September, 2006
Maharashtra: The New Bihar
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A journalist friend from Patna was recently transferred to Mumbai. During his many years in Bihar, I often wondered how he coped with a daily dose of murder, kidnapping, death, disease (and of course, Laloo). "This is Bihar my friend, not your Maharashtra!" he would remind me. A few days ago, soon after the Malegaon blasts, he smsed : "Your Maharashtra has become like my Bihar!" Even allowing for a little exaggeration, the "Biharisation" of Maharashtra is no longer a flight of fancy. Sure, Maharashtra isn't a basket case, but cut through the legacy of social progressiveness and rapid industrialisation, and the bright lights of the Mumbai-Pune-Nashik golden triangle rapidly begin to dim. The glitter of corporate India cannot mask the fact that many parts of the western Ghats increasingly resemble the violent chaos and deprivation that characterizes large swathes of the Gangetic plains. Poverty? Bihar's poverty line figures....
More about Rajdeep Sardesai
Rajdeep Sardesai is the Editor-in-Chief, IBN18 Network, that includes CNN-IBN, IBN 7 and IBN Lokmat. He comes with 22 years of journalistic experience during which he has covered some of the biggest stories in India and the world. Prior to setting up the IBN network, he was the Managing Editor of both NDTV 24X7 and NDTV India and was responsible for overseeing the news policy for both the channels. He has also worked with The Times of India for six years and was the city editor of its Mumbai edition at the age of 26. During the last 22 years, he has covered major national and international stories, specialising in national politics. He has won numerous other awards for journalistic excellence, including the prestigious Padma Shri for journalism in 2008, the International Broadcasters Award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for 2007. He has won the Asian Television Award for best talk show for the Big Fight on two occasions and his current flagship show on CNN-IBN, India at 9, has been awarded the best news show at the Asian awards for the last two years. He has been News Anchor of the year at the Indian Television Academy for seven of the last eight years and won more than 50 awards in this period. He has also been the President of the Editors Guild of India, the only television journalist to hold the post and was chosen a Global leader for tomorrow by the world economic forum in 2000. An alumni of St Xavier's College, Mumbai, he has done his Masters and LLB from Oxford University and has also played first class cricket for the Oxford University team. He has contributed to several books and writes a fortnightly column that appears in seven newspapers.
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