Jyeshtha Shuklapaksha 4, Kaliyug Varsha 5115
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Recently, Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry in the UPA Government, made sweeping remarks about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi . As per an article in the Hindu, he said that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is an arrogant man who has mastered the art of using untruths and half truths to his advantage and making sensational claims. He further added that Mr Modi was a leader who blew his own trumpet. His sycophants too were busy beating drums, unmindful of the reality around them.
This is not the first time a Minister or leader from Congress has tried to take this route of rubbishing the Gujarat Growth Story to suit their political motives. Earlier too Congress has tried to blame Narendra Modi for everything under the sun, only to be rejected by the people time and again.
But here starts the interesting part in the episode. Anand Sharma goes on to say that “It is shocking that Modi could resort to such lies and mislead the people with claims that fall flat on their face when put to scrutiny. His claims on developments in Gujarat are full of untruths. What I am giving are official figures and not something manufactured as Modi does all the time.” So Anand Sharma acts as the holy cow and gives a barrage of statistics to prove himself right. Interestingly he does not give out the source of his ‘official figures’.
But do we believe a Congress Minister on mere face value? Definitely not. Is he giving out the real truth? Is he throwing up half truths or is he lying? We won’t need a lie detector test to find that out, a careful scrutiny of his ‘official figures’ will do the trick.
Anand Sharma begins his tirade by saying that Gujarat was way behind Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh or even West Bengal in access to safe drinking water. But the Planning Commission seems to think otherwise. As per the latest Planning Commission Report titled Household Access to Safe Drinking Water, 90.3 per cent of the total households in Gujarat have access to safe drinking water. Incidentally, Gujarat also has the highest access to safe drinking water in urban areas among the large States with 97 per cent. Maharashtra lags way behind at 83.4 per cent and West Bengal follows with 85.5 per cent. Only Andhra Pradesh is in Gujarat’s vicinity with 90.5%, but again its urban record is no match for Gujarat.
Anand Sharma’s next allegation is that Gujarat leads the national average with a 25.66 per cent school dropout rate, well above West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tripura and Sikkim. That sounds scary, doesn’t it? But the official figures again tell a different story! As per Gujarat Socio Economic Review 2012-13, Gujarat has made tremendous progress in decreasing the school dropout rate. Today, the school dropout rate stands at 2.07 per cent which has come down from 22.3 per cent in 1999-2000. Anand Sharma’s ‘official figures’ don’t seem to find mention here as well, or maybe he was referring to the scenario in Gujarat in the 1990s before Modi took over.
Then he talks about literacy rates and resorts to half-truths, while concealing the inconvenient truth. Gujarat’s literacy rate, which is 79.3 per cent, though lower than Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu in absolute terms, recorded a better growth in the last decade than the above mentioned States. It is this growth which actually determines the success achieved by a Government over a period rather than absolute figures. Surely a Minister in the Union Government knows this fact! But alas, the malnutrition levels in India are going up significantly, leading to diminishing levels of IQ among a lot of Ministers sitting in Delhi. While on the topic of literacy, Anand Sharma should also know that according to the Economic Survey 2012-13 Kerala has the maximum unemployment in urban areas, implying that a large number of the educated in Kerala are actually unemployed.
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Next Anand Sharma talks about people leaving under the poverty line. According to a Planning Commission Report, Gujarat made good progress in reducing the number of people living under the poverty line from 31.6 per cent to 23 per cent in the last decade. Many States like Bihar, Odisha, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, etc, are lagging behind Gujarat in this regard. Also Gujarat is way ahead of the national average which is 29.8 per cent.
Finally, Anand Sharma talks about Infant Mortality rate. According to the latest data from Planning Commission, the Infant Mortality Rate in Gujarat is 41 and not 44 as Anand Sharma puts it. Another thing to look at is the legacy of poor Human Development that Narendra Modi inherited when he took over in 2001. The State’s infant mortality rate has decreased drastically from 60 in 2001 to 41 in 2011.
Again towards the end , Anand Sharma gives out incorrect data to suit his motives. Narendra Modi has never bragged about Gujarat attracting the highest FDI. The obvious reasons being that Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore being the headquarters of a lot of MNCs in India, the FDI inflows of these cities would be high. But yes, Narendra Modi has always stressed on the need to attract investment per se. The Vibrant Gujarat summits are a testimony to his commitment to increasing investment in Gujarat. And the results are quite visible. According to an ASSOCHAM report, Gujarat topped private sector investment across the country, with a share of 14 per cent. This is even more remarkable as Gujarat lacks any natural resources like Odisha, which comes second.
So after this comprehensive analysis of Anand Sharma’s ‘official figures’ , it is clear that Anand Sharma is lying to malign Narendra Modi and his stupendous track record of development. Because he is so interested in ‘official figures’ and proper functioning of Government, I would urge him to read the Economic Survey of India 2012-13 which states that projects with investments worth Rs 7500 billion have been stalled in the country under the UPA Government.
It appears that taking pot-shots at Narendra Modi to gain political mileage is higher on the priority list of our Minister for Commerce and Industry than resolving the stalemate over investment worth Rs 7,500 Billion.
Source : Niti Central
