Chief minister Nitish Kumar's resolve for electricity to every household is nearly complete - another 477 villages have to be covered by this December and it's done.
Plans to cover the villages - in remote areas with difficult terrain - have been formulated. This came light on Tuesday when Nitish chaired the fourth meeting of the Bihar Vikas Mission governing body. The Mission was constituted in January 2016 to oversee implementation of programmes of good governance, including the seven resolves, and also tap the private sector to bring experts to help in implementation.
Tuesday's was the Mission's first meeting since the NDA government took charge in Bihar in July.
Nitish looked into implementation of each of his seven resolves minutely as well as other government welfare programmes along with deputy Sushil Kumar Modi, other cabinet members and senior officials including chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh.
The chief minister's resolve for 35 per cent reservation to women in government jobs has been realised, so work is on the remaining six - economic empowerment of youth, electricity to every household, drinking water to all, pucca drains and lanes up to all households, toilets for all households, and education opportunities for all.
The officials told Nitish that till now, 25 blocks and one sub-division (Belsand in Sitamarhi district) have been declared 'open defecation free'. Progress on this resolve has been slow, and the destructive floods in north Bihar proved to be a huge setback to the government as a large number of pucca toilets were destroyed in the flood-hit areas.
For economic empowerment of youths, the district registration and consultation centres have received 4.45 lakh applications or which little over 13,000 has been received for the student credit card scheme. This scheme - one of the three aspects of the youth-empowerment resolve - provides Rs 4 lakh loan to students who desire to study beyond Class XII with the government standing a guarantor to banks .
Nitish instructed the officials to monitor attendance of students in colleges for increasing it because Bihar's gross enrolment ratio in higher education is just 13.9 per cent. The government's target is to take it to 30 per cent and up.
Member-secretary of the Bihar Vikas Mission, Brijesh Mehrotra said: 'A sanction of Rs 175 crore has been made for the Mission this year. Altogether 105 posts of data entry operators have been created. A public transport expert will be hired to improve this sector. Two experts for bridges and highways will be brought for the road construction department, while a banking expert will be recruited for the finance department.'
