The brilliance and the adroitness of this soil lie in the fact that Bihar gave birth to some of the most distinct personalities in the history of ancient India. Chanakya, the all-time greatest philosopher and political mentor, who also regarded as the Father of Economics wrote the famous book Arthashastra, was born on this soil. Valmiki who wrote the great epic of Ramayana, Aryabhatt the great mathematician who invented Zero, Vatsayana who wrote Kamasutra, Ashoka the greatest ruler of India whose famous emblem of Ashoka Chakra is adorned in the National Flag of India, Dinkar who is considered the National Poet of India, Rishi Shushrat who was the Father of Surgery, Dr. Rajendra Prasad who became the First President of Independent India – all were born and lived on this very soil. In addition, Lord Buddha got enlightenment and Lord Mahavira found Jainism in this very ancient land of Bihar. As a whole, Bihar truly marked the history of the country.

But ironically the glorious past of this land is fading away now. The state today stands much behind in the count of the universities and colleges compared to other states that too when there is an ever-increasing number of students with every successive year. Bihar, even after the division of its southern land as Jharkhand in the year 2000, is still India’s 3rd most populated state. While this densely populated state accounts for only 30 Universities today, Gujarat, which stands much behind in terms of population and is the 9th most populated state of the nation, accounts for a total of 49 Universities in present. This speaks a lot about the miserable state of Bihar in terms of higher education system.

The sad story of the state starts from here, the students with great potential are left with no choice but to migrate to other parts of the country, mostly to the metro cities. These students of Bihar in the lack of quality and preferred universities in their home state migrate to the big cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad etc. While pursuing their graduation, post-graduation and other higher studies in different parts of the country these students face a lot of challenges to settle in these new states.

The darker side of the picture is the fact that these students from Bihar who leave their state for the higher education rarely return to their home state. They find themselves placed in respectable and desirable positions in multinational corporations in the big cities. Bihar, where the count of students cracking the Civil Examinations is highest in the country, is a state that produces the highest count of IAS & IPS Officers in the whole country cannot stop brain drain. Is this not a matter of shame for Bihar that it cannot provide quality higher and improved employment opportunities to its students?

This frightening truth of the state raises many questions about the governance and political situation. The government of the state needs to wake up and establish a firm and quality educational infrastructure and offer its inmates their deserving educational rights. Will the state government ever stop to play the vote bank politics and work towards the development of the human resource sector in the state? It‘s high time when the state should wake up to stop the migration of talents if it wants to establish Bihar as a resourceful and rich state or else it will create serious damage to overall Human Development Index of the state.