When a storyteller tells stories about many things, he himself gets confused and at times his stories become intermingled with many facts, and it sometimes makes listeners alienated. Gujarat Growth Model is the story of such a genre, which was repeatedly told by Narendra Modi to everyone even before the onset of the election campaign.
During the whole election campaign he tried to put various things together to the public, but in a very confused manner. It was only because what he actually did in Gujarat was totally different from what he has been telling to the people of India so far. All the underlying facts have come out from the works and subsequent observations of academicians, researchers and many independent observers of Gujarat growth model. They tell a whole new set of stories about Gujarat, which are not based on any false proposition, but on factual and concrete analysis.
Among all these, the most discussed and acclaimed one is Dr. Atul Sood’s book Poverty amidst Prosperity: Essays on the Trajectory of Development in Gujarat, published in 2013. This book, which contains 10 essays by different writers on various aspects of Gujarat’s growth enigma, solves many intricacies of the myth that is being created by Mr. Narendra Modi and his ruptured media about the so-called ‘Gujarat growth model’.
While examining the myth of Gujarat model, two major points need to be mentioned from his book. First, private investment is sought in many of the basic structures like railways, ports, roads and energy, instead of the state’s own investment. And second, for industry and service sector a kind of compartmentalised field has been created to attract private investment and where all basic facilities have been provided by the state. Along with this, the people who were or are willing to invest in these fields would get higher subsidies, relief from taxes, cheap loans and many other financial and institutional facilities.
Talking about the social sector development, the book provides many examples to show how this aspect has been dealt with in Gujarat. Health and education, being the most important components of social sector, has a different story. Looking at the expenditures on health, the ranking of Gujarat has worsened in comparison to those in other states between 1990 and 2010, and the trend is similar in the field of education.
Comparatively looking at one indicator, the maternal mortality rate (MMR) for Tamil Nadu is 97, for Maharashtra it is 104 while for Gujarat 148. In case of undernourishment of children, the condition of Gujarat is not better than any other states and if indicators of health are compared for the marginalised section then the picture is grimmer. Social disparities in education in Gujarat are higher compared to other states in parameters like educational outcomes, participation and access to education.
The biggest and least discussed casualty of the ‘successful’ growth in Gujarat is about employment. The aggregate employment in Gujarat has remained stagnant. The loss in rural employment happened along with reduced participation of small farmers in the fast growth, high value crops and reduced access to cultivated land because of changes in the norms for sale and purchase of land. Earlier, on 5 December, 2012, through an article in Himalayan Mirror Dr. Sood discussed this fact as how the rate of unemployment has been growing in Gujarat, in spite of its acclaimed growth rate. During 1993-94, to 2004-05 the employment growth rate which was 2.69% came down to almost zero level during 2004-05 to 2009-10. Another corollary to this fact is increment in contract labour instead of increment in formal sector labour employment.
Corroborating his findings, well-known economist Kamal Nayan Kabra in his article in Mainstream on 16 April 2014, reaches at the same conclusion what Dr Sood indicates while differentiating between growth and development in special context of Gujarat. He concludes by questioning: when same corporatisation, bureaucratic model, aristocratic and political institutions, and trading pattern are applied in Gujarat while ignoring the people’s basic needs, expectations and the most important their rights, then how is it different from the rest of the corporate world’s growth mantra?
Another point which needs to be mentioned here is one exposition from National Crime Record Bureau, which indicates that crime rate in Gujarat is also higher than the national average. For example, if we talk about the cases of abduction then more females are prone (around 80 per cent of total abduction) to this than males.
All these are some of the glimpses of the so-called Gujarat’s vibrant growth model. Surprisingly, Modi, with the help of his puppet media, has left no stone unturned to masquerade these updates instead of presenting a true picture of Gujarat. In fact, Modi has tried hard to do away his negative image after the incident of Godhra and many other afterward events associated with it.
Mr. Narendra Modi, his blind followers in media and his supporters from the elite and high class society which consists of mainly corporate houses, industrialists, who portrayed Gujarat as a role model for all India and campaigned for it, themselves do not want to explain what this growth model is all about. What kind of growth they are talking about? And why it is so different from other policies and models incorporated by other states? In fact, the theory behind all this is no different from the tenets of neo-liberal policies.
The investment is done in a manner whereby the capitalists and industrialists who wanted to invest, and not the lower middle class people and farmers, would get more benefit. The only difference from the rest of India resorts to the power which was concentrated in one person in Gujarat and his close citadel. This citadel is covered by selected media who were given exclusive right to propagate about Gujarat’s so-called brighter side.
Another difference can be pointed out in the way and extent privatisation policies have been implemented here which is different from other parts of the country. For example, railways, ports, roads and provisions of social sector are still looked upon by the government but in Gujarat this is not the case. Reliance, Adani, and Tata are some of them who got the rights to operate in Gujarat and were most benefitted here in comparison to other states. Now one thing is clear that through the path of Gujarat model, India’s socio-economic progress will be undermined, bringing disastrous results for many other sections.
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