Pride and Prejudice for Bihari’s
Who carries you on a rickshaw or an auto rickshaw in Delhi? Biharis. Who drives the cars of Delhiites? Biharis. Who built the Delhi Metro? Biharis. (You may not agree with the last one.) Who is building the new houses and the expanding suburbs of Delhi? Biharis. Who made Punjab the most prosperous state in the country? The answer agin is Biharis (Here too you may not agree)
The credit for building the Delhi Metro or making Punjab prosperous will never go to Biharis. Does anyone ever say that blacks built America?
At the same time Biharis excelled in the other fields. Many became great political leaders, ICS and IAS officers, Scientists, doctors, engineers, writers and artists. Delhi and other part of Indian cities attracted huge white collar Bihari populations and Bihari’s formed a large part of the Indian diaspora of professionals.
As the years passed, many of the Biharis who had come to Punjab or Mumbai as manual labourers started moving up the economic ladder as did the blue -collar Indian emigrants abroad.
Now comes the 11% growth. The state can recover from the damage it has suffered over hundreds of years only if such a rate of growth can be sustained for many, many years. Then Biharis would not have to till others land or built cities and countries elsewhere.
