The incredible tragedy in Bihar caused by the floods in the river Kosi raises several questions. Close to 3 million people have been displaced from their homes. Over a 100 are dead, but there is no way that figure can be established as much of the flood affected areas are cut off. While several people raised the spectre of global warming, why was there no warning and protection when engineers could see that the Kosi dam in Nepal was under structural pressure before it burst and caused the devastation ? If reports are to be believed, the warning was faxed to an office in Patna where the faxes accumalated as the person in charge was on leave and no one was in office!!!! Fax ? Whatever happened to the cell phone ?
\nA fundamental question too : why does the rest of India treat Bihar as a lost cause ? Wherever I go there is general lament about Bihari labour creating slums, forgetting that they were there for a purpose. To build our roads, our houses. Why have people got this attitude for a state that was once the greatest centre of learning in the whole world, at the nalanda Unversities. Famous Bihari’s include King Asoka, Chandra Gupt Maurya, Chanakya, Vatsayana, but also Dr rajendra Prasad, Karpoori Thakur, even our current hot favourite – Mahendra Singh Dhoni. And yet if you ask people about Bihar the first name that comes up is Laloo Prasad Yadav. Why not Buddha and Bodh Gaya ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The incredible tragedy in Bihar caused by the floods in the river Kosi raises several questions. Close to 3 million people have been displaced from their homes. Over a 100 are dead, but there is no way that figure can be established as much of the flood affected areas are cut off. While several people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n