With Bihar assembly elections due by the year-end, chief minister Nitish Kumar is making all attempts to project himself as an able administrator. He has been visiting every nook and cranny of the state, seeking endorsement of work that his government has done in the last four and a half years. There's nothing wrong in that, but now his top bureaucrats too seem to have joined the campaign, making frequent trips to the national capital to cultivate the media on behalf of the CM.

On Monday, C K Mishra, Anjani Kumar Singh and Pratyaya Amrit, the secretaries of health, education and road construction, respectively, made Power Point presentations before the national media about the ‘changing face of Bihar.’ Again, there's nothing wrong in publicising their efforts towards good governance. However, the veneer peeled off as soon as their presentations outlined 2004-05 (the concluding year of the Lalu-Rabri regime) as the base year for comparisons.

For example, Amrit said: “While 340 km of roads were built in 2004-05, 3,000 km of roads were built in 2009-10.” The other two secretaries too came up with similar enviable figures for their own departments.

If the base year of the comparison was not a giveaway, another bombshell, the one that certainly belied their intentions, was reserved for the end of the presentation. One of the bureaucrats concluded his presentation by saying, “This is just the beginning, and we need another 10 years to take Bihar where it should be.” Well, it did not need any explanation under whose leadership they wanted “10 more years.”
Be that as it may, the figures of progress are astounding, to say the least, and you can't help making comparisons with the 15 years of dark ages lorded over by Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi.

Yet what is disquieting is that the proponents of these comparisons are the bureaucrats of the state and not the politicians of the ruling coalition. Repeatedly, during their presentation, the comparison, by insinuation of course, was between the two political parties. And, this obviously does not augur well.

The bureaucracy in the country, at the centre or in the states, undoubtedly, has the history of aligning with the ruling party. Babus, with an eye on the right postings or post retirement cushy rehabilitation, happily offer their services to the political masters, surrendering their souls in the process. However,so far, this has been merely an informal understanding between the bureaucrats and politicians, more often than not, in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink fashion.

But Nitish Kumar's poster-boys singing paeans to the chief minister in a very formal setting before the national media, even if couched in the pretext of ‘changing Bihar’, is unprecedented and uncalled for.