India struggles to tame its heart of darkness

By Simon Denyer

PATNA (Reuters) - Young girls and their mothers huddle under shawls in the central reservation of one of the city's main streets, picking through trash for grimy metal scraps that might earn them 20 rupees a day.

Buses and autorickshaws belt out black fumes beside them on the congested, muddy street, dogs pick through huge piles of garbage by the roadside, men urinate at their side.

This is Patna, the capital of Bihar, India's poorest and one of its slowest growing states economically. On a rainy day, Patna can seem like some post-apocalyptic nightmare, with poverty, misery and ugliness around every corner.

So far, India has failed to trickle the benefits of its economic boom down to Bihar, a failure which could have serious political and economic repercussions. People here feel the rest of the country is simply not paying attention.

"Everyone has discarded Bihar, they think of it as a nightmare," said businessman Rajesh Singh.

"They only talk about the good things in India, they don't even look at Bihar. But this is 10 percent of India's population, you can't just chuck it away."

Bihar is home to around 90 million people and has one-seventh of India's poor, but accounts for just 1.6 percent of its gross domestic product. By any measure, literacy, infant mortality, malnourishment, it sits at or near the bottom in South Asia.

The World Bank put the challenge in its most tactful terms when lending Bihar's government $225 million last December.