It started with a student from Bihar at Harvard with a question as ambitious as it was simple: How can the leadership evolve in a predictable manner,not left to genetics or accident? The question had a specific context. It was encouraged by the spectacular turnaround story scripted by Nitish Kumar back home,evidence of the difference that good leadership can make. Beginning January 2010,when he came to Patna on a months break,Ghanshyam Tiwaris question grew in size and reach. Soon,it drew a team around it. Eventually,it became a shared seven-month project that fed into Nitishs poll campaign. The Bihar leadership project is one of the small untold stories of this election that was all about new things happening in the state. Team members,average age 27,were all Biharis,except one. Ghanshyam,31,belongs to Gorari village in Rohtas district,and is currently pursuing an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management alongside a Masters in public administration at Harvards Kennedy School of Government. Jai Prakash,25,from the 2007 batch of IIT Bombay,is a computer engineer. Vinod Yadav,34,the lone non-Bihari,is from UP,doing a Masters at Kennedy School. Rajan Kumar Singh,25,a graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences,runs an NGO in Ranchi. Manish Deepak,27,graduate of Manipal Institute of Technology,is based in Patna. Bihar seemed to be at a unique inflexion point,says Ghanshyam. Hope,a good,honest and committed leadership and political stability had come together in a never-before way. I thought I could contribute to the story. I believed Nitish was the right leader for the state. Ghanshyam landed in Patna with zero political connections. He was fortunate,he says,to be adopted by the Asian Development Research Institute. I hung around as an uninvited guest. Dr Saibal Gupta (who heads ADRI) was very encouraging. He met deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi. I offered my skills the ability to gather and analyse a bunch of disconnected data. To draw a narrative out of it. Modi asked him to come back. That gave me a footing,he recalls. Back at Harvard,Ghanshyam wrote to JD(U) chief Vijay Chaudhury in March-April sketching out his plans,and then worked on building a team . E-mails were sent out,Jai Prakash came on board,and in May,8-10 students from TISS signed up for a month-long internship on the Bihar Leadership Project. The next step was setting up friendsofbihar.org a platform for people across the world,attached to Bihar,to come together. More than 100 people have signed up since it was launched in August-September. The team prepared a brief on each of the 243 constituencies,analysed the effects of delimitation,parsed media reports,profiled the political history,played with data,looked for patterns. It gave ideas for the JD(U) shivir in Rajgir in August,the JD(U) manifesto in October,and for the campaign that followed. JD(U) members at the Rajgir shivir were asked: Name three or four critical government schemes that must be communicated to the people; the critical issues at block level; how would you strengthen the party structure. TISS interns wrote development reports to identify critical gaps relative to other constituencies in the state and country. They covered 40 constituencies detailing the level of schooling,road network,electrification etc. In June,Ghanshyam met Nitish. He has spent 35 years in politics,I am not even 35. But he didnt dismiss me,he says. Our approach was that we would launch a battery of small ideas. We were not emotionally attached to them,if they were shot down,it was ok. Some ideas went through,others didnt. The team proposed that if voting in a village rises above,say,60 per cent,candidates should promise to plant a certain number of trees if he or she wins. Said Kiran Ghai,BJP MLC and media in-charge during the campaign: They feel for the state. We welcomed their suggestions during the framing of the manifesto. NRI Biharis have seen a new world and they can help us refine our blueprint for the state. What next? For the moment,the team has dispersed. Ghanshyam has six months left at Harvard. After that,he plans to come back and tackle another question as ambitious as it is simple: How can Bihar leverage its natural advantages for faster development?
