'Just treat all castes and religions as the same'

Young Mohd Imtiaz Alam Kamar who is still in college studying economics runs a startup business of his own along with three friends retailing mobile accessories online You can look up his wide range of stuff accessed from China on sale on his site wwwglobegrabcom We did and were suitably impressedWhile this exhibits as extraordinarily an entrepreneurial a spirit for a mere 20yearold anywhere in metropolitan India Delhi Bengalaru Mumbai that Kamar and his friends operate from Purnea a smalltown in northeast Bihar might seem deeply surprising to some who have either traditionally associated the young in the state with hankering for government jobs preparing for campateesan or migrating to bigger cities seeking better opportunities since none exist withinIn fact only one Rahul Dev Ranjan 18 of the seven handsomely turnedout dudes of Purnea that we took out for evening coffee planned to study for UPSC Mohd Aamir 19 did once consider government employment But observing how his brothers and cousins had found it hard to land any job at all he altogether dropped the idea of working for a firm never mind the state He wishes to runexpand his fathers clothing store insteadMajority wants to stay backAlso majority 47 in the group did not wish to leave Purnea One of them Deepak 21 wants to start a personality development school especially aimed at improving proficiency in the English language for the local young Its born out of insults he once had to face in Delhi mainly because his spoken English was poorEven from among those who plan to settle outside Purnea besides Ranjan the Civil Services aspirant only one Mohd Tufail 20 aims for a corporate gig in Chennai or Mumbai after graduating in civil engineeringThe other Rahul Kumar Rana 25 the feisty fasttalking ringlead of this group has a blueprint for an agrobusiness in place And for which he would need to attract expertise and therefore eventually step out He says If Biharis can crack IASIPS exams clearly they are dimaag se tez sharpbrained Theyve just been conditioned to believe they cant do businessWhile Rana has graduated the other students belong to local Aryabhatt or Purnea University Unless weve accidentally chanced upon statistical outliers for a random sample set Purneas students seem exceedingly bright that let alone the towns older folk even the rest of India could benefit much fromThe sameekaranPurnea goes to polls today with the sitting MP Santosh Kumar Kushwah from Nitish Kumars JDU aligned with the BJP up against Pappu Singh formerly with the BJP who recently joined the Congress in alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadavs RJD This is a bipartisan roundrobin given that Khuswah had defeated BJP in 2014 but is invoking Prime Minister Narendra Modis name pushing for a second term Unsurprisingly our conversations with the older folk in Purnea centred on community sameekaran equations Muslims and Yadavs that vote as a block and if the Rajputs willwont join in etcThis shows up in the quality of campaigns as well that the young men with us seem quite tired with Prejudices that people vocalised in private are being blared in election rallies openly namecalling laments Aamir Forget corruption its all about communities We just want all castes religions to be treated the same says Kamar This is refreshing coming from a state that has conventionally voted caste rather than cast votesLed by Rana the inevitable Modi fan conversations predictably veer towards buzzwords like Digital India and how the PM with Mukesh Ambani heralded a 4G and Facebook revolution heading towards 5GKamar pipes in with public sector BSNL getting destroyed in the process and that the government could take no credit for introducing social media which these guys are evidently roundtheclock consumers ofAnd that primarily informs their partisan politics as well while we discuss Rahul Gandhi who the majority here 47 feel loses out to Modi because of poor oratory ModiRahulAmbani this could be a casual chat with the politically aware during elections anywhere in IndiaThumbs up for Nitish KumarExcept being Bihar there is much on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar The group appears to like him because hes delivered on bijli sadak in villages and worked on womens empowerment through efficient schemes These young ones also love Nitish because he introduced sharaabbandi Prohibition in 2015 and in fact want him to plug holes so bootlegging doesnt entirely take over Well Thats another crucial difference with perhaps much of India and the reason weve met for coffee in the eveningCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates