Bihar is witnessing a slow and steady transformation these days and the heroes of this journey are its often ignored human capital. We have so many success stories today which have been path breaking and also been augmenting incremental change in the social landscape of Bihar. These stories are definite signs of Bihar’s turnaround story. These happens to be few of the most unbelievable things which one would expect to hear from Bihar.

Take the example of Kaushalendra, a topper from IIM-Ahmedabad, who decided to forsake rewarding and cozy corporate life and go for setting up a vegetable distribution network which intends to promote brand Bihar by supplying fresh vegetable.

If this was not enough, the amazing journey of Drishtee in transforming the rural landscape in Madhubani, Bihar deserves special mention. This is perhaps one of the most unique BPO’s in the country, set up in Bihar and run by people from socially underprivileged section of the social strata.

Located in Saurath Village this initiative has empowered locals to think beyond the regular means of earning livelihood. The employees of this call centre mostly communicate in Hindi but they are slowly gearing up to speak and communicate effectively in English.

"We need to engage them to stop this problem of brain drain and migration. I feel if we are able to do this, then these problems will stop to a great extent. I believe this is the first of its kind, the first rural BPO in India," said Kamlesh Kumar, the manager of Drishti Business Process Outsourcing. "We want to learn things in life so that it helps us ahead in life. We are from backward area. This training in computers and BPO will really help us," said Alok Kumar Thakur, a trainee. There are around 35 literate boys and girls from the village who are undergoing a three-month training course.

If India has to truly come up to face the talent challenges and bridge the rural-urban digital divide ,success stories like this will go a long way in creating more opportunities for the needy and under privileged.

The success of students from Patwatoli village from Gaya in Bihar is also a unique phenomena .More than 100 students have cracked the most competitive IIT-JEE entrance exam over the years.Most of these students belong to poor weaver’s community and together they have changed the milieu of this village by ensuring that they bring honour to their families and village by ensuring high success rate in the competition.

Every year students of this village are guided by their seniors who share their experience and learning with these aspirants .They study together, share the same textbooks(mostly passed on by seniors) and burn the midnight oil together to achieve their goals within limited means.

Despite the odds, the only guiding mantra for them is the inspiration they get from others who have already made it to the IIT’s and their approach of group study has helped them change the destiny of the entire village. Together these heroes have changed the way the world looks at them and also created inspiring success stories.

CIMP (Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna) was formally inaugurated by Vice-president Mohd Hamid Ansari .The dawn of a new era in benighted Bihar with the opening of Chandragupt Institute of Management (CIM), being developed on the pattern of Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Ahmedabad.

"Bihar has been a land of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship and wealth creation have been the ancient themes in this state," Ansari said while inaugurating the institute here on Wednesday. He hoped this institute would promote this ancient, yet thoroughly modern, virtue.

The institute, being developed with monetary support from the government, is due to start its session from July. However, chief minister Nitish Kumar said there would be no government interference.

The first batch would have 60 students for the PG management course. It is mandatory to have 50% of the students from Bihar. Institute director Mukunda Das, who has been selected on advice from IIM-Ahmedabad, has already completed the admission procedure. CIMP has started the journey towards its goal with the launch of its flagship programme — Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration — a two year fully residential programme for graduates of any discipline desirous of a career in management.

The need for this B-school was felt from a long time, even though Bihar accounts for more than 8% of India’s population, it houses just 0.8% of all the management schools across the country. There are just 1,050 seats for MBA or PGDBA studies in Bihar as against around 95,000 nationally. This makes Bihar the state with the lowest number of PG seats per lakh of population among all Indian states with management institutes.

Reflecting on these numbers, the working group of NKC opined, “There appears to be a correlation between the number of schools in a state and its economic and industrial development. The regional imbalances in development and the creation of capacity for management education in the state are probably related.”

One of the main objectives of the institute is to help in economic and industrial development of Bihar, while fulfilling its role of training management professionals nationally.

Bihar has made significant progress in scaling upto the challenges of improving the education system in the state. At the grass root level radio’s in Bihar are playing English tutorials for the kids in the interior villages to learn the nuances of the language .

Now I can say 'welcome', 'thank you' and even write small sentences," said Rajesh. It's an achievement for a boy who belongs to a landless farmer's family and speaks the Maghi dialect at home.

The programme covers nearly six million primary school students in 37 districts in the state and is broadcast through radio sets in government schools. "English for Fun" was launched by the Bihar government in December last year at a cost of Rs 40 million in collaboration with a Bangalore-based NGO, Education Development Centre, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

On the other hand Higher and technical education in Bihar is showing encouraging action. Graduates of IIM-A have charted a course and are helping the government of Bihar to set up CIMP management institute in Patna with support from IIM-A faculty members.

Director, CIMP, V Mukundadas, stated that IIM-A has agreed in principle to support CIMP with its technical expertise in setting up the library, although a formal announcement is yet to be made by the authorities in this regard. Professor Piyush Kumar Sinha, chairman, placement committee at IIM-A, is one of the key members involved in the shaping up of CIMP.

Bihar is likely to start the first batch of its much awaited IIT from the current academic year 2008-09.The Union HRD ministry asking the state government to provide details of the infrastructure needed for its launch in a temporary building. In a letter to chief secretary RJM Pillai, the special secretary in the Union HRD ministry, KM Acharya, has asked the state government to "identify the temporary premises for the proposed IIT with a built-up area of around 38,000 square feet".

This is much awaited and well deserved start in the effort to put Bihar once again on the global education map. World’s oldest university at Nalanda is also likely to start its functioning by next year. Former President APJ Kalam has been personally monitoring the efforts for Nalanda University and he also visited Patna to discuss the work going in this regard.The proposed plan to start IIM at Patna is also on its way and the Ministry of HRD with Bihar Govt is trying to work out the modalities for the proposed Business school at Patna in collaboration with the IIM’s.

Ask any statistician he will tell you that Bihar’s literacy rate is perhaps one of the lowest in the country but what he will not tell you is that the how Bihari students have been topping in most of the competitive exams in the country. IIT-JEE or CAT , UPSC or Railways chances are that Bihari students will definitely figure in the merit list. To secure good ranks in the best academic institution is a dream for most of the Bihari students and their parents. What’s most inspiring is the fact that these students are mostly from semi urban and lower middle class families from remote districts of Bihar. These parents dedicate themselves and spend their life’s saving to realize their kids’ dream of getting the best higher education. I have seen how thousands of parents beat the scorching sun to secure forms of coaching institutes and competitive entrance exams. They take loans from friends, relatives and banks to take care of their kid’s education.

Try reserving a train to Delhi, Pune or Bangalore just after the board exams and you’ll see the mad rush to these cities for securing admissions. Perhaps there’s no better example than that of Patwa toil((weaver community) in Gaya ,Bihar where more than hundreds of students have secured place in IIT’s and REC’s. What’s even more inspiring is that the sons of this small community have been guiding the young ones in the community to start focusing on the basic from the start so that they do not face the same odds when it comes to crack these competitive exams. They come back to their villages and hold free training classes for engineering aspirants.

Another amazing success story is of the Super 30 batch which is run by Anand Kumar, a Maths wizard, along with a senior Bihar IPS officer Abhayanand. The duo helps meritorious students from economically weaker section of the society to compete for IIT-JEE and in the last 5 years they have helped more than 100 students to secure top ranks in JEE.Every year thousand of student appear to secure seat in the Super 30 batch which means they get free coaching and other support for realizing their dream.

All this has happened without any Government support or any organized funding, the best and meritorious students of Bihar have been chasing their dreams braving all odds and with the start of these prestigious institutions in Bihar it’s positively likely to make their dreams closer than ever before.

After IIT, it is the IIM, which is all set to make a debut in Bihar. The state government has set in motion the process to open a B-school after its success in securing the arrival of some top-class institutions, like the IIT, National Law School University and National Institute of Fashion Designing, in Bihar.

The late principal secretary of the human resource development department, Madan Mohan Jha, had finalised all the modalities of opening the institute through a series of meetings with IIM, Ahmedabad, director B.H. Dholakia. Jha, who died on Friday, has also left behind a detailed project report (DPR) and the bylaws of the B-school in the offing.

Anjani Kumar Singh, who has replaced Jha as the department’s new secretary, said the new business would begin functioning from the next academic year. “We have all the groundwork ready,” he said. Sources in the department said that the government had already decided to appoint V. Mukund Das, a former professor of IIM-A, as the first director of its proposed school of management.

In fact, Das, at present working as the dean of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kozhikode, has also been working on the new project for Bihar. He, along with Piyush Sinha, a professor at IIM-A, got the DPR of the proposed institute prepared in consultation with Jha.

The proposed B-school will start with 50 students at the outset and the admission would be through CAT. Singh said the government had already procured the approval of taking admission in its upcoming B-school through CAT. Apart from the six IIMs, around 70 other B-schools take students based on CAT score.

Initially, the institute will function at the Hindi Bhavan adjacent to the All India Radio office here. Later, it will be shifted to a venue that the government would “exclusively” build for it.

The law university, too, is at present functioning at the AN Sinha Institute here. But the government has already allotted land for it in Mithapur on which the new building for the university is under construction. The government has also allotted 500 acres for the proposed IIT at Bihata on the outskirts of Patna.

Its takes courage to break the shackles of inertia and create a new identity for a place like siwan which has been always been notoriously labeled as a badland due to the nefarious deeds of the likes of Shahbuddin.But as they say the lotus blooms in the backwaters of Siwan and the boy has just set the right example for many to emulate.

Telegraph reports about Niraml kumar who dreams of changing the lives of people of his state Bihar with the power of his ideas. Like many at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the 26-year-old doesn’t aspire to a Wall Street job. However, his eyes flash with the big dream he’s nurturing.

A budding entrepreneur, he wants to use advanced technology to create a one-stop provider of basic facilities. The building blocks of his venture — Community Information and Communication Centre — will be in place by September. Over time, the centre will offer health care, education and entertainment in villages.

Nirmal, in the first year of his MBA course after having cleared the gruelling CAT last year, has made up his mind to opt out of placements, due in the spring of 2008. Showing the precision of a corporate strategist, the diminutive student predicts an annual turnover of over Rs 2,000 crore for his centre in 13 years. His aim is to be a globally recognised figure in rural development. That ambition has been emblazoned in red on a chart in his hostel.“I am going to set up a profit-making company that will work in the rural areas. The pilot projects will begin in Chhapra, Siwan and Gopalganj before the experiment is repeated in all Bimaru states,” said Nirmal.

Offers for financial assistance to set up the Rs 5-crore centre have already started flowing from overseas financiers. Nirmal has made presentations on his plan to over two dozen IAS officers, banks and venture capitalists. Three professors, including one from IIT, are helping him take his idea from the drawing board to the dust bowls.

“The profit that I will make will be ploughed back,” says the son of a school teacher, who hadn’t heard about IIM until he graduated.

He was teaching at a private institute in Hyderabad when he learnt that some of his friends were preparing for CAT. The possibility of becoming an entrepreneur excited him, and he realised a degree from the top B-school would stand him in good stead. Kudos …Way to go Nirmal !!!