Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday unveiled a blueprint of Bihar@2025 under the caption ‘Badh Chala Bihar’ (Bihar on progress) which aims to set up a strong framework for setting medium to long-term goals through multifaceted, tailored interactions with different sections of the society. The vision document would be prepared on the basis of the information and input to workout a plan of execution. Nitish said the entire exercise would take eight to 10 weeks which means that the vision document would be ready just before the election exercise starts in the poll-bound Bihar. Assembly election is likely to be held in October-November.
“It has no direct link with the election but a way to accelerate the pace of development and prepare a work plan. This scheme will not influence the election but will definitely help the parties coming to power for execution of the agenda. The public participation in development process is a policy decision and it will be a party neutral document. But any party will be free to adopt it for sake of governance,” said Nitish who has been projected as the leader of the non-BJP parties alliance.
Emphasising that no section of the society will go untouched, the CM said 3-4 crore people would be reached for their views and suggestions and possibly this would be world’s biggest, comprehensive and collaborative public participation initiative. ‘Badh Chala Bihar’ will take a stock of Bihar’s spirited propulsion towards inclusive development. This all encompassing and energetic wave of inclusive development had been facilitated by erudite and well grounded policy information and enthusiastic and systematic implementation. Building on these changes, this imminent evolution in public engagement and inclusion will assist introduction of positive measures that will meet needs of the people in direct and precise ways, a brochure released on the occasion said.
“This is the first initiative to seek feedback from public and know their views about what they are getting, what their expectations are and what their view points on the governance are. Our target is to reach 40,000 villages. The interaction will be held with youth, media, intellectuals and also the common people and their views would be documented to make them part of the vision document,” said Nitish.
The other programmes under the banner include Bihar development dialogues to be held in Patna, Delhi and Mumbai, Bihar lecture series which will be organized in Patna, Nalanda and Gaya, breakfast with CM and leaders memoirs. The CM said, “In almost a decade I have tried to do my best to bring about development in our State and reach out to the people with programmes like ‘Janata ke darbar mein Mukhya Mantri’, Vikas Yatra in 2009, Vishwas Yatra in 2010 and Seva Yatra in 2011. Now we are about to embark on a unique, global democratic exercise and this will be a giant leap towards participatory agenda setting.”
The programme to be carried out Information & Public Relations Department (IPRD), will establish layered modules of public participation at village, district, State, national and international levels to capture citizens’ inputs and insights, their needs and aspirations. IPRD Minister Vijay Kumar Cahudhary said the Badh Chala Bihar will set a path-breaking and iconoclastic framework for participatory governance globally and hoped that the gold standard for citizens’ engagement would be emulated by other State Governments. Earlier IPRD secretary Pratyaya Amrit threw light on the basics of the schemes.