Kaimur visited

[That's me in front of Bhabua's impressive administrative centre]

The heat wave rolls on in the southern reaches of the Republic of Bihar. In Bhabua, the district headquarters of Kaimur, named for a hilly range, one gets to see a spanking new District Collectorate, very impressive, with all the important departments within a stone’s throw of each other. It was clean, with a well tended garden, and no litter in sight. Let’s hope it stays that way.

[Roads have brought improvement in communication and markets, but we want more]

Roads in Bihar hadn’t existed five years ago. Roads linking the towns of Bihar were riddled with potholes and strewn with the carcasses of damaged vehicles of all breeds. Today, brand new roads make for smooth rides. Nitish Kumar, like Obama promised change when he came to power five years ago. In just five years, at least he has shown Bihar the ‘roads’ to development. What we got from 15 years of RJD was the bitumen scam.

[Are we teaching our children well by example, or are we perpetuating discrimination and corruption?]

Of course, in the past five things have become smoother and shinier on the surface. Poverty and caste-based discrimination remain stolid and unmoved. Corruption is the noxious weed that continues to strangle the life out of the system, and it appears to have become a way of life in Bihar. Pilferage and embezzlement appear to be the order of the day. The officials from the Bihar Pradesh Service Commission appear to be uncouth, loudmouthed, rustic louts, who wear their lack of social graces as a badge of honour. It’s appalling to see and hear the way government teachers, block education officers, and even district superintendents of education behave and speak. They’re rude to their subordinates, butt-lick their superiors, and don’t seem to have any ethics at all. The small minority of government teachers who cling to the tradition of honesty and integrity are harassed, abused, and actually implicated in trumped up cases that take years to fight, and when they are finally acquitted by the courts, they are too old or beaten to give a damn about the system.