Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that Bihar has progressed during the last one decade and made frog leaps in growth rate but added that its growth scope is narrow based. “We want policy support from the Centre and press for our demand of special category status,” he said while inaugurating the silver jubilee celebrations of Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) which is organising international conference on development and growth. The conference is sponsored by World Bank, International Growth Centre and ICSSR.
Reiterating his demand for special status to Bihar, he however welcomed the economic package but said a backward State like Bihar needed special attention. He said that the State has made progress in overall development of Bihar, much is still needed to do though, and introduced many pioneering steps in education, social empowerment and infrastructure.
Referring to the school education, the CM said in 2005 when he took over 12 per cent children were out of school but through various innovative methods like free uniforms and bicycles not only the number of girls increased manifold in schools but also only 0.86 per cent were now out of school. “The girl education got a boost because of the introduction of free bicycles to them. This innovative scheme has been studied by many small countries which are planning to implement similar schemes,” said Nitish. Similarly, he added, women empowerment has got a push with encouragement to form Self Help Groups (SHG). The State has set a target to form 10 lakh SHGs against which already 4.6 lakh SHGs have been formed. This has helped women socially as well as economically, he added.
The CM acknowledged that ADRI and its founder Shaibal Gupta helped in the making of Bihar and through its economic and social researches, surveys and recommendations assisted the government in formulating several new schemes for social and economic prosperity.
Hitting out at the BJP and RSS, the CM said after the NDA Government failed to deliver and fulfill its promises its leaders made during the 2014 election, now patriotism was being made a movement as if all the problems have been addressed and useless issues being brought to the debating table only to divert the public attention. “look who is occupying the bigger space in print, electronic and social media these days and real issues have been put on backburner,” he commented. He added, “They say everywhere in the world similar things are happenings. Yes, it is happening at least in the USA where one Presidential contender (Donald Trump) is making all controversial statements.”
Social scientist Shaibal Gupta, who is known nationally for his research oriented views on economy, society and politics, said ADRI worked on social and economic issues and equip the Government with innovative ideas. It has already worked on over 150 projects on political economy and other aspects, conducted surveys and researches on different social phenomenon and also preparing Economic Surveys for Bihar Government for the past ten years.
Earlier a lecture was delivered on Caste in the Indian Economy by University of Cambridge professor Kaivan Munshi and another paper was presented by lakshmi Iyer, the associate professor at Harvard University, on consequences and determination of women’s political participation. lord Meghnad Desai chaired the inaugural function.