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Nitish Kumar has fallen short of original ideas

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Kumar Shakti Shekhar
Kumar Shakti ShekharSep 09, 2015 | 21:35

Nitish Kumar has fallen short of original ideas

Whether or not Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar wins the five-phase October-November Assembly elections in the state, his name will go down in history for launching some innovative schemes for the welfare of society at large. One of them was a slew of measures for women empowerment in the state.

The Bihar government distributed bicycles for free to girl students of Class 9 in 2006 and, by 2014, the number of girl students attending school shot up from a mere 1.70 lakh to whopping seven lakh. The scheme became popular enough to catch the imagination of other states too. States like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and even Congress-ruled Assam replicated it.

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Nitish did not stop there. He followed it up with free distribution of uniform and sanitary napkins to the girl students. He also launched a scheme for training in martial arts to the girl students. States like Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu emulated Nitish and, tweaking his schemes, distributed free laptops to students.

However, the Bihar chief minister seems to have fallen short of ideas now, particularly after parting ways with the BJP in 2013. Of late, he is seen just copying governance and political ideas from either his bête noire Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his new-found friend Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Hours before the Election Commission announced on September 9 the dates for polling in Bihar, the Union cabinet announced release of additional instalment of dearness allowance (DA) to Central government employees and dearness relief to pensioners due from July 1. Representing an increase of six per cent over the existing rate of 113 per cent of the basic pay and pension to compensate for price rise, this will benefit about 50 lakh government employees and 56 lakh pensioners.

It cannot be a coincidence that minutes after the Union cabinet's decision, the Bihar government matched the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in increasing DA to state government employees. Asked whether he sought to neutralise the gain that the Centre hoped to achieve, Nitish said, "It was an old decision to increase DA in accordance with Central government, nothing new." However, there have been instances when the Centre has increased the DA without the Nitish government following it up immediately.

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On the issue of women's empowerment, while Nitish was leading all the other chief ministers at one point in time, he is seen following the BJP now. The Union cabinet on March 20 approved 33 per cent reservation for women in police forces of all union territories, including Delhi Police, through direct recruitment in non-gazetted posts. But just two days after this, the Bihar chief minister, while speaking at "Bihar Diwas" in Patna on March 22 to mark 103rd anniversary of Bihar's separation from the then Bengal province of the British-ruled India, unveiled Women Empowerment Policy reserving 35 per cent posts of police constables and sub-inspectors for women.

More recently, the Bihar chief minister was forced to follow the Centre's footsteps on the issue of developmental package. Addressing the third leg of his Parivartan rally in Arrah on August 18, Modi announced Rs 1.65-lakh crore package for the poll-bound state to bring back the political discourse on developmental agenda. Nitish initially criticised the package and tried to find faults in it. But he succumbed to the pressure and, to counter Modi, unveiled five years' Rs 2.70 lakh crore development plan for the state, which included free electricity and drinking water connection in every household.

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Apart from developmental politics, Nitish has been seen following Modi on political issues too. After winning Prashant Kishore, Modi's campaign strategist for 2014 Lok Sabha elections, to his side, JD(U) launched "parcha pe charcha" on the lines of Modi's famous "chai pe charcha" and sought to pander to Bihari pride on the lines of Modi's "Gujarati asmita" by talking of "Bihari swabhiman" to protest the PM's "DNA" remark. But it is clear that Nitish, towards the fag end of his current stint as chief minister, surely has been found lacking in original ideas and, hence, is left with no choice but to borrow ideas from Modi or Kejriwal. November 8, the day Bihar Assembly election results will be announced, will tell how the second hand ideas have fared against the original ones.

Last updated: September 11, 2015 | 13:01
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