The chessboard changes
BG Verghese

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The Kosi floods
could be the harbinger of a New Bihar, a new land system, a completely
new and rational farm layout with levelled fields, proper access roads,
field channels and drains, homesteads, and a new cadastral record that
confers land titles on actual tillers of the soil through a model law
or special legislation that overcomes all previous encumbrances that
have, except on paper, been removed by an act of God. Good ISRO
satellite imagery could suggest answers.A larger spatial and livelihood
plan must be conceptualised.Who will do this other than Delhi
and the Bihar Government together with the Government of Nepal? On the
Indian side an inter- disciplinary task force must be put together
under the Planning Commission with public-private,NGO, panchayat and
people’s participation. Immediate livelihoods will come, not from
agriculture,which will take some years to revive, but from
reconstruction activities with food-for-work, NREGA and other support.
Remember, Faridabad, now a bustling industrial township was built with
their own hands by lower middle class urban refugees from the NWFP in
1951-53.

Lt. Col. (Retd.) Bajrang Bihari Singh
Head Administration Apollo International School & Raunaq Public School
Raunaq Education Foundation C/O Apollo Tyres Mobile: 91-9729057707
e-mail:bajrangsin@...  


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