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As allegations fly thick and fast in Bihar after the Janata Dal (United) decided to break its coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party and tie-up with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and its allies instead, it is governance that appears to be crying for attention.
Various indicators make it amply clear that there are grave challenges facing the new government of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Bihar, the third most populous state in the country, is also the poorest, according to the NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index (MPI). On this metric, every second person was poor in the state in 2015-16 against one in every four at the all-India level. The gravity of the issue can be gauged from the fact that 42.16 per cent of the second poorest state – Jharkhand – were categorised as poor, almost 10 percentage points less than the state it was part of before 2000.
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The MPI is based on three dimensions – health, education, and standard of living – with each having a weighting of one-third in the index. These dimensions are further based on 12 segments — nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts.
One may argue that the MPI cited above is for the year 2015-16 and that much has changed since then. Other indicators from National Family Health Survey (2019-21), however, show that Bihar had the lowest female and male literacy rates in the 15-59 age group, often referred to as adults. Besides, it had the second highest infant mortality rate.
