Nitish Kumar raises objection over use of term 'Pravasi' for people of Bihar working in other states

PATNA: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Wednesday said the state government has so far spent more than Rs 8,538 crore to provide necessary relief to its people during the period of Covid-19 pandemic.
Addressing the elected representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and urban local bodies ULBs), Didis of Jeevika’s self-help groups and other stakeholders through video-conferencing and webcast from the CM residence , he further expressed serious objection over use of term ‘Pravasi’ (expatriate) for the people of Bihar working in the other states of the country.
“Nowadays, a term ‘Pravasi’ is being profusely used for the people of one state working in another state. I do not consider such people as ‘Pravasi.’ When the whole country is one and our citizenship is one. How can a person from Bihar working in the other state be termed as Pravasi?” CM asked and further explained that a person can be termed as Pravasi only if he/she has gone outside the country for work.
In his long speech, Nitish also lashed out at other states for not taking proper care of migrant workers from Bihar.
“Bhai (O, brother), you people had gone to other states to provide service to them. They must have taken adequate care of the workers in the hour of crisis. But they didn’t take care of the people who had gone to provide service to them; it is not a good thing,” Nitish said.
He said the people of Bihar were forced to return to their home state as the states where they had been working didn’t bother to take care of them. “Now, when you have returned to your home state, I wish that henceforth you should not go outside Bihar in any compulsion. If anyone wants to go outside the state for a job willingly, the entire country is one, there is no issue,” Nitish said.
He said the state government was taking all necessary steps to provide employment to all returned migrant workers, besides those workers who had been working here and did not prefer to go outside Bihar in the past.
While giving the statistics of the expenditure during the Covid-19 pandemic, CM further said of the total expenditure (of 8,538 crore), Rs 1,620 crore were spent on providing financial assistance of Rs 1,000 per family to around 1.41 crore ration card holder families and 21 lakh non-card holder identified families; Rs 1,017 crore was spent on providing three months’ social security pension to 85 lakh pension holders, while a sum of Rs 3,261 crore was disbursed by the education department among beneficiaries of its different schemes.
Similarly, more than Rs 200 crore were spent on providing financial assistance of Rs 1,000 per migrant workers, while another Rs 417 crore were spent on disbursement of cash input subsidy among 12.35 lakh farmers.
CM also revealed that an average Rs 5,300 per person was being spent on people staying at quarantine centres.
“An estimated 12.70 lakh people viewed the CM’s speech through different platforms including social media,” state’s information and public relations department secretary Anupam Kumar said.