Nitish Kumar Development Model: A tale of Collapsed Bridges
Nitish Kumar touts his development Model as much better but data and news coming out from Bihar has been rarely exemplary. A bridge inaugurated by Nitish Kumar himself last month has collapsed today. The Bihar Government has refuted that the bridge has collapsed
This is not the first such instance
60% of the state’s budget is funded by Central Transfers and Grants but that has not dramatically changed its position in the Indian economy. Bihar continues to be the poorest state in the country and under Nitish, Bihar at best has been an average performing state in the last 15 years. Despite a low base, it has underperformed more affluent states primarily because of a weak service sector. The only consolation for voters is Nitish Kumar has performed much better than Laloo Yadav.
GDP Per Capita Growth (Current) Under Nitish Kumar
- Telangana: 8.4 times
- Uttarakhand: 8 times
- Karnataka: 7.8 times
- Tamil Nadu: 6.4 times
- Andhra: 6.3 times
- Haryana: 6 times
- Rajasthan: 5.9 times
- Madhya Pradesh: 5.9 times
- Delhi: 5.7 times
- Bihar: 5.5 times
The problems for Bihar under Nitish Kumar
- High Density plus High Fertility. There are far too many people living in small piece of land and having far too many children per family. While fertility rates have fallen, still a long way to go.
- No Rich States are neighbours of Bihar. For an economy to succeed, having a rich market close by helps, Bihar has no affluent market close by. No wonder that Manufacturing made up for just 6% of the GDP.
- Because of smaller budgets, Bihar is unable to invest in education and skills, also it is a small market in itself making it to difficult to build a robust service market.
- Though Bihar receives generous grants from the centre, it is unable to capitalise fully because of the above issues.
It is unclear if Bihar’s problems can be solved by better Governance locally. It needs massive central interventions for 4-5 years particularly in developing a robust consumer market that will then be a driving force for that State. Bihar needs a dramatic economic revival and restructuring in collaboration with the centre.
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