Bihar is in the Eye of the Beholder
Contents: 1. Authors note. 2. Prologue. 3. Laloo Prasad and the secret of Democracy. 4. Sisters under the skin. 5. \'Biharis need to be kicked\'. 6. \'I was kicking someone\'. 7. \'I will be dead by forty\'. 8. The fourth R is revolution. 9. Bihar rides the two-headed tiger. 10. O ladies who have seen the light. 11. \'Hum maxim mangta hai. 12. Laloo puts it to the touch. 13. Killing the divine king. 14. Epilogue.
"In this impressionistic Account of the Sixteen months he spent in a small town in Bihar, essayist; literary journalist and award-winning poet, Vijay Nambisan, tries to discover the forces that drive, or rather thwart, one of the most populous and indisputably the most \'damned\' state in the Indian Union, Vicious caste wars, grinding poverty, dirty politics, corruption and lawlessness--the worst of modern India is in full display in Bihar. The state is to many a place beyond redemption--\'a hole in the heart of India\'. And yet, is the state really on the brink of a spectacular collapse?.
To the author, Bihar is the symptom of a disease that afflicts the entire country. It \'is a state of mind as well as of being; it lies all about us wherever we are\'. It is a place where democracy denies more often than it empowers, and yet remains the only hope for equality and progress; where elected leaders rob those whom they are charged with serving, even as everyday people work against enormous odds to make a difference; where a woman living in poverty, working over twelve hours a day, does not expect to live beyond forty; where a child is put to work in a crude arms factory and has a hand blown off in an accident; where religion invariably corrupts and divides; where complete strangers will take you into their homes and insist you share their food.
Looking beyond facts and figures to analyse attitudes and opinions, Vijay Nambisan has produced a remarkably perceptive and balanced portrait of present-day Bihar, forcing us to re-examine our easy, often second-hand views of the state. \'Bihar\', he asserts, \'justifies the attitude you carry to it; Bihar is in the eye of the beholder\'." (jacket)
