the list of 100 Richest Indians is courtsey "Forbes" and can be found at "India's Richest"

Prashant
www.progressivebihar.com