On the day of Maha shivaratri, I was on a fast and trying to deviate myself from the hunger, I decided to read something. I picked up the Geography of India and went on to read chapter by chapter. To my surprise I read some 10-11 chapters in a day. It was a non-stop affair of at least 10 hours. While going through the chapters on climate, land forms, rivers, disaster managements, people of India and several such chapters, state wise data was something that kept cropping up. With 28 states and 7 union territories, it was difficult to remember which was the highest rice producing state and which state had the largest reserves of coal. But, in every sheet of data, I could not miss out looking for Bihar. On the table of population, I saw that Bihar is the third most populous state of the country after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and also one of the states with a very high density of population. It reminded me of the crowded buses in Bihar. On the chart of literacy, the data was alarming. We are last in the list of states on literacy , both in male literacy and female literacy. The infant mortality rate was highest and the %age of malnourished children the maximum. With every new data that came up, the situation kept becoming more dismal. On the list of agricultural produce, we ranked a little better in some items but were far behind in many. It was only in the list of mineral resources that we fared better. But, to be more precise, all those mineral resources are in Jharkhand now and the book had not updated itself fully.
The most disturbing fact remained about the floods of Kosi. I was surprised to know that floods due to the river Kosi are an annual phenomenon and that there are also huge embankments made on the river sides to prevent the floods. Every year hundreds of people of the Mithila region lose life and property owing to the floods by Kosi. And when Kosi is milder, Ganga fills the gap and there is probably no year that Bihar hasn't seen floods. Having spent most of my life in Bokaro, which is a part of Jharkhand now, I can't imagine such a tough life being a reality. Agriculture and labour work related to agriculture seems to be the major occupation of Bihar's villages and it is no wonder that the lack of proper infrastructure forces these labourers to flee to the areas of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana for job. The plight to Mumbai has also grown in recent years. Whenever I am on a rickshaw in Gurgaon, the rickshaw puller is a Bihari 9 out of 10 times. He tries to speak the Delhi accent but the originality reflects in a few sentences and I can always say that he is a Bihari.
Undoubtedly, there are problems in Bihar, and that people run away from their homes for better life. But when the time of marriage season comes and the time of harvesting of crops, you see the number of rickshaw pullers and the house-maids suddenly reducing. All the bihari folks go bakc home. Despite being away from their homes for so long, they haven't still forgotten their roots. They board those owercrowded trains and happily go back to their villages in Gaya, Madhubani, Chhapra and other places. When they return from their homes taking the same crowded trains back to delhi and ludhiana, they bring back with them the litties full of sattu, chooda for their breakfasts and the aroma of the local spices. They are full of energy and joy and are ready to get to this life of labour and wage all over again. Despite so many problems in Bihar, people are still moving on. No one frowns and no one complains. Don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it sure is a wonder to me.
