(Deepshikha Gautam, Intern Journalist) Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar often discusses his development plans in his campaign during the Bihar assembly elections. According to Nitish Kumar, he has laid a door-to-door tap water scheme and a network of electricity and roads in the state in the past years. Let us know how much work Nitish has done on electricity, roads, and water.
According to the 2011 census, Bihar is the second most rural-dominated state in the country after Himachal Pradesh.
89 percent of its population lives in rural areas as compared to 69 percent of the country. This means that basic civic amenities are an important issue in the state. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s seven promises before the 2015 Bihar election included electricity, roads, and water.
How did they do it?
According to data from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), electrification took place in only 51% of villages in Bihar in 2004-05 as compared to 74% at the national level.
It increased to 61% in 2009-10 and to 93% in 2014-15. At the same time, according to the Saubhagya portal, all the rural families seeking a connection in the state were electrified by March 2019. According to the data of per capita, energy consumption in the third term of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar shows the most improvement.
According to the latest available data of the period, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of energy consumption per capita is 7.9% between 2004-05 and 2009-10, 8.9% between 2009-10 and 2014-15, and 2014-15 and 2016-17 Between 30.2%. However, according to available data, Bihar’s per capita electricity consumption was lowest in 2016-17 as compared to 18 major states. It was one of the 12 major states where rural areas did not get a 24-hour power supply.
According to various answers given in Parliament, it was ranked 6th in September 2019 and August 2020.
According to the latest available data available from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was 1.2% of the road length in Bihar between 2004-05 and 2009-10, while it increased between 2009-10 and 2014-15. 10% and is seen to be 0.9% between 2014-15 and 2016-17. This shows that the length of the road increased the most during Nitish Kumar’s second term as the Chief Minister of Bihar. However, given the lack of recent data, it is difficult to comment on Bihar’s road construction record in Nitish Kumar’s third term. Inadequate despite the increasing length of roads. However, what is worrying about Bihar is that it is insufficient despite increasing the length of roads. It is 1994.5 kilometers per million people. Road density was the third-lowest in the state after Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh in 2016-17. Another problem with roads in the state is their quality. Though the highway is of solid surface made of bitumen, most of the rural and urban roads in the state are uncertain, as per the 2016-17 data. At the same time, the overall share of surface roads in the state has not shown a steady improvement compared to the national level and it remains very low.
According to the 2011 census, only 2.8% of households in Bihar reported their main source of drinking water. Of this, 2.2% contains clean or 0.6% un-boring boring water within its premises. The national average of such families was almost ten times 26.8%. At the same time, this difference was even greater in rural areas.
Only 1.1% of households in Bihar had their drinking water source as compared to 14% nationally. Let us tell you that this data is based on the data collected under the Water Life Mission Scheme. As per the plan, Bihar achieved only 1.1% domestic coverage of piped water supply at the end of 2016-17. The fourth round of the NFHS survey in 2015-16 saw some improvement in Bihar but a gap remained. According to the survey, only 4.1% of the households in the state and 2.5% of the rural households used water through pipelines in the houses or 30.1%, and at the national level, the figure is 18.1%. However, there are signs of improvement in pipe water supply in the state between 2011 and 2015-16. The state has seen the biggest improvement in supply water, although according to data from the Water Life Mission Plan in 2019-20, 17.7% of rural households in the state were getting water supply as compared to 1.7% at the end of 2018-19. On October 29, this coverage was increased to 55.4%, much higher than the national average of 30.1%. On April 1, 2020, Bihar ranked 16th among 32 states and union territories with 17.7% of the households covering the number of households with piped water connections. A house is fully covered under the Jal Jeevan Yojana. If within a radius of 100 meters of that house, 40 liters per person (person) gets safe drinking water per year. On 1 April 2020, Bihar had 11.1% of the population covered by piped water supply. It is the lowest among all 32 states and union territories according to the data obtained.
About Post Author
