The land of history, enterprise, resourcefulness and ingenuity.

Do you know this Indian State?

• Home to one of the oldest universities in the world and birthplace of Buddhism as well as Jainism?
• Birthplace of Aryabhatta, Vatsayana and Guru Gobind Singh?
• Gave us our greatest Emperors; Chandragupt Maurya, Samudragupt, Vikramaditya and Ashoka the Great?
• Was the laboratory of Gandhian Satyagraha?
• Houses India’s highest Stupa?

Well it is Bihar. Its honest citizens are hardworking and have this amazing knack of finding humour while answering the most trying of stereotypical questions. (Sample this – “Wahan toh sab raat 8 baje bandh ho jaata hoga?”. “Bhai, NOIDA main nahin hai Bihar”). Biharis are also the backbone of the ‘steel frame’ of India’s democracy; our bureaucracy.  (I believe 10% of all IAS officers are from Bihar). Most importantly however, Biharis are enterprising, resourceful and the masters of ‘jugaad’.

Remember how I had expounded on the virtues of burglary as a profession in one of my earlier posts here? Then you will also recall the ingenuity of Satheesh and Muniyan? Well ladies and gentlemen, Satheesh and Muniyan are mere novices when it comes to the ingenuity exhibited by some of the finest citizens of Bihar. Now, I’m sure that most of you must be raising a quizzical eyebrow, so let me try and buttress my claim.

Thieves generally opt for valuables that are easy to pocket; cash, jewellery, mobile phones, etc, being easy to purloin, are all time favourites. The more daring may opt for bank heists, carjacking, ATM machines or even art pieces. Bihari thieves however, scoff at these childish heists. “Where is the daring in this?” they ask. “Where is the need for skill, where is the complex planning in these simple activities?” Bihari thieves go for things grander – say for example a bridge. In case your quizzical eyebrows are going ‘???’, let me assure you, yes ‘A BRIDGE.’

Decision so made by one merry band, they with an unerring accuracy that would make an Olympic archer proud, identified a 60 feet 500 tonne structure in Rohtas District (famous for housing Sher Shah Suri’s tomb) as a potential target. Now experts will agree with me when I say that confidence is the key when attempting a heist of this magnitude. Fortunately for the merry band members, confidence was not something alien to them, cause they in fact, had it in bucketfuls. So, taking on the persona of State Govt Irrigation Department officials was for them easy peasy lemon squeezy. Procurement of necessary implements such as gas cutters and earth movers didn’t make them sweat even a wee bit; and off they went to work. Now, thieves generally I believe, prefer the ‘middle of the night for their escapades, because prying eyes of nosy bystanders can be irksome when stealing is one’s motive. But remember they were now State Govt officials?  So, armed with that insufferable officious manner that such officials display (and thus making them seem even more genuine), they whisked away the entire bridge in broad daylight, leaving the actual engineers of the State Govt, mouth agape. The officials, once they were able to ‘unagape’ their mouths, did lodge a police complaint but then that was like bolting the proverbial door after the horse had bolted. Source – In Bizarre Robbery, 60-Foot Bridge Stolen In Bihar Rohtas District (ndtv.com)

Local government officials (bless them, always being vilified) were on trip somewhere in Banka District (of Banka tussar silk and Mandar Parbat fame), when they found that the smooth road they were travelling on, suddenly gave way to a dirt track and fields. Assuming they had lost their way, they turned to the all-knowing Karen Jacobsen, the Google Maps lady.  Imagine their consternation when Karen stated in her mellifluous but detached manner that they were actually on the correct road. Yes, agape is a term that comes to mind again. Apparently, another merry band of enterprising souls had made optimum use of tractors to plow the entire road and cart it away. Now why would one do that is a mystery that yet remains unsolved; however, their next step makes me feel that they were also well tutored in the principles of war which state that deception is one of the key enablers of success. They, once the road was safely tucked into their knapsacks, laid down a wheat field where the gleaming road once was.  If you think I’m making it all up, please read here.

In another quaint locality in the cultural capital of Bihar, Darbhanga, the locals had exclusive use of a pond for fishing, swimming and other such activities. This pond was thus well loved by the entire community. Say you were one of them and had a refreshing swim in the evening. Thought to yourself, “that was good, I’ll come again tomorrow”. You would scratch your head in puzzlement if the next day you were to sight, not the beloved pond, but a hut standing right in the same coordinates that the pond was occupying last evening, right? Well, so scratched the local citizens too. A police complaint and the ensuing investigation revealed that the escalating cost of real estate was the reason. Fed up at these capitalist problems where supply never meets demand (a key factor in rising costs the economists will tell you) the local mafia decided to do away with the pond and ‘reclaim’ the land thereon. Filling up the pond thus was for them, a work of a moment. Brilliant, right? Source Strange! Pond stolen overnight in India’s Bihar, hut constructed over it (msn.com)

Then there were equally fascinating robberies involving an entire mobile tower, a train engine and even 2km of a railway track. Paucity of time however, precludes me from delving into each one of them. The reason I cite the these examples however, is not merely to commend the chutzpah of the thieves. What impressed me more than anything else is the rather altruistic thought process of the merry bands. Did they loot the already impoverished locals? No. Did they threaten/extort money from the general citizenry? No. They merely redistributed wealth by taking away from the government what they had paid via taxes. In a way, and I am sure they would have thought so too, thieving from thieves is hardly a crime.

Robin Hood did the same thing and was loved for it, wasn’t he? Gandhiji too if you remember was not one very enamoured with taxes, the very reason for him to undertake the Dandi march; and he is revered. Well, can you fault the above merry bands?