Good for Bihar, good for India

The chief minister summarised the initiatives of the last 15 months and laid out his vision for the coming years, while others from government provided insights into Bihar’s current strategies and challenges. Ramesh Yadava, a charter member of Silicon Valley TiE, brought out the importance of accelerating the pace of implementation of commitments made in its recent approach paper to the XI Plan.

The theme that ran through all sessions was: In a setting with many pressing needs, substantial administrative challenges to overcome, and constrained financial and human resources, what steps deserve priority?

Some of the points that emerged:

• Learn from others’ experience: Don’t reinvent the wheel. The world is full of relevant examples and experiences, both successes and failures, to learn and build upon. For example, on SEZs, there have been comparisons of India and China. Nick Hope’s presentation highlighted the importance of having an exit policy to wind up any special preferences once their purpose is over.

• Tailor others’ experience to local conditions: Hope’s presentation on China’s development strategy, for example, would need to be tempered to India’s democratic setting. China’s differential treatment of coastal and interior provinces, for example, would not be feasible here as a way to focus resources. Our own session focused on “infrastructure clusters” such as office parks, small-store retail malls, time-share equipment shops — things citizens with entrepreneurial bent could access no matter how small their initial enterprise.

• Take advantage of India’s conditions: Democracy might look like a “constraint” when policies fail to reach consensus, vested interests block reforms, or people occupy land supposedly destined for a power plant. But it is actually an advantage in other ways. The freedom to protest provides information about preferences and needs. Confidence in challenging government policies also makes citizens better able to act as monitors for service quality. Active community groups could complement government.

• Take unintended consequences into account: Anjini Kochar’s presentation on education, for example, pointed out that the focus on localising schools seems to have affected the level and quality of education. In the end, Professor Kochar recommended placing pre-schools so that they draw people into the system, then move students to better ones for the higher classes.

• Leverage technologies to create change: India’s development efforts, and especially its rural development policies, are taking place in an era where IT can (in theory) mean the “death of distance.” The challenge: To develop the content to be diffused through this network and ensure greater access.

• Rework institutions to enable change: Sessions looked at not only the state’s institutions, but also the state’s institutional context. T.N. Srinivasan emphasised the importance of rationalising intergovernmental transfers, reconsidering the role of the Planning Commission, and restructuring the mechanism for Centre-state relations.

• In the end, implement: Policy pronouncements are just words and aims, changing outcomes takes concerted actions, coordinated by pragmatic strategies. In all of these areas, Bihar is not alone or unique in India. What is good for Bihar could also be good for India.