Bullish on Bihar: Go East, young man!

So much so that 'Bihari' has come to be seen in some circles as an insult. I was told by an acquaintance of the situation, he, a Malayali, experienced in college days in Bangalore. The Hindi folks would refer to him, without malice, as a 'Madrasi,' which irritated him. He just loved being reduced to a stereotype, especially when he had absolutely nothing to do with Madras. Then he hit upon an ingenious solution: he began referring to Northerners as 'Biharis.' They would get very upset, and would attempt to tell him they were... whatever else, but not Biharis.

My friend would feign ignorance, and launch into this whole speech: "I know in the North there are Punjabis and Biharis. You are not Punjabis, because you don't have turbans and beards. Therefore you must be Biharis, no?" He would beam, clearly proud of his watertight logic. Obviously, he never 'got it' about non Punjabi non Biharis. He must have made his point though, for they stopped calling him 'Madrasi.'

But what struck me is the disgust and disdain most people have for Bihar. This, I think, is unfair and disregards the illustrious history of the state. For after all, the very name 'Bihar' comes from the Buddha vihara; and Bihar, with Magadha and Pataliputra, was the very center of the glittering Buddhist civilisation of 2,000 years ago.

The great university of Nalanda was there, too. So clearly, this land was one of the most civilised in the world for a thousand years, till roughly 1200 CE. And I personally see no reason why it cannot revive itself and reclaim its lost glory.

After the drying up of the Saraswati following an earthquake circa 1900 BCE, the people of the Indus Saraswati civilisation seem to have migrated eastwards to the Gangetic plain and re-established their culture there in the land around the Ganga and the Brahmaputra.

Furthermore, then as now, Bihar had a treasure trove of metals and minerals that would have been exploitable and tradable.

With their culture and civilisation lost, their very survival dependent on the vagaries of monsoons, Biharis essentially reverted to an uncivilised existence. Nothing has happened for a couple of centuries to improve matters.

Nothing in particular is happening now, either. But it is in the nature of things that there will be ups and downs. As a contrarian, and because it appears as though Bihar has reached its nadir and couldn't possibly decline any further, I predict that Bihar can only go up. And that trajectory may be very quick.

In case you think casteism in Bihar is its biggest challenge, I present you with Exhibit A: Kerala. A hundred years ago, Swami Vivekananda was so appalled by Kerala's rigid and unbelievably cruel caste system that he called it a lunatic asylum. Today it is by any measure the most egalitarian part of India. If Kerala can do it, why can't Bihar?

Similarly, if you don't believe things can change overnight, consider Exhibit B: Calcutta and West Bengal. This dowager of a city, once upon a time elegant even under the colonial heel, and a center of industrial prowess, has been converted in a very short period of fifty years into a disaster area where there are no jobs or even hope.

The lush Bengali countryside, once the engine of the Indian economy, producing at least 12 per cent of the world's entire industrial output (yes, far more than California does now!) has been ravaged by twin scourges: the colonists and the Old Left.

Yes, the South is on the ascendant. Some of this can be attributed to good management. Chandrababu Naidu is a marketing wizard, who also has a great deal of substance and sincerity. S M Krishna is doing much better than his dull, inept predecessors. J Jayalalithaa has curbed her tendencies for excess, and her second incarnation is doing amazingly well for Tamil Nadu. A K Antony in Kerala is doing a terrific job despite backbiting and intrigue from fellow Congressman K Karunakaran.

But let's look at the downsides as well. In Andhra Pradesh, development is essentially confined to Hyderabad and Secunderabad. I have to admit they have done a masterful job there. When I went there recently after many years, I was simply astonished that a grimy medieval city had been transformed so much in such a short time.

And it is true that good governance has brought dividends to some parts of the state. But in the vast hinterland, especially Telengana and the drought prone interior, things still need to improve a lot. The plight of Andhra farmers who commit mass suicide now and then, and the fact that the barbaric Maoists still have some support in rural areas, both underline the long haul ahead. While e-governance has improved things, and there is a refreshing can do attitude, life is still grim for rural people.

In Karnataka, once again development seems to be confined to the Bangalore region and to some extent Mysore and Mangalore; in general, southern regions of the state. The vast, arid, interior northern parts of the state have not gained anything from the infotech boom. The real Deccan plateau of giant boulders and reddish laterite is still plodding along in the 19th century while Bangalore has zoomed into the 21st.

While Bangalore is still extremely pleasant -- it is by far my favourite city in India -- and it has become quite cosmopolitan and globalised, there is also increasing pollution, stress, and crime. Old timers tell me that the weather has become much harsher, rush hour is choking the roads, and life has become unpleasantly fast.

Tamil Nadu has done an exceptional job in attracting automobile majors to the outskirts of Chennai; and Madurai, Tiruchirappalli and especially Coimbatore are all thriving. Despite its dependably atrocious weather, Chennai has become a more appealing city with better restaurants and shopping.

But then there is Salem district where large numbers of female babies have been murdered because of poverty. Arid coastal districts, such as Tirunelveli, have not shared in the rising fortunes of Chennai. The lack of water is a major problem all over Tamil Nadu, as demonstrated by persistent acrimony over the meager flow in the Kaveri.

And finally there is Kerala. It has squandered its many assets in infighting and political extremism; Kerala is a money order economy. Behind the misleading facade, there is economic deprivation. When the Gulf boom ends, as it inevitably will shortly, Kerala will be hard pressed to survive on nothing more than its good looks and charm: can tourism and ayurveda and backwaters sustain 30 million avid consumers?

I hasten to reiterate that I say this about the South as an avid Southerner. It is good that the South is getting good marketing, but I wish to point out that it is not as though Bihar is so completely behind the curve that they can never catch up. No need to give up.

If I were a young and adventurous person, I would head out to the badlands of Bihar, figure out the corridors where growth is most likely to happen, and invest there. But being older and less brave, I merely advise others to do so. In the medium term, meaning in the next 20 years, Bihar will be a success story.

For Diwali, belatedly, here is a song for all exiles, voluntary and otherwise. Vikram Seth's wonderful poem has always affected me powerfully.

For me, though, it's not the Raag Malwa, it is the half heard melody of a rough rustic voice singing a capella a Bhakti hymn from Manikkavachakar (as in G Aravindan's masterpiece Chidambaram).

It is looking out my window in Kerala and seeing a host of dragonflies silhouetted against the deep green of coconut leaves and the lighter green of tamarind and neem, and remembering the souls waiting to be reborn buzzing about as dragonflies on the rock out at sea in M Mukundan's On the banks of the Mayyazhi River.

Rest then, disquieted heart!

Three years of neurotic
Guy Fawkes Days-I recall
That lonely hankering-
But I am home after all.

Home. These walls, this sky
Splintered with wakes of light
These mud-lamps beaded round
The eaves, this festive night,

These streets, these voices...yet
The old insensate dread,
Abeyant as that love,
Once more shifts in my head.

Five? Six? generations ago
Somewhere in the Punjab
My father's family,farmers,
Perhaps had a small shop

And two generations later
Could send a son to a school
To gain the conqueror's
Authoritarian seal:

English! Six-armed god,
Key to a job, to power,
Snobbery, the good life,
This separateness, this fear.

English: beloved language
of Johnson, Wordsworth's tongue-
These my "meridian names"
Whose grooves I crawl along.

The Moghuls fought and ruled
And settled. Even while
They hungered for musk-melon,
Rose, peach, nightingale,

The land assumed their love.
At sixty they could not
Retire westwards. The British
Made us the Orient.

How could an Englishman say
About the divan-e-khas
"If there is heaven on earth
It is this; it is this; it is this."?

Macaulay the prophet of learning
Chewed at his pen: one taste
Of Western wisdom "surpasses
All the books of the East,"

And Kalidas, Shankaracharya,
Panini, Bhaskar, Kabir,
Surdas sank, and we welcomed
The reign of Shakespeare.

The undigested Hobbes,
The Mill who later ground
(Through talk of liberty)
The Raj out of the land ...

O happy breed of Babus,
I march on with your purpose;
We will have railways, common law
And a good postal service-

And I twist along
Those grooves from image to image,
Violet, elm-tree, swan,
Pork-pie, gable, scrimmage

And as we title our memoirs
"Roses in December"
Though we all know that here
Roses *grow* in December

And we import songs
Composed in the U.S
For Vietnam (not even
Our local horrors grip us)

And as, over gin at the Club,
I note that egregious member
Strut just perceptibly more
When with a foreigner,

I know that the whole world
Means exile of our breed
Who are not home at home
And are abroad abroad,

Huddled in towns, while around:
"He died last week. My boys
Are starving. Daily we dig
The ground for sweet potatoes."

"The landlord's hirelings broke
My husband's ribs-and I
Grow blind in the smoke of the hearth."
"Who will take care of me

When I am old? No-one
Is left." So it goes on,
The cyclic shadow-play
Under the sinister sun;

That sun that, were there water,
Could bless the dispirited land,
Coaxing three crops a year
From this same yieldless ground.

Yet would these parched wraiths still
Starve in their ruins, while
"Silkworms around them grow
Into fat cocoons?", Sad soil,

This may as well be my home.
Because no other nation
Moves me thus? What of that?
Cause for congratulation?

This could well be my home;
I am too used to the flavor
Of tenous fixity;
I have been brought to savour

Its phases: the winter wheat-
The flowers of Har-ki-Doon -
The sal forests - the hills
Inflamed with rhododendron -

The first smell of the Rains
On the baked earth-the peaks
Snow-drowned in permanence--
The single mountain lakes.

What if my tongue is warped?
I need no words to gaze
At Ajanta, those flaked caves,
Or at the tomb of Mumtaz;

And when an alap of Marwa
Swims on slow flute-notes over
The neighbours' roofs at sunset
Wordlessly like a lover

It holds me-till the strain
Of exile, here or there,
Subverts the trance, the fear
Of fear found everywhere.

"But freedom?" the notes would sing...
Parole is enough. Tonight
Below the fire-crossed sky
Of the Festival of Light.

Give your soul leave to feel
What distilled peace it can;
In lieu of joy, at least
This lapsing anodyne.

"The world is a bridge. Pass over it,
Building no house upon it."
Acceptance may come with time;
Rest, then disquieted heart.