Nitish launches 'Bihar@2025' campaign to ensure public participation in policy making

Patna: The state government on Tuesday launched an ambitious campaign ‘Bihar@2025’ to ensure public participation in policy making and to produce a vision document on development for the next 10 years. [caption id=“attachment_2263698” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Nitish Kumar. Reuters.[/caption] Touted as the brainchild of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and world’s largest campaign for participatory agenda through massive engagement of citizens, it aims to reach out to four crore people residing in 40,000 villages in the state, including 10,000 government and civil society members over the next eight to 10 weeks. Dedicating the campaign to the people at a function in the state capital, Kumar said, “During my governance-related tours across Bihar, the idea came to me that there should be some mechanism to ensure the participation of the people, their thoughts and views in developmental policies. ‘Bihar@2025’ is an outcome of it.” Kumar added that the campaign will elicit views of the people, encourage them to tell about their issues, and what they want in health, electricity, education, employment and other sectors of development. Views will also be sought from people hailing from non resident Biharis, as well as from specialists in different fields in this regard, he said. “Everything will be documented and included to prepare a vision document on the work plan for the next 10 years. Vision documents have been made earlier also, but this is the first time that public participation is being incorporated,” Kumar claimed. “This is a government initiative in which several organisations will lend their hands. Our purpose is to establish ‘jan-samvad’ (public interaction) for an interactive vision document. I am very enthusiastic about this as the vision document will aid in making development programmes,” he added. PTI