Bihar sees reverse brain drain

BY PALLAVI SINGH


It was perhaps the worst of times. With the fall of night, Patna would blanket itself in a pall of darkness, interrupted occasionally by traffic thinning rapidly with each passing hour.

Downed shutters in shops would signal fearful business, rickshaws would accept no late evening passengers and women and chil- dren would be home before sun- set. It was, for all practical pur- poses, a self-willed curfew.

As a painful memory of his growing up days, Sumit Prakash still has this vivid remembrance of his home town: notorious, lawless and hopeless about the status quo like a defeated war- rior. “Six-seven years ago when I would go visit my parents in Pat- na, I wouldn't be moving around without a bodyguard; I wouldn't even be allowed to walk up to an ATM alone!“ he recalls.

One fine morning in 2007, he realized this was changing.
While Prakash and wife Smita Choudhary were driving back from a holiday to Sydney, where they both worked as business managers for different firms, his Patna-based father, who had just been denied visa from the Aus- tralian government on account of his old age, called up. “He ask- ed us to return home. We had ev- erything going for us, but we had no close family in Australia. Our option was Bombay or the Unit- ed States where my brothers live but that day, out of the next 5 hours of the drive, we spent three hours talking about Patna,“ he says.

The recurring leitmotif of the conversation centred around the improving law and order situa- tion and infrastructure in Bihar and the record number of con- victions in the state since the new regime under chief minister Nitish Kumar took over in 2005.

That is why, in February 2008, Prakash and Smita, homesick and looking for purpose in their state of birth, came back to settle down and run the family-owned school Prarambhika in Patna's upmarket Boring Road. And just like them, there are many--engi- neers, doctors, management consultants, students and busi- nessmen born and brought up in Bihar, but away for better educa- tion and employment during the previous regime led by Lalu Pra- sad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)--who are returning to the state driven by emerging oppor- tunities.

“For the first time in the last 60 years, there is a concerted effort to build the state. I wouldn't say rebuild because there was no such thing as role of the state in Bihar earlier. Now, the place of the bahubalis (musclemen) has been usurped by the state. Con- victions took place across all castes and classes unlike before when only people from the dis- advantaged sections would suf- fer. Because of this, respect for the state and faith that police will act against lawbreakers has re- markably increased,“ says Saibal Gupta, director of Asian Devel- opment Research Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Patna. There have been convictions of 49,000 people since 2005 including charge sheeted politicians such as Sha- habuddin, a former member of Parliament from the RJD.

The unprecedented reverse brain drain to Bihar is being led by people who never imagined they would return. Prakash, 42, has been in Patna for two years now, but on the day he had left the city in the early 1990s for Australia, he hadn't at least thought so.

Neither had Anjay Thakur, a commercial pilot trained from California and a professional photographer who returned in late 2008 to look after the family- run hospital Shushruta Surgical Clinic. Not very long ago, Anjay's father Rajeshwar Thakur, Patna's leading laparoscopic surgeon, would close his hugely popular clinic in Patna city locality at dusk. “Earlier, doctors travelled with bodyguards. One doctor was shot down and we also know several doctors who got threat calls for extortion,“ he says, add- ing that kidnapping and ransom were industry here.

Thakur's family hospital is now in expansion mode with him at the helm of affairs, which is unusual for his accomplish- ments. In Thakur's return lies abandonment of two promising careers in India's metros.

After various stints of flying and dabbling in photography with stalwarts such as Farrokh Chothia and Atul Kasbekar in Mumbai and running a studio of his own in Delhi, Thakur's inter- est in family's hospital projects sparked owing to various rea- sons. “I had offers from IndiGo for flying, but when recession set in, it was withdrawn. Around that time, my family was plan- ning to set up a hospital in Noida close to Delhi. My father suggest- ed that it should be built in Pat- na,“ he remembers.

From the gloomy flashback of the city in the 1990s, Thakur now mulls on the present. His voice lifts up as he describes his morn- ings at the Patna Golf Club, his impromptu road trips across the state and outside and most of all, the night life quickening to met- ropolitan tastes.

That Bihar is indeed becoming a state where aspirations and en- terprise have replaced sense of insecurity and scepticism is evi- dent from the newly opened res- taurants and bars that serve till midnight, social gatherings in its clubs where young people have replaced the older members and lavish weddings. “Earlier, people were scared to show off wealth.
At the club where I go, there would only be old people my father's age but now, I see many of my generation and even young- er, which goes on to show that people are indeed returning and that homes no longer have just old parents,“ Prakash says.

Anjay, while dusting off his Mamiya, Nikon D2X and F100 cameras which he says he used for shooting stills of Bollywood movies such as Ek Ajnabee and Pyare Mohan, particularly re- members the use of Jimmy Jib cranes, mostly used in film shootings, at a marriage in Patna recently. “Can you beat that?
How many people do you think can afford to shoot weddings with a Jimmy Jib?“ Apart from Prakash and Tha- kur, who have family ventures to manage and run, there are many who have returned to start from the scratch.

Bibhuti Bikramaditya worked with nSYStech Co. Ltd, an infor- mation technology firm in South Korea, as a project manager be- fore setting up Tech Brains Pvt.
Ltd, probably the first electronics design company in Bihar, in 2008. “I come from a small vil- lage and when I started doing decent abroad, I felt I should do something for the state,“ he says.

Bikramaditya, while in South Korea, formed Bihar Brains De- velopment Society (BBDS) in 2004, a forum for non-resident Biharis, which eventually shifted to Patna with him three years lat- er. At the Society, he organizes scientists, entrepreneurs and students to brainstorm on op- portunities that can be created in Bihar apart from promoting local talent.

For his electronics design company, Bikramaditya has also hired engineers from engineer- ing colleges in the state such as National Institute of Technology (NIT) and Maulana Azad College of Engineering and Technology, Patna. “We are also helping NIT to set up a chip design lab. Then, there are several student ex- change programmes we facilitate for colleges in Bihar with univer- sities in Seoul,“ he says.

The state government, too, is trying to reach out to people and exhorting them to return. Chief minister Nitish Kumar has a weekly jan sunwai (public hear- ing) at his residence. Police sta- tions across the state have been freshly painted and refurbished and emphasis is being laid on faster registration of complaints.
For the Global Bihar Meet in 2006, Kumar's government also roped in Bikramaditya, who was then in South Korea, as interna- tional coordinator for the event.

But even Bikramaditya admits that the next step for the govern- ment, after fixing law and order, should be encouraging entrepre- neurship, which will create jobs and bring in investment. “People right now are driven by the feel good factor,“ he says. “Now, we need more dynamism from the chief minister; he needs to be the Narendra Modi of Bihar.“

Yet, at the Bihar Chamber of Commerce, where until a few years ago angry businessmen would lash out at the state's top police officers for failing to check crime spiral, the topics for dis- cussion have moved to traffic snarls in the city, frequent power cuts, public denial for paying for parking and lack of civic man- ners in people.

For those returning from the metros, it's adjusting to this change in lifestyle and attitude that is bringing in the conflict in their happy vision of getting back to their roots.

“As a society which hangs out together, there is little of it. All my friends still remain outside the state, which is why I get to share my father's friends,“ says Prakash.

During his golf practice ses- sions, he eventually made a few friends, but wife Smita, who han- dled mergers and acquisitions at an Australian firm and now is the vice-principal of Prarambhika, says she continues to be con- strained by a society, which is in- tensely patriarchal. “When I walk into a bank, it's my husband people address even if I have asked the question. At 31, people refuse to believe that I can get work done. But I know it would be foolish to expect a drastic change overnight,“ she says.
“Since I have decided to live here, I have also decided that I am going to do everything and enjoy it too.“

Next in the four-part series on Bihar, read “The growing tribe of migrants“. The changing face: 1. The newly constructed Dariapur bridge in Bihar. The topics for discussion in Bihar have moved to traffic snarls in the city, frequent power cuts, public denial for paying for park ing and lack of civic manners in people.
2. Sumit Prakash with wife Smita Chowdhary, viceprincipal Prarambhika school. Homesick and looking for purpose in their state of birth, the couple came back to settle down and run the familyowned school Prarambhika on Patna's upmarket Boring Road in February 2008. During his golf practice sessions, Prakash eventually made a few friends, but wife Smita, who handled mergers and acquisitions at an Australian firm, says she continues to be constrained by a society, which is intensely patri archal.

3. Asian Development Research Institute director Saibal Gupta says for the first time in the last 60 years, there is a concerted effort to build the state. Now, the place of the musclemen has been usurped by the state and because of this, respect for the state and faith that the police will act against lawbreakers has remark ably increased.