Low floor buses like these are set to hit Patna roads soon

The successful trials of the low floor buses in Patna under the JNNURM scheme triggered memories of road travel in the Bihar of the seventies.

The roads were narrower but smooth and the fewer number of vehicles ensured speedy travel throughout Bihar and across to Nepal. Most vivid impressions endure of trips from Patna to my village 25 miles (40km) south of Gaya. The 25-mile last stretch was a single lane state road which allowed a smooth ride in just about an hour. Logic suggests that with time the journey would have gotten faster and more comfortable. The reality, however, is quite to the contrary.

Two decades later when I took my fresh bride home, these 25 miles were quite taxing. The bumpy ride took well over two hours. By the mid-nineties, the journey took more than three hours by car and the buses on a good trip clocked over five hours! By the turn of the millennium, some stretches of the road had completely disappeared and vehicles had to negotiate their path with great care and patience. In a couple of decades the clock had been firmly wound back on this ancient state artery and several others across the state. The turn of events would have been tragic had not there been an equally spectacular reversal so that today once again the journey is comfortably made in an hour.

There are lessons to be learnt from this. Development and progress cannot be taken for granted. States and societies that do not understand this tend to fail and perish. Rise and fall of empires are not to be found just in history books. The process is continuous. And it is not just about the Enrons and Lehman Brothers of the world. While roads were disappearing in Bihar, elsewhere the entire Soviet empire unravelled in the nineties. While we debated the division of Bihar, Germany was reunified and communism messily cremated.

Even the turn of the century saw the same churning of societies and states failing due to a host of reasons. The great multicultural Balkan experiment of Yugoslavia ruptured with barbaric violence. Afghanistan through the last three decades has proved to be the nemesis of both the recognised superpowers on the planet. Iraq’s future still remains uncertain. Africa has more than its fair share of failed societies. The world has never been free of strife and suffering.

Any analysis of the reasons of various crises throws up a common ailment which plagued all these cases. Lack of good governments or governance is the single most important reason that hampers growth and prosperity. This diagnosis is the easy part. It is the non-availability of a ready prescription that haunts administrators and their leaders the world over.

Different societies have prospered at different times for a unique set of circumstances. However, no people have succeeded without a dynamic leadership that actively makes policy to shape its own future. But such governance is not achieved easily. And things don’t take long to fall apart, as the disappearance of Bihar roads showed.

While zipping down the well-paved roads of Bihar, it would be prudent to remember that not so long ago the state was plumbing the depths of almost all socio-economic indicators of human and economic development. The path of development has been well laid but there is still a long road ahead.