Rajkot One Day/ Bihar and Litchi

In the last three overs if you have four wickets in hand and 18 runs to get, very few teams will engineer their way to defeat. India did. Yesterday. At rajkot. I was, with my sisters, a witness to it. But the things changed so quickly that very few of the 25000+ crowd could understand before it happened.

For appi-anni, the high time of watching their first international cricket match came when Sachin and Ganguly managed to steer india to a comfortable situation with their fifties. Dhoni and Karthik also provided spectators with display of some solid batting. But the good catches by Srilankan players and some poor play by Indian tail-enders led India to defeat.
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Bihar is under developed as compared to Gujarat. With downward spiralling effect of lack of infrastructure - financial, support services, processing and marketing- its agriculture is heavily based upon mercy of rain-gods (flood et al). But Bihar has good soil quality to support Litchi, Mango, and Banana.

Monsanto says Bihar and Jharkhand is the best market for its non-cotton hybrid seed (Jowar, Paddy, Wheat, Corn, etc). Cargill has its special focus on Bihar as emerging market.

Muzaffarpur has a National Research Centre on Litchi supported by Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) working on the scientific improvement in production and processing techniques of Litchi. It is also working on establishing/ improving the commercial positioning of the place and the commodity.

Just for records, Muzaffarpur produces 72% of world's production of SHAHI Litchi, the best known variety of this seasonal and very delicate fruit.