On August 24, Nitish Kumar completed nine months in office as the Chief Minister of Bihar. Just a day before, the HSBC (Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) inaugurated its 44th branch in Patna and, two days later, the tenders for building the roads of capital town of Patna was opened. In the presence of Naina Lall Kidwai, the high profile CEO of HSBC, its branch was opened by the British High Commissioner Sir Michael Arthur. In case of the tenders, contrary to the initial apprehension, out of the eleven nationally reputed builders who had bought the tender forms, two companies (Tantia Group Construction Ltd. and Consortium of DS Constructions and P&M Infrastructure) actually submitted the tender, each with a deposit of Rs.1.40 crore as earnest money for a Rs.140 crore road building project. These two apparently unconnected events, though not very dramatic, indicate the initial outcome of sustained re-branding of Bihar in the last nine months, resulting in regular trekking of dramatis personae of national/global economic and financial firmament for getting connected to the state. Nitish Kumar is possibly the only public figure in recent period in India who is engaged in two onerous tasks - first, re-branding of the state from a very negative image through the elite prism of administrative, industrial, planning and much talked about tax reform and, second, providing slew of subaltern centric steps like reservations for the lower backwards in Panchayat election, Land Reform Commission, Commission on Common School System, Farmer's Commission, massive thrust to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and revitalizing the state's educational agenda. Apart from charting out the developmental policy contours to rejuvenate the economy, he is also trying to resurrect the moribund state structure and create commensurate conditions for emergence of institutions to provide sustenance to quality governance. For enabling Bihar to emerge as a front ranking state, various specialised human resource institutions are being planned, which will provide higher education opportunities within the state and also stop outflow of resources through student migrant. For example, the just created Chanakya National Law University at Patna will not only provide much needed integration with the international legal epistemology but also produce graduates who will aid and create ambiance at every level of governance. Now that World Trade Organisation (WTO) is there, gone are the days when industry or agriculture in India could flourish in a protected market, without the need for international legal literacy. So agenda for development in a peripheral economy like Bihar with a very limited market and literacy is a formidable one.

In view of the enormity of the task and the nature of the existing social support, Nitish Kumar is essentially working out, in last nine months, the nuts and bolts of operational parts of policy initiative, which was electorally fine tuned in the last assembly election. The victorious coalition was possibly the broadest possible social coalition, incorporating extreme social groups from elite at one hand to the very subaltern at the other. Working out the programmatic thrust of this coalition in such a short time is not a mean achievement. It is to be borne in mind that Nitish Kumar is functioning with several handicaps. He has no advantage of history to flaunt, unlike in many of the southern and western states in the realm of growth and developmental icons. He does not have a well oiled party organization, like CPI(M) in West Bengal, which can act as a social shock absorber or foot soldiers for implementing the governmental programme, working as a outside pressure group. The absence of a corporate sector and a development oriented civil society is another major constraint for re-branding the state. Thus the success of the developmental strategy here rests entirely on the bureaucracy which falls short on the ground of both capacity and commitment. However, these handicaps gets partly compensated by a so far non-hostile central government and the full support of the President of India for Bihar. For example, P. Chidambaram's visit to Bihar, his first to any Hindi heartland state, was sort of a 'political coup' on the part of Nitish Kumar. Even within the state, the NDA is functioning quite cohesively. The Deputy Chief Minister, Sushil Kumar Modi, has played a decisive role in this cohesion. He is also the co-architect for initiating several tax reforms. He has not allowed any one-up-manship or ideological predilection to sour relation with the Chief Minister.

The task of building Bihar, however, needs not only cohesion within NDA, but a still broader provincial consensus. Bihar has never pursued a cohesive and inclusive agenda of development. This was primarily due to the absence of a viable, forward looking and inclusive state structure. Further, the feudal pattern of appropriation also came in the way of a formation of an authentic elite. These limitations had direct consequence in the quality of governance in the post-independence Bihar. Infact, the foundation laid in the fifties by the then ruling elite determined the subsequent trajectory of underdevelopment. In the recent past, while the society got increasingly democratized, the ram shackled elites of the state increasingly gave up its 'ownership'. In the process, functioning of the state further nosedived. Will Nitish Kumar will be able to bring back the sense of ownership of the elite for the state, without altering the process of democratization which the state has already undergone ? To what extent the subaltern will remain part of this ruling coalition without allowing any enchroachment in their already won democratic space? For Nitish Kumar, the nine months have been very tight rope walking, but his political and administrative brilliance will be measured ultimately in terms of his policy of 'growth' with 'justice' without abandoning the 'coalition of extreme'.