Bihar’s decline from being the center of one of the greatest empires to the dirtiest and most underdeveloped state is depressing. Time and time again we ponder, “how did that happen” and time and time again we are subjected to a large number of examples that explain exactly HOW that happened.
This time the example is from Ara, the great city of Bihar, known for Bhojpuri movies. Dr Amrendra Narayan, a teacher in Veer Kunwar Singh University has been beaten by goons. His only fault was that he wanted to change the sad state of his university! Dr Amrendra Narayan represents every person from Bihar that moves out from the state in order to learn. He represents everyone of us who, after watching Bihar go down the drain due to corruption and mismanagement, wants to return back and do something for the motherland. He could have gotten a job in the USA, where he did his PhD but returned back to Bihar in order to contribute to a better state.
He reopened the computer center of the University that was closed for 10 years. He also ensured no one was copying thesis from the internet for their PhD by introducing plagiarism checks. Doctorates from the subcontinent have a very bad image in the world due to most of the thesis being copy-pasted from someone else work. Being a doctorate himself, he vowed to eliminate this anti-learning and illegal practice. He felt proud to have done something for the betterment of his homestate.
His feeling, however, was shortlived when some people who profited off of students misery attacked Amrendra in the University campus itself. The man behind this is Vivek Kumar, who has mentioned ‘lecturer’ as a profession on his Facebook page. Dr Amrendra being a believer in the system asked the university to file an FIR against the said person but to no avail. He was left on his own to fend for himself.
He later filed an FIR but the justice has been on hold. There is no outrage in the media as Dr Amrendra Narayan is not famous in a country where fame occupies the top priority in every field. A country where actors, singers and politicians are kept on a pedestal, teachers, doctors, engineers are given no heed.
Dr Amrendra Narayan’s incident explains why exactly Bihar is the way it is. Here, a common person’s issues are rarely paid importance over communal politics and other smokescreen issues that win elections. Its decline can solely be attributed to the continuous harassment of qualified people who are chased out of state by government-backed goons. Dr Amrendra Narayan’s incident is just another example of similar brain drain going on in Bihar.
I hope he continues to stay there and fight as he has done so far. He might not need Bihar in order to succeed but Bihar certainly needs people like him in order to get back to the glory days of the past.
