STATE ATROPHY: Ad hoc reviews won't solve land question.

THE Bihar Governor meets the Prime Minister next week to discuss the question of land reforms and lawlessness as represented by private armies in Bihar. Vajpayee will personally review these. Bihar is a basket case; but the need for land reform is urgent countrywide. And ad hoc prime ministerial reviews won't help. The breakdown of the administrative machinery is the proximate factor encouraging lawlessness. KA Jacob, the Bihar DGP, has said that the problem of agrarian lawlessness is "socio-economic". But this hardly absolves the police from enforcing the law. Before the last massacre, a police picket alerted the villagers to impending danger and promptly departed. The …