India Inc has come together in support of Special Category Status to Bihar. At a meeting of Bihar Industrial Investment Advisory Council in Hotel Trident Mumbai on Sunday, chaired by CM Nitish Kumar, Business Leaders supported the demand of Special Category Status to Bihar State.
CM Nitish Kumar also appealed Corporate Houses to set up their Business Units in Bihar, while assuring 100% cooperation from the State Government.
Kumar reiterated that Bihar’s Development won’t materialize if there are no big Investments in sectors like Power, Education, Health, Infrastructure, Manufacturing,Information Technology and Tourism.
“Bihar’s growth is primarily driven by public investment, and till the time we don’t have private investment inflows, it will be difficult to sustain our growth rate after the next five years,” Kumar told reporters after attending the meeting.
Kumar said some private investments have definitely come in over the past few years, but those were mostly from local entrepreneurs and maintained the state needs large investments, which only big industrial houses can make.
The Bihar Industrial Investment Advisory Council (BIIAC) was constituted last year by CM Nitish Kumar. Its first meeting was held in September 2012, while the Second meet was on October 19, 2013.
The meeting was attended by Vedanta Group chairman Anil Agarwal, Deepak Parekh of HDFC, Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank, Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank, chief of the capital markets regulator SEBI UK Sinha, ITC’s YC Deveshwar and Star India’s Uday Shankar among others.
The other members from the industry were, CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever Nitin Paranjpe, Tata Sons director (finance) Ismat Hussain, CFO of Tata Consultancy Services Rajesh Gopinath, Axis Bank MD Shikha Sharma and Max India chairman Rahul Khosla.
The meeting surely had some fruitful outcome as Business Leaders echoed in support of Nitish Kumar’s demand of Special Category Status to Bihar . Anil Agarwal Chairman of  Vedanta, who spent his early days in Bihar, said that his group will increase investment in the state if the special status is granted.
Other corporate Houses also supported the demand of Special Status to Bihar. Boston Consultancy Group’s chairman for Asia Pacific Janmejaya Sinha said, “there definitely is a need” for granting a special status to Bihar and asked people to look at the issue as something which will help the country.
“There are four crore kids in Bihar, they are not Bihar’s kids, they are the kids of India. How their future shapes up will decide how the nation’s future moves. We should not think at the state level, but about the needs of India,” he said.
ICICI Bank’s Kochhar said her bank had increased the branch network in the state and felt the state held many positives.
The agenda of the Meeting was to create a favourable climate for investment in Bihar. State government officials also presented a presentation, underlining the efforts to make Bihar an investor friendly destination. The council also discussed infrastructural challenges in the state and the ways to propel the state forward.