The Hindu Business Line : BIMARU or <i>bimari</i>?

THE BIMARU States comprising Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (UP) have long been known to be lagging behind in respect of most indices of economic growth and at the bottom of human and infrastructural development.

This has now been comprehensively documented by a survey of the best and worst States of the Indian Union conducted on the basis of a credible methodology by the magazine India Today and published in its issue of August 15.

Among the 20 big States, the rankings are 12 for Rajasthan, 14 for MP, 17 for UP and 20 for Bihar, with Chattisgarh and Jharkhand carved out of Bihar and MP some time ago being placed at 15 and 19.

Going by the specific aspects of governance and growth such as law and order, primary health, primary education, literacy, agriculture, consumer market, investment scenario and budget and prosperity, the BIMARU States and their offshoots occupy conspicuously low positions with Bihar being the last in most tables.

Indeed, it is striking that in matters of consequence to the people such as law and order, health care and primary education, Bihar and UP are at the bottom, with Chattisgarh and Jharkhand straddling them. Only in agriculture does UP make it to the big league (with the seventh rank).

To be fair, it is not as if only the BIMARU States are making such a poor show: Assam and Orissa too, among the bigger States, are seen to be running neck-to-neck with them.

The gut reaction of most politicians and even the intelligentsia of poorly-performing States to such surveys is to dismiss them as born out of prejudice. Sometimes they also question the methodology but without any clear or precise indication of the source of bias or error.

The reasons why the BIMARU States are consistently proving a drag, with such dismal returns on the money spent, deserve a detailed and objective study. If with similar resources at their disposal, and the balancing out of advantages and disadvantages, other States are able to show better results, why not the BIMARU ones, or Assam and Orissa?

This is a question that the political class and the civil society of those States should seriously ask of themselves instead of looking for scapegoats outside of themselves.

B. S. Raghavan

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