Modi’s Gujarat Model has many takers and is seen as the most successful model in India.
The upcoming general elections are about development. All the political parties are wooing the voters on the basis of development models and development policies that they have to offer to them. Till now, the leaders directly in the fray are Gujarat chief minister BJP’s Narendra Modi, Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and Delhi former CM AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal.
While Rahul has no experience of administration till now and his policies are limited to paper which Congress is trying hard to give ordinance route, Kejriwal failed to prove himself and resigned in 49 days from the chief ministership.
Of course there is third front which has been formed recently which can change the game and has many heads which have the potential of holding the prime ministerial post, for example, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa. While Nitish is seen as the ‘development man’, Jayalalithaa has done her fare share of development in the state.
The fourth side of the story is West Bengal CM TMC’s Mamata Banerjee, but chances are the least for her to come out of West Bengal politics on the basis of development plank.
Modi’s Gujarat Model has many takers and is seen as the most successful model in India. Giant industries chose the state over any other anytime. The people are leading a peaceful and prosperous life in the cities of Gujarat. Even many surveys have showed that women are more safe in Gujarat than in anywhere else in the country.
This development was reminded recently by a trending twitter hashtag #YoGujSodeveloped. Keeping this in mind, here are some points to show how much Gujarat has developed under Modi:
- Under the Modi government, agriculture has done remarkably well in the state in last decade. Agriculture production, which was at Rs 9,000 crore in year 2001-02, has been gone up to Rs 1,12,000 crore in the last fiscal.
- Total production of milk in year 2001-02 from 58.76 lakh metric tonne has risen to 103.15 lakh tonne now.
- The number of universities has increased from 15 in year 2000 to 52 now, while government colleges have jumped from 20 to 71 now.
- Under Modi government, Gujarat has made progress from revenue deficit of Rs 6,732 crore in year 2001-02 to revenue surplus of Rs 4,602 crore.
- The infant mortality rate in Gujarat has come down to 38 in 2011 from 60 in 2001.
- School dropout rate for students in I to V was 20.50 per cent in year 2001-02, which has fallen to 2.07 per cent in 2011.
- For Gujarat the non-disadvantaged have a poverty decline of 15 percentage points between 1999/00 and 2011/12. For SC-STs, the poverty decline is 28 percentage points (ppt) for the same period. So, the excess poverty decline for SC-ST is 13 ppt, and this is the third-largest excess decline in the country for SC-STs. In the case of Muslims, Gujarat was the second-best performing state where they had the largest relative decline in poverty.
- Gujarat, as per the survey reports of Labor Bureau of India, 2012, happens to record the lowest unemployment rate of only 1% as compared to all the other states of the nation, where the national unemployment rate is estimated at 3.8% by the same report.
However, many surveys have shown Gujarat not doing well which includes government’s NSSO survey. But the surveys have been alleged to be biased and botched up by many agencies.
As writer Surjit S Bhalla says in his article in Financial Express, “There is a considerable amount of molestation of statistics going around (e.g., Digvijay Singh’s comment referred to above)…”
In these desperate times, should we not praise Modi for what he made out of Gujarat?
