PATNA, India -- In the early 1990s, a British travel writer described Patna, capital of the northwestern Indian state of Bihar, as the capital of hell on earth. There is indeed something rotten in the state of Bihar and things have only gotten worse. People live in a Hobbesian world, where life is nasty, brutish and often short.
Bihar happens to be my home state, and a recent visit to my mother coincided with general elections in the state (and in neighboring Jharkhand, which was split off from Bihar relatively recently).
In the five years since the last elections, there have been 19,375 kidnappings -- and not a single solitary conviction. Police estimate there are about 20 criminal gangs involved in the racket. Moreover, there has been a steady rise in the number of kidnappings each year, from 2,605 in 1999 to 3,931 last year.