I was born in Bhagalpur, a small town in Bihar. If you have ever been to Delhi, you might have noticed that calling someone (or something) Bihari (i.e. someone from Bihar) is a popular form of dismissing him or her as mostly illiterate or gaudy or irrelevant. Atanu Dey has a blog entry that sums up pretty much why Bihar has been left out and why I have not been to my home for around 10 years now.
Sitting on in the de-briefing meetings, a picture of gradual and steady decline began forming in my mind. The signs were apparent. The power failed intermittently. Bihar produces no electrical power of its own. Somnath informed me that Bihar gets about 1000 MW of power from outside the state, 700 MW of which is unaccounted for. Patna consumes 300 MW, a good bit of which appears to have been used by the Rabri Devi household. It is reported that when she vacated her official Chief Minister's residence, they had to remove 53 air conditioners.
Heh. I remember the days when we used to go without power for at least a week (stealing power cables and selling the copper used to be good source of income for some people). Enough reminiscing - those days are behind me now.
Update: Changed the blog title