President Pranab Mukherjee today advised resource-rich Jharkhand and Bihar to learn lessons from Bangladesh on how to meet development challenges effectively and to chart their own path of development.
Addressing an international conference, 'Bihar and Jharkhand: Shared History to Shared Vision', Mukherjee said Bangladesh, once a part of Bengal Presidency, was indeed able to meet its development challenge effectively, charting an innovative path of development.
"This experience of Bangladesh has great lessons for some eastern Indian states like Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal," he said at the conference being organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) as part of its Silver Jubilee Celebrations here.
Mukherjee also recalled a speech delivered by Nitish Kumar in the 1990s as a Lok Sabha member, saying Kumar seemed to have made a valid point that Bihar and other eastern states had lost their competitive advantage because of the freight equalisation policy.
Under the policy, the Centre subsidised the transportation of minerals to a factory set up anywhere in India.
"So, despite having mineral resources and fertile land, Bihar, and now Jharkhand, too, could not make the desired progress," the President said at the event attended by Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, Education Minister Ashok Choudhary, economist Meghnad Desai and former Rajya Sabha MP N K Singh.
Mukherjee advised both the states to consider investing in education sector beyond what is done in "normal circumstances" as part of their development strategy.
He said not all current development problems lend themselves easily to techno-managerial solutions.
"In most of the developing nations, which attained their Independence in the middle of the previous century, the institution of state is considered to be very pervading with very limited space for non-state actors," he said.
The President said international development experience shows in the absence of such non-state institutions, often called civil society organisations, the efficiency of the state-led development process is bound to be limited.
"Such institutional gap is particularly wide in disadvantaged states like Bihar and Jharkhand," he pointed out.
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