Elections are times when the government’s purse strings are loosened.
Even as the release of funds under various welfare schemes run by the Centre has just commenced for the new financial year, poll-pound Bihar has already cornered a tidy sum.
Of the first burst of release under rural development schemes, the lone state to have already received funds under the Pradhan Mantri Awas-Rural is Bihar, which has the lowest per capita income among Indian states. The eastern Indian state has got nearly Rs 1,500 crore under the popular rural housing scheme.
Bihar has also got Rs 1,000 crore out of the total Rs 2,400 crore released to all states under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) so far in the current financial year, official sources said.
In the first decade of PM Awas, the scheme was saturated in Bihar with 5.7 million units provided to poor families in the state, out of a total of 40 million housing units built all over the country.
In the new phase, beneficiaries are being identified on a war footing in the state to ensure the scheme;s implementation doesn’t lag a bit.
The Bihar assembly election is due in October-November 2025. Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (U) is leading a coalition government in the state in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In fact, prime minister Narendra Modi was in Bihar on Thursday to announce new projects involving pubic investments and roll out several schemes, including for housing.
Modi announced that in the coming years, 30 million more permanent houses will be provided to the poor. He said that across the country, 1.5 million poor families have been issued approval letters for the construction of new houses, including 0.35 million beneficiaries from Bihar. He also highlighted that on Thursday, financial assistance has been sent to nearly 1 million poor families for their permanent houses, including 80,000 rural families and 1,00,000 urban families from Bihar.
Under MGNREGS, underdeveloped Bihar has been falling behind the developed southern states in terms of funds utilisation under the scheme.
However, that may change for the better his time.
MGNREGS aims to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household in rural areas of the country, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, mainly during off-seasons.
Tamil Nadu, with about 1.4% of the poor population estimated in the country, claimed almost 11% of all MGNREGS funds released IN FY25. As against this, Bihar, accounting for 26.6% of the poor population, used only 8% of total MGNREGS releases in FY25.