The 'template of good governance' in the 50s and from then on fodder for satire well into the late nineties, Bihar today is emerging from the shadow of misgovernance, believes eminent journalist and scholar M J Akbar.

Congratulating 'Governance Now' for holding a seminar on Bihar, he said, this would have been unimaginable few years back.

"The fact that such a seminar is held in Delhi and that such a large audience has come to attend it speaks for itself," he said. 

"Bihar is emerging from the 'joke' reputation and is starting to show promise as a serious player in the growth of the country," Akbar said here on Saturday at the Governance Now Forum 'Bihar on the move'.

"A snapshot of the contemporary Bihar story comes not from Patna, but from Ludhiana in Punjab. Today, the farmers and landowners there are feeling the pinch of labour-shortage. The Bihari families working on their fields are heading back to Bihar," he added.

Akbar, who has been a Lok Sabha member from Kishenganj in Bihar, talked of how the Bihar story had changed in the last few decades when caste-identity politics hijacked the election agenda in the state. While easy alliances came along caste lines, the excess of caste politics relegated governance to the background. Politicians started confusing, very dangerously for the state, political rhetoric with power. "They charmed people at one level and instigated differences at another," Akbar said.

"There was a time when the ruling class in the state would laugh at the suggestions  of bettering infrastructure in the state," he added.

Akbar, however, believes that the narrative is changing now with the realisation that governance is not charity; rather, it is instrumental in creating value for investment.

Akbar highlighted freedom of culture and the right to labour migration as two factors which will sustain good governance in the state. He said that during the height of misgovernance in the state, migration had allowed for the survival of its poorest. The balance in the value of the rupee saw the poor through.

He congratulated the chief minister for effecting a change in the perception of Bihar in people's mind by striving towards good governance. But, however, he also warned that the achievement of the same was still to come. He asked the Bihar government not to believe that it had achieved substantially but to believe that substantial achievement for the state was possible.