November 16; As Chief Minister of the Indian State Bihar, Honourable Mr. Nitish Kumar, departed from Pakistan today, he left behind a very powerful message that was coined together by him and the 2 Provincial Governments of Sindh and Punjab: Let us fight together against Poverty and Hunger; Let us not fight among ourselves in Pakistan and India.

With the successful conclusion of Chief Minister Bihar�s visit to Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore from November 09-16, PILDAT�s vision behind facilitating this visit stands fulfilled. Peace and Friendship for Good Governance, as PILDAT envisioned a year earlier and extended invitation to Chief Minister Bihar to visit Pakistan, are the way forward for improving deepening Pak-India relations. While PILDAT has and continues to facilitate a Parliamentary Dialogue between Pakistan and India on issues including Kashmir, Siachin, River Water, Tourism and Trade, among others, we envisaged that beyond the countries� capitals, the conversation must also include experience sharing on good governance and on basic public issues including Education, Health, Poverty Eradication, and Right to Services. After the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, it was logical that experience sharing on Good Governance must take place at the Provincial level, reservoir of power in Pakistan.

Based on this idea, PILDAT began working with the Provincial Governments of Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan to initiate experience sharing on Good Governance with India by inviting Mr. Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar. The �Bihar Miracle� of growth, the successful initiatives of Nitish Kumar in introducing Right to Public Services and Right to Information, and impressive results in compound annual growth rate of Bihar, all were the reasons why PILDAT believed experience sharing on providing equitable growth and services to citizens must begin between Bihar in India and Pakistan�s provinces.

As a prelude to Nitish Kumar�s visit, PILDAT facilitated a 12 member Parliamentary delegation of Pakistan to visit Patna, Bihar, to interact with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on August 25, 2012. Thus PILDAT initiated experience sharing on Governance outside the national capitals of Pakistan and India when Pakistan India Parliamentary interactions went beyond National to State Levels and Pakistan-India Parliamentary Dialogues, facilitated by PILDAT since January 2011, successfully made a foray into the Provincial level from the National capitals of the two countries.

Governance, Governance and Governance, the motto of Nitish Kumar when he took over the reins of power in Bihar in November 2005 (after serving his first 5-year term as CM, he was swept back to power in Bihar in 2010 with a record four-fifth majority), remained the key theme of interactions between Nitish Kumar and his counterparts in Sindh, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, and Punjab, Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, during his visit. Hosted in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore by Sindh, Federal and Punjab Governments respectively, Nitish Kumar and his delegation shared experiences of governance models at the Chief Minister House, Karachi, with the Sindh CM and at the Government College, Lahore with Mr. Shahbaz Sharif, thus taking the experience sharing to audiences outside the Government sphere as well. In his dialogue with Mr. Imran Khan, Chairman of PTI, and his conversation with MQM, Pakistan-India relations were, for the first time, discussed in the context of the welfare of the people, rights of the citizens and the responsibilities of those elected to govern them on pledges of good governance.

�Yes, Im a socialist at heart,� said Nitish Kumar in response to Shahbaz Sharif�s comment that �I�m an Islamic Socialist and Kumar a Socialist,� as the two addressed the youth at the Experience Sharing Seminar at the GCU, Lahore. �I believe in equitable and sustainable growth and increase in the livelihood opportunities for all,� said Nitish Kumar.

The key themes of Kumar�s experience sharing in Pakistan included Good Governance, Growth with Justice and Rule of Law. Growth with justice is the real growth, he said and until all sections of society are able to benefit from it, a high growth rate is meaningless and unsustainable. Establishing the Rule of Law is the key to the road of growth, he believed.

Once a Government is determined to establish the writ of rule of law, the rest becomes easy, said Kumar. 74000 criminals have been convicted in Bihar in the past 5 years due to the Government�s perseverance and follow-up. His across-the-board anti-corruption measures have seen that houses of top bureaucrats convicted of corruption have now been turned into schools for girls and centres for the disabled.

Among his many achievements is enhancing education. With 26% of the Bihar�s Annual Budget devoted to education, school enrolment of children in Bihar, at 12.5% children out of school in 2005, is now reduced to 2% only. Talking about introducing a universal Bicycle Scheme for girl students of 9th Class in Bihar, he said that girls� enrolment, from 1.7 million in 2005, has grown to 6 million in 2010. In the health sector due to ensuring doctors� appointment and presence at health units across the country, and availability of free medicine, average of 9000 patients per month receive medical care compared to only 39 patients on average that visited public health units in 2005.

With the opportunity of experience sharing on governance issues, a new paradigm has thus been introduced in Pakistan-India relations which, based on the rights of citizens, has a direct relevance to people�s lives, equitable growth and good governance in the region. It is hoped that this inter-action at the provincial level will provide the much-needed depth to Pakistan-India relations and hopefully protect the relationship against any future accidents. PILDAT also believes that this Experience Sharing aimed at improving Governance also needs to further expand both at the national and increasingly at the Provincial and Political Parties� Levels both in Pakistan and India.

Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi, Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Pakistan, Ministry of External Affairs in India, State Government of Bihar (India), Provincial Governments of Punjab and Sindh (Pakistan) played a key role in the preparation and successful conclusion of the landmark visit. In addition, Mr. N. K. Singh, Member Rajya Sabha, Senator Ishaq Dar, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate of Pakistan (PML-N), Ms. Anusha Rahman Khan, MNA (PML-N) and Dr. Nafisa Shah, MNA (PPPP), among others, played key roles in the background in the preparation and successful conduct of the visit. We gratefully acknowledge the support of everyone

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