SONS of the soil are waiting in the wings, to fly to their motherland and re-script the success stories they penned __ away from home. With the return of Nitish Kumar to power, Bihar-born investors, along with others, are itching to expand their trade and industry base to their homeland.
“Even Biharis in New York now want to come back… Everyone has a good word or two to say about Bihar,” said Rahul Verma, president of Shristi Group of Companies, which has been into infrastructure, hospital-ity and lifestyle ventures across the country.
Verma minces no words in berating the bad, ‘ol days of “jungle raj”. “The defeat of Lalu Prasad is the best thing to have happened to Bihar,” the young entrepreneur said, sitting in his posh Park Street office in Kolkata.
Nodded H P Kanoria, patron and chairman of Srei and Shristi groups of companies which have prepared several development projects and peti-tioned the Nitish Kumar government with an offer to execute them in Bihar.
Kanoria’s firms have already tied up with the West Bengal government and are heavily into infrastructure development in and around Kolkata. “A knowledge city, a superspeciality hospital, a five-star hotel, a power plant and a township at Digha are among the projects we have proposed to the Bihar government,” said the elderly entrepreneur, whose business pursuits have taken him across the globe, including China, as part of the business delegation that accompanied the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
A native of Barahiya on the outskirts of Patna, Kanoria’s grandparents had flour and pulse mills in their village. In 1970s, Kanoria himself bought a steel factory in Patliputra Industrial Estate and opened a steel showroom near Patna’s Dak Bungalow crossing. “We had friends in the government and the bureaucracy. Yet, we had a bitter experience with the red tape and we wound up,” recalled the 1942-born Barahiya high school passout. By 1971-72, the Kanorias were in Bengal, bag and baggage.
Now that the Kolkata Presidency and St Xavier’s alumnus has resolved to return to his roots, he is not scared of the corruption Bihar has of late become so infamous for, even with Nitish at the helm. “Law and order is more important. So are investor-friendly government policies,” the former director of West Bengal Industrial Infrastructure Development Corpora-tion said, waiting for “the government to show to the trade and industry the spark that could ignite a fire”.
Kanoria may be waiting for the government response to his business proposals, but Sajjan Kumar Tulsiyan of tax consultants S K Tulsiyan & Company looks beyond that. “If CM Nitish Kumar creates a system in Bi-har that continues even after he becomes Prime Minister, that would be his biggest service not only to the state but to the nation which cannot grow without Bihar’s growth,” said the eminent Kolkata lawyer, also “a proud Barahiya native”.
Tulsiyan, who has the corporate sector’s who’s who as his clients, ex-plains “honest, good governance” of Nitish has generated confidence among investors. “But they too, like me, won’t be surprised if Nitish be-comes the PM one day,” he said and added that this very thought creates gnawing doubts about the trade atmosphere in Bihar, minus Nitish.
Tulsiyan hailed Nitish as “an incorruptible man” whose Bihar, he said, should follow the Gujarat model of development where corrupt babus do not have a say in policy making and implementation. “I will be failing in my duty as a Bihari if I forget to doff for Sushil Kumar Modi,” he said and added the deputy CM, as a true Nitish compatriot, has been “silently, tire-lessly burning midnight oil” to jack up the state’s revenue.
Heaps of praise for the Nitish-Modi duo, indeed!
For the trade and in-dustry to really feel good, “the spark that could ignite a fire” is awaited.
Read more: State-born bizmen wait for ‘spark’ to ignite ‘fire’ – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/State-born-bizmen-wait-for-spark-to-ignite-fire/articleshow/7142578.cms#ixzz18sSGXoff