Municipalities in Bihar have been taking commendable steps to ensure better sanitation and waste management. The state is also working well in the District Administration and e-Governance. The state is ranked at 20th position this year, a notch up from 21st rank last year in the annual SKOCH State of Governance ranking.

When SKOCH studied projects in different sectors, it found that Bihar has introduced Bihar Right to Public Grievance Redressal Act 2015 which is quite an effective scheme and is definitely “catching up”.

The Act covers the entire state of Bihar and 478 programmes/plans/ schemes notified by 44 departments of the Bihar government. A strong IT infrastructure that connects all PGROs, key public authorities, appellate and reviewing authorities has been set up and a 24×7 access is provided for registering grievances and accessing records. The entire process from registration to redressal is digitised and available online. Redressal is ensured within 60 days.

Besides the above mentioned project, SKOCH found that a few other projects too had the spark and with able handling and thought, they could make it to the list of well performing projects.

The Department of Transport of Bihar intends to implement a comprehensive computerisation management system as a part of improving the issuance of permits, licenses, etc. aimed at accountable, transparent, responsive and service focused governance. This report covers implementation roadmap for a comprehensive Transport Management System.

District Administration of Gaya has implemented an App-based platform called ‘SchooGlink’ to improve education ecosystem in the district. SchooGlink is a step towards bringing the entire education ecosystem on a single platform and having all the stakeholders together and connected. The aim is to ensure that they are in constant communication with a strong feedback loop to highlight problems and implement solutions in an effective manner. The mobile appenabled platform ensures seamless communication between all partners and stakeholders and enables realtime knowledge sharing as well.

Patna Municipal Corporation has been aggressively working towards solid waste management, which includes door to door collection. The sustained finance system of this project is what makes it unique. The Patna Municipal Corporation has to bear the cost of the project for a period of 1 year only. Thereafter, the implementing agency offers a lumpsum amount (worked on the basis of user charges collected from households covered by the implementing agency). This creates a win-win situation for both the ULB as well as the implementing Agency and the common citizen benefiting out of this.

As part of Swachh Bharat, Bodh Gaya Municipal Corporation has introduced a project named “Solid and Liquid Resource Management”. The project aims to cover all the wards under the Corporation and intends 100 per cent door to door collection and segregation at source. The target population comprises households, hotels , guest houses, monasteries, shops and restaurants.

Bihar was ill-famed due to various reasons and for the state to resurrect; it needs to work extensively in a lot of areas. It is huge task for the government in Bihar but the face is slowly but definitely changing and looks more positive. The efforts are clearly in the right direction.