Provide ‘Bihar stimulus’ from central package: Shyam Rajak

Ahead of the 2020 Bihar assembly polls, the BJP-supported state government has virtually demanded a special Bihar stimulus from the Covid-19 economic package announced by the Centre recently. In a letter to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the state’s minister of industries, Shyam Rajak, requested the Centre to allocate a significant share of the Centre’s economic package to boost economic activities in the state’s sectors including MSMEs, micro food enterprises, food processing, khadi and silk/handloom industries.

Rajak has highlighted the problems faced by Bihar, which accounts for 14% of the 5.6 crore migrant workers as per the 2011 census.

“This number is likely to have doubled in 2020. Bihar has to create jobs for this additional workforce,” the minister wrote. Keeping in mind the large number of migrant workers in the state, the Centre should allocate a significant part of the Rs 7,000 crore assistance to Bihar, he added.


Rajak also demanded that “a fixed amount of corpus be allocated to Bihar from the common pool of Rs 3 lakh crore for collateral-free loans to MSMEs”. According to the minister, makhana, magahi paan, jardalu mano, shahi litchi, Bihar honey, Nalanda red potatoes, etc were exquisite items of Bihar and the state needs to develop these clusters and become more vocal about them to position them as global products. The minister has demanded that a fixed amount of the corpus be allocated to Bihar from the common pool of Rs 10,000 crore for the cluster development of Micro Food Enterprises.