Job´ber`nowl`-ism

Now please don't call me communal nor a congi-agent. 

A friend of mine re-shared something on facebook yesterday which said

Even I have been seeing my uncles, friends and colleagues posting on facebook and twitter; for and against Modi. Let me ask, what is wrong with Modi? Is it that he doesn’t speak good English? Or is it that he walked out of a Karan Thapar interview? Or because he kept mum when 700 odd Muslims and 200 odd Hindus were killed in Gujarat. Erm, yes, there is something wrong with him. But, no one still has got the evidence to, as Mani Shankar Iyer once said to get him hanged and then released with a mercy petition, as he was against capital punishment.

Ignore the killing of 100s of Muslim shop owners. Ignore the brutal slaughter of some Gujju Congress MP or MLA and the gang rape of his family women. May be Narendra Modi wasn’t strong enough then to curtail them from happening. I don’t know. But something that I learnt from the facebook and twitter posts of my cousins, friends and colleagues is that even though whether he was influential in the pogrom or not I should support ‘NaMo’ just because he sky-rocketed the developmental figures in Gujarat. But did he really do so?

The lady criticised Modi in the above said FB post is a Mallu. In fact Gujarat Model is often compared to Kerala Model in terms of development. Taking these two points even I would like to compare both the states on the basis of GSDP, Per capita NSDP, educational, social and social welfare shares in the various budgets.

Now lets start with per capita NSDP. Before Mr. Narendra Modi took over as the CM of Gujarat the per capita was Rs 18864 [1]. After more than a decade of Modi rule as of last year it is Rs 89668 [2]. It is a good amount, well above the national per capita of Rs 61564. In fact the figures for Kerala for 2000 and 2012 are Rs 19461 [3] and Rs 83725 [4] respectively. Interestingly, so is the change for some of the major states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh grew at the same rate around 14%.

Now, onto GSDP. Gujarats GSDP for 2004 was Rs 216Cr and by 2009 it is Rs 323Cr. Not really good for Kerala, nor the rest of the stated we compared above. When Gujarat’s GSDP grew at a rate of 14% rest of them were around 10%. Thanks to the industrial growth in Gujarat which shot up at around 7.5%. Congratulation Mr. Modi. Even that is with 5 times the area as that of Kerala and just 2 times the population the per capita income is almost the same as Kerala’s.

But is just one sector that’s all about development? How much has the state concentrated on the other sectors. See this here. The average share of the budget spent on education by Gujarat across the Modi rule is around 12%. Whereas the same as that of Kerala is 17%.  So are the cases with heath and public service. Stats are given below.

Now, some miscellaneous points::   Gujarat is a state that bears the 3^rd highest debt in the country after Poshcim Bongo and Uttar Pradesh [5].  In fact, during the Modi rule the debt multiplied by 4 times.While taking Human Development Index into consideration, Gujarat is still at the 14th position [6]. The female literacy rate in Kerala as of 2001 is 87% and in 2011 is 100%, whereas in Gujarat in 2001 it was 60% [7]. Which means during the Modi rule in Gujarat the growth was only 3%, whereas in Kerala it was 13%.

All my online buddies praise NaMo for fantastic Gujju roads and its transit system. Do you know what? During the Modi rule period till 2009 the change in the length of roads in Gujarat is negligible (0.54%), whereas in Kerala it was around 7%. The point to be noted in case of roads is that the growth of roads in Gujarat were mainly urban. Growth of rural roads in Kerala, Bihar during the period was at 9%, in Andhra Pradesh was at 12%, whereas in Gujarat it was at 0.03% [8]

If you go by Tavleen Singh's argument, Karunanidhi extemporaneous speaking skills. He was arrogant, doesn't speak English on national media , he has brought in investments to the state from various countries and has been successful for the past four decades. Now in a democracy, shall I ask ms. Singh, can only a person from a national party be a prime minister? In the same sense how the 'non-delhi/dynasty/non-english speaking' tag is put up on Modi, it is put up on not just many leaders, in fact even on prominent regional parties.

Modi has done lot of positives during his period, definitely. Industrial growth, better voter turnout, electricity production, etc. are just few among them. So, YES Modi might be a good(shrewd) administrator, but after all, for what are we developing towards? Now, what is his proven track record? Is it on the basis of the above mentioned data? Taking just academics into consideration and ignoring 2002 completely, is he the only Prime Ministerial stuff that India has right now? Lets see!!!

References:

[1]And [3] - http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/percapitaincome.htm

[2] - http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/stateplan/Presentations13_14/gujrat2013_14.pdf

[4] - http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2012-13/estat1.pdf

[All figures] – “Development trends in selected Indian States”- by S.Narayan
[5] - http://www.indiatvnews.com/business/india/modi-s-gujarat-bears-the-third-highest-debt-burden-after-bengal--5216.html
[6] - http://indiatext.net/hdi-india/
[7] - http://www.census2011.co.in/census/state/
[8] - http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/Infra_stat_2010/1.ch_road.pdf