As I watched the interview of the president of El Salvador with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, I couldn’t help but draw an Indian parallel. It’s Bihar, my home state but I’ll come to it later.
First the background. El Salvador is a tiny, impoverished country in Central America. The economic parameters of the country narrate a sad story of decades of corruption, red tape and an absolute lack of accountability. El Salvador is a place where dreams die. But it’s right under the bulged belly of the mighty US.
Salvadorans have, for decades, dreamed only one dream – get into the US somehow and start a life of prosperity and safety. Most of their families stay in El Salvador itself and they get remittances from the ones who made it.
El Salvador has now become a country whose net export is human beings. Its economy is supported by the remittances of the Salvadorans in the US. And US gets cheap labor in return. But there are two downsides to it.
First, No one likes illegal immigrants. Salvadorans aren’t welcomed with open arms in the US and for the right reason. Why should the Americans feed illegal aliens from another country? Liberal media likes to call it racism, I call it normal human behaviour.
Second, with a better government, the Salvadorans could have created much more wealth in their own country, more than the remittances that El Salvador survives on. The brain drain could have been stemmed. It could have been a better country.
But no government ever thought about it. And now it’s a vicious cycle. The able-bodied and bright-minded Salvadorans will never stay in their country and their country will never improve because those who could have, have already left.
And it’s all because the country never had a president who gave serious thought to it. They were content surviving on the scraps from the US. The current president Bukele seems like an honest man who wants to solve this crisis and May he succeed in his noble pursuit.
Bihar is the El Salvador of India. Every day trains full of cheap labour leave various train stations from Bihar to different parts of the country. Biharis work in farms of Punjab and Haryana and get kicked and abused on a daily basis.
Biharis drive rickshaws and sell veggies in Maharashtra and Delhi and get thrashed and abused almost daily. The word Bihari eventually became an identity tag rather than a cultural tag. And this tag reeks of poverty, the extremely horrible form of it.
The economic parameters of Bihar narrate a sad story of decades of corruption, red tape and an absolute lack of accountability. Bihar is a place where dreams die.
Biharis have, for decades, dreamed only one dream – get out of Bihar somehow and start a life of prosperity and safety. Most of their families stay in Bihar itself and they get remittances from the ones who made it.
Bihar has now become a state whose net export is human beings. Its economy is supported by the remittances of the Biharis outside Bihar. And rest of India gets cheap labor in return. But there are two downsides to it.
With a better government, Biharis could have created much more wealth in their own state, more than the remittances that Bihar survives on. The brain drain could have been stemmed. It could have been a better state.
But no state government ever thought about it. And now it’s a vicious cycle. The able-bodied and bright-minded Biharis will never stay in their state and their state will never improve because those who could have, have already left.
And it’s all because the state never had a CM who gave serious thought to it. They were content surviving on the scraps from the other parts of India. The current CM who has been in power since time immemorial has no time for fixing things.
I could have been in Patna right now, creating jobs there, like I am, here in Noida. But I cannot because I will be asked to pay Rangdari tax, there will be people chasing my car. I will continue staying a non-resident Bihari.
It’s my story. It’s the story of countless more people from Bihar – The El Salvador of India.