Waiting for Bihar’s moment in the sun

This column is on the Bihar assembly elections, but it is more of a collage of the massive changes taking place in the state and the painful impact of the upheaval.

- Shashi Shekhar

First, let’s go back in time to the last decade of the 20th century. I, along with two colleagues, was travelling to Dhanbad from Patna. In the dim sunlight of high winter, we witnessed a disturbing scene near the road. In the bitter cold, a woman draped in a sari was about to step into a slush-filled pond to bathe. What held her back was that she didn’t seem to have another sari to wear after bathing. People in vehicles passing by were leering at her. I was trying to understand her vacillation in a dignified way, but what followed further accentuated our unease. She haltingly sat on her haunches and rinsed her mouth with the same water.

A lot of water has flowed in the Ganga and the Kosi since then. Bihar was reorganised into two states. Dhanbad is now a part of Jharkhand, while the condition of women in Bihar has undergone a sea change. Government data suggests that the twin interventions by the state government and society have helped the women take a giant leap. In the year 2000, women literacy rate in Bihar was 33%, which is now estimated at 73.91%. The 35% quota for women in state government jobs has resulted in a big improvement in the male-female ratio in the workplace. Today, 37% of the police force is women. Similarly, the absolute number of women teachers stands at 261,000. Women in Bihar are now wielding both pen and pistol.