Word: bihar
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...What can happen when this yearning for a better life remains unsatisfied is vividly illustrated in Bihar?the region where 2,500 years ago the Buddha attained enlightenment. Today, Bihar is India's poorest state and can't provide the work its people need. The result is a Darwinian scramble for employment: a few lucky ones get the jobs; others migrate; and on the fringes, some of the disgruntled join the gangsters, extortionists and Marxist guerrillas that have made Bihar one of India's most lawless places. Buddhism died out long ago here, and shows little sign of taking hold...
...blame than tackling the problem. Indian politicians like to accuse Nepal of releasing too much water. Nepal says India clogs drainage with its badly managed flood-control system, and Bangladesh's leaders blame both countries for inundating them. All three nations see more antiflood infrastructure as the solution. Bihar's water resources minister Jagdanand Singh backs an extraordinary project popular across the political spectrum to build thousands of kilometers of canals that would link every river in the country. In theory, the network would allow engineers, with the help of gravity, to divert water from wet areas...
...corruption. Says Pushpender Kumar Singh, regional manager for flood-relief group Action Aid: "[Floods] used to go by in two or three days. Now, they'll be here until March. So no crops. And more disease." As a result, he predicts 3,000 drowning and disease deaths just in Bihar, which would make it the deadliest flood on record there...
...with waterborne diseases such as cholera (already contracted by 15,000 Nepalis) and dysentery (currently infecting 5,000 people a day in Bangladesh) turning into full-blown epidemics. "This is just the beginning," says Dr. Sudhir Kumar as he distributes medicine and water-purifying tablets to refugees outside the Bihar city of Darbhanga, which has all but disappeared beneath a vast new lake...
...apart from one another produced a bizarre schizophrenia in India's government last week. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toured the floods, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram was asking businessmen to pray for rain and warning that drought might cut economic growth to below 5%. And when Singh arrived in Bihar, the state asked in the same breath for $2.4 billion for flood alleviation and $890 million for drought. "It's crazy," says Bihar air-relief coordinator Gautam Goswami. "Absolutely crazy...