KYA AB BIHAR KI BAARI HAI ECHOES ONCE AGAIN

To begin with, I request the leaders sweating it out in Bihar’s electoral fray, please don’t bother to look for poll math here, as it’s a collage of massive changes and its enduring pain and the resultant cry.

- SHASHI SHEKHAR

First, let’s return to the last decade of the 20th century. Two colleagues and I were on our way to Dhanbad from Patna. In the dim sunlight of peak winter, we witnessed a disturbing scene near the road. In that bitter cold, facing a slush-filled pond, a woman wearing only a sari was poised to bathe. But her embarrassment held her back. She didn’t have another sari to wear after bathing and people in vehicles passing by leered at her. I was trying to understand her vacillation in a dignified way. What followed made us more uneasy. She haltingly sat on her haunches and rinsed her mouth with the same water. Since then, a lot of water has flowed in Ganga and Kosi rivers. Jharkhand has separated from Bihar. Dhanbad is now in Jharkhand and the condition of Bihar’s women has undergone a sea change.

Government data reveals that the twin intervention by the state government and the society has helped the women take a giant leap. In 2000, women’s literacy rate in Bihar was 33%, which is now 73.91%. The state's 35% quota for women has resulted in a big improvement in male-female ratio at the workplace. Today, its police force has 37% women participation. The number of women teachers is 261,000. Women are wielding both pen and pistol.