Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s visit to IIM is believed to be another good PR exercise in its effort to transform the image of Bihar in places of high academic credence like IIM. He appears to be keen to present a dynamic and vibrant face of Bihar to the world at large. It is believed that he gave a patient hearing to all the students and delegates who shared their plans and ideas on issues pertaining to Bihar’s development.

He also mooted the idea of having an IIM in Bihar by next year and the IIM director accepted Kumar's invitation and assured him all help from his team in establishing a management institute. A team of experts from the IIM-A would help the State Government in preparing the curriculum besides helping in developing the basic infrastructure. The CM assured the director that funds would not be a problem for developing the institute.

Bihar was also the flavor of the season in the India Economic Summit where delegates where keen to know the developments which have taken place in Bihar since the last govt. took over. The Bihar story was passionately articulated by Bihar’s very own N K Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission for Bihar,who painted a bright picture for the 82 million people - the size of Germany's population -- who have been traditionally at the bottom of the UNDP human-development pyramid.

Besides producing 80 per cent of India's lychees and 60 per cent of India's mangoes -- and sending half of the 1.6 million patients who crowd the corridors of Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences each year -- Bihar also plans to spend Rs 18,000 crore on roads over the next three years. It has scrapped its Urban Land Ceiling Act, sharply slashed stamp duties, and attracted $6 billion in foreign investment. Half of that is in sugar, said Singh. Bihar is the only state in India where sugarcane grows on non-irrigated land. It has passed 30 pieces of investor-friendly legislation over the past year, and now has a single window for investors.

This begs the question -- if so much is changing so quickly, why did nobody do anything about the Wretched State all these years? Perhaps the Biharis, who NK Singh said could populate the new IT havens of the nation, have been listening to Wipro Chairman Azim Premji. "If we don't stay one stay ahead of the Chinese," he told the conference earlier, "they will have us for lunch."

I’m sure the achievements of the past one year have been credit worthy but the challenges seem to lie at various levels.So Nitish can plan to have another IIM’s at Patna but the bigger challenge lies in resurrecting the dilapidated and paralytic academic system prevailing in the rest of the institutions in Bihar. I think it’s easier to have an IIM’s in Bihar than weeding out the deep rooted malaise which plagues the university and even school education in Bihar.Nevertheless the focus has to be on both the tracks so that not only we revive the existing institutions and create an overall healthy academic environment rather than just having an IIM which becomes an island of prosperity for Bihar.