The NY Times published the following article over the weekend.  It reveals that one of India's poorest states, Bihar, achieved an unprecedented 11% annual GDP growth during the last five years.

Turnaround of Indian State Could Serve as Model

To put the 11% growth into perspective, note that the Indian economy overall achieved only 7%-8% growth during the same time period.  So Bihar, instead of being a laggard, was actually a powerhouse in terms of growth.  Bihar is a country within a country, having a population of 83 million.  If it were independent, it's growth would have hit international headlines long ago.

Bihar's success is good news for India on many levels.  It demonstrates that even a modestly successful reformist government at the state level can improve the lives of its citizens by picking some low hanging fruit.  Bihar, along with a few other northern Indian states is notorious for bad government at the state level.  Corruption and cronyism has held these states back, amongst other factors.  It was not too many years ago that these laggard states in the north of India were being written off as a hopeless cause.  Some analysts even posited that with southern Indian states in general developing faster than the north it would create a fissure in Indian politics and make the country increasingly difficult to govern.

It's too early to determine whether Bihar's recent success is an outlier or whether it can continue to build on its achievements.  It also remains to be seen whether other poor northern states can copy Bihar's success.  The continuation of growth will depend on whether voters have had sufficient taste of what fast growth can do for them.  Thus far, the very poorest have only felt marginal improvements in their lives.  I'm optimistic - despite the desperate poverty, even the poorest in India have relatively wide access to a vast and free India media, in English and local languages, that continuously reports on economic successes in the most prosperous parts of India, so, having had a taste of what a little growth can do, I would bet that voters will demand their local politicians do what they can do deliver more growth.