Meet Rohit.
This is one of the most important — and most misunderstood — questions in Indian development economics. And the conventional answer (“Bihar is poor because its people are uneducated/corrupt/whatever”) is almost entirely wrong. Let me reframe it. Bihar is not income-poor. Bihar is infrastructure-poor. Here’s the distinction that changes everything. Bihar receives approximately ₹1,00,000 crore annually in remittances from its migrant workers across the Gulf, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and beyond. That’s an almost incomprehensible figure — larger than the GDP of 30 countries. So the money is arriving. That’s not the problem. The problem is what happens to it when it gets there.
