Word: bihar
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Lack of Concern. Shitala's scourge has been particularly felt in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. Yet no where has the goddess lashed harder than in Bihar. With 70,393 reported cases, that state accounts for 60% of the world's current total of known smallpox victims...
Officials blame much of the epidemic on the primitive conditions in Bihar. The state, which has a population of more than 60 million, is one of India's most backward. Ninety percent of its people live in villages that are little more than clusters of one-room mud huts. The people are largely illiterate, and some are afraid to report the disease for fear they will be socially ostracized and deprived of their jobs. "Some of these people would sooner travel 100 miles to a temple of Shitala to pray to her to spare their children than report...
...main cause of the epidemic is indifference. Although the Indian government, as part of its last five-year plan, set aside $21.6 million for smallpox immunization programs to be administered by the states, Bihar leaders made little use of the available funds. Engaged in an internecine political struggle for control of the state government, they failed to enforce a plan for immunizing the local population. Their lack of concern has apparently infected even health workers. While the epidemic rages, 2,200 Bihari doctors and health personnel are threatening to strike unless their salary demands...
Best Forgotten. The New Delhi accord was less precise in dealing with the fate of the 500,000 Biharis (non-Bengali Moslems) in Bangladesh. Many of the Biharis-so called because they emigrated from the Indian state of Bihar at the time of the 1947 partition-sided with the Pakistani military during the war, and for that reason face a painful future if they stay in Bangladesh. Most of them live in fear and squalor in huge refugee camps outside Dacca and other cities...
...Gandhi fears that if the Andhras are allowed to have their own separate state, it will open a Pandora's box of similar demands in other states plagued by economic disparities. Already, factions in her home state of Uttar Pradesh, as well as in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, have made known their intention to seek realignment along economic lines. On the other hand, dividing Andhra Pradesh into two states may be the most equitable solution, since the Telanganans are as eager to have a separate state of their own as the Andhras...