A small and unheard village has suddenly been in news and has been the center of attention amongst all the astronomers and other enthusiasts of the world. Ever since it was discovered that the Total Solar Eclipse of 22 July, one of the rare celestial occurrences, would be best viewed from the village, people have been thronging the dusty roads of Taregana, 60 km away from Patna, the capital city of Bihar. Such a widespread enthusiasm can only be attributed to the interest shown by the state government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and their efforts of making this event turn into a grand spectacle.
For a state which has been used to live in darkness for a long time, this darkness that the eclipse brings with it might well just signify the phase which is taking it towards light, however slow that journey may be. There was a period when the powers-to-be in the state made a mockery of the technological advances that the rest of the world was going through. To them, lack of education was a tool which would help them control the masses in a much more effective manner. In the post economic liberalization era, investors made a rush towards different parts of the country, but Bihar was totally neglected and this led to the further broadening of the gap with the other parts of the nation, that the state had already been experiencing in terms of economic benefits and quality of life of the people in general.
The most disappointing facet was of course the fact that all this never mattered to the leaders here. No effort whatsoever, was made towards promoting any sort of development. Education, industrialization, health care, internal security- nothing was going right in the state. That’s what darkness meant to the people of the state in its actual sense of the term. Those who dreamt of doing something in their lives and were capable of doing so were forced to go to other states to realize their dreams, in most cases never to come back. Education could have made the poor people see through the grand hoax of democracy that they had been made part of by the government. Remember how Lalu Yadav used to explain what to do with the Electronic Voting Machines – “Press the button near the lantern symbol and wait for the peeenk sound”. And the naive villagers were all too happy to follow those humble directions.
While things have not improved by leaps and bounds, a sense of anticipation of something better happening to the state has been certainly there ever since Nitish Kumar took charge. Roads are being built, power supply has been better, crime rate has considerably gone down and people are feeling much secure living in their own homes. This occasion of eclipse gave the government a chance to show that it really “cares” for the people of the state and those who come from outside. And it has been a job well done so far. People are saying that Nitish needs at least one more term to transform the state totally from the sorry state of affairs it had been. Yes they are true. May be he needs even more. It takes considerably smaller time to obliterate something than is needed to create it.
