This Week Bihar: Shake,PM projection and damage control

Lalu goes after Nitish

lalu prasad,who had been criticised for spending most of his time in Delhi after the poll drubbing in 2010,has of late started hitting the roads with local issues against the Nitish Kumar government. The RJD leader recently visited Aurangabad to protest a police lathicharge on RJD and CPI(ML) workers who had been demanding a probe into a murder. Lalu vowed to uproot the NDA government and said his silence must not be taken as his weakness. Also,he demanded that Nitish clear his stand on the handshake with Narendra Modi. Nitish says his “elder brother” has been going through “a phase of deep frustration and is speaking incoherently”.

special category

with an inter-ministerial committee having found Bihar not a fit case for special category status,a demand the state had made,the chief minister has now threatened to launch protests from Patna’s Gandhi Maidan to Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. Nitish Kumar’s government had already collected a crore signatures from people who favour the special category status and submitted these to the Prime Minister. Nitish has demanded that the Prime Minister dismiss the committee’s report and look at the demand afresh and with an open mind. If a new committee is not set up,Nitish said,the government will mount pressure using public support.

Emerging economy

bihar,criticised by the Planning Commission for recording just “nursery growth”,has been ranked the ‘number one emerging economy’ in India’s Most Competitive States Awards,2012. Andhra Pradesh won the ‘investment-driven economies’ award. The awards have been constituted by the Institute for Competitiveness (India),a wing of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard. Delhi was the top-ranked city ,Punjab was number one in ‘transition economies’,Haryana was the most ‘innovation driven-economy’,and Rajasthan was the best among ‘changeover economies’.