Gujarat model hyped? Other BJP-ruled states, non-Cong parties performed better

Gujarat’s developmental model has dominated this election season, thanks to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi making it a poll issue and the Congress hitting back with vengeance.

Updated on: May 2, 2014, 11:37:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Gujarat’s developmental model has dominated this election season, thanks to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi making it a poll issue and the Congress hitting back with vengeance.

Modi showcased his state’s model to project his performance. The Congress called it a ‘toffee’ model that India does not need. TMC said the West Bengal model was better while Telugu Desam Party said the Gujarat model was inspired by the one it had designed for Andhra Pradesh.

The parties, however, have failed to project more equitable models of development that could be adopted by the next government.

Pranob Sen, chairman of National Statistical Commission, said there is no clarity on the Gujarat model. “There is no development model that can be a template for entire country. It has to be a mix and match as different models deliver different results. One should remember that the Centre frames broad policies and the state implements them. There cannot be one central model of development,” he said.

The best way, others said, is for the states to learn from each other’s successes and failures. If one looks at state-wise socio-economic indicators, some non-Congress ruled states achieved much more than Gujarat in providing basic minimum facilities to people and in equitable distribution of wealth.

Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, provided drinking water facilities to more people than Gujarat between 2001 and 2011. They also did better in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. Tamil Nadu recorded higher state gross domestic growth between 2005-06 and 2012-13. “Tamil Nadu has done as well as or better than Gujarat,” Sen said.

The primary school dropout rates in the traditionally backward and BJP ruled states – Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – were lower than in Gujarat. A Central government official attributed it to expansion of primary school network in these states and effective monitoring as they had more out-of-school children than Gujarat.

BJP patriarch LK Advani had patted Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh for their performance, adding they were heading backward states unlike a developed one by Modi. BJP won state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December 2013 for the third consecutive time, like in Gujarat.

Chhattisgarh and Nitish Kumar-led Bihar beat Modi’s home state when it came to rise in per capital income. The reason was the low base of per capita income in these two states. Chhattisgarh’s annual per capita income rose by 11.16% and Bihar’s by 14.77% compared to 10.47% for Gujarat.

Traditionally, the northern states have been laggards in socio-economic development compared to southern states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A planning commission study of 2012 said that the northern states were catching up on human development indicators by adopting southern success models.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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