Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar probably had his people's aspirations in mind when he said the state will never go back to the dark ages of misgovernance.

"Governance is here to stay - the average Bihari has lost his/her tolerance for misrule," Kumar said here on Saturday at the Governance Now Forum 'Bihar on the move'.

"Even if my coalition does not come back to power this elections, the process that my government has started cannot be reversed. We have seen to it that governance is institutionalised. One will have to work very very hard to make a dent in the process," he said.  

The state is witnessing the major galavanisation of the health care, education and infrastructure sectors, he claimed.

"50,000 convictions through speedy trial has taken place in the state and that I can say with authority is a record in itself and no other state has done that before," the chief minister said. That is the statistics for a state where previously the government witnesses would not turn up during a trial, he added. 

Kumar said that the state's immediate priority was improving its literacy rate. "Some of the state's schemes have made possible a huge fall in the dropout rates of girls at the upper-primary and secondary school level," he added.

Infrastructure development is also high on Nitish's agenda. " A road project that connects Patna and Kishenganj under five hours is my pet project at the moment," he announced.

Bihar's turnaround story has been largely credited to Nitish Kumar's government in the state with visible changes in law and order, roads and healthcare. 

Kumar said when he came to power in November 2005 he inherited a state which was bedeviled not by misgovernance but by absence of governance.  

The situation was so bad, Biharis often hid their identity when out of the state. "Bihari was a term nobody wanted to be associated with," he said.

"Patna, which is a city in its own right, was deserted by 7PM. And if some one did not return home by evening, his family members would start worrying for his safety."

"The roads were so bad, you would end up breaking your back while travelling to any part of the state."

Things have changed for the better now, he said.

Sounding a cautious note, he added, his job was not finished, and Bihar had a long way to go.

"Bihar is teeming with possibilities," he said.