This time it may not be easy for Narendra Modi to win in Gujarat on the development plank.
This October, the British government announced that it was ending its decade-long boycott of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. In the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, several countries had declared that Modi would be denied entry into their countries because he had violated religious freedom. Only the United Kingdom has revoked this now, a decision that made Modi tweet thus on October 11: I welcome U.K. govts step for active engagement and strengthening relations with Gujarat. God is great.
The decision followed the British High Commissioner to India Sir James Bevans meeting with the Chief Minister on October 22, where the former largely discussed business and investment opportunities in Gujarat. Soon after the meeting, Modi said: I am very happy that world leaders think they should meet me and do business in Gujarat.
For Modi, the British move has been the fruit of all the hard work he put in to shake off the communal label. The man who was once associated with the worst-ever communal riots India has witnessed in recent history has been working relentlessly for several years now to establish himself as the leader who brought industrialisation and thereby progress to Gujarat and thus gave it a great future.
The timing of the British decision could not have been better. Gujarat goes to the polls at the end of this year, and Modi faces a tough battle. Since he obviously cannot use communalism to win this election, he has worked tirelessly to project himself as a Vikas Purush (man of progress and development), who brings in massive investment and creates no obstacles for business and industry desirous of coming to Gujarat and as the only thinking, progressive and honest politician around. Some observers call it a massive public relations stunt.
Frontline spoke to a cross section of people in Gujarat to find out if this election will be easy for Modi. The States middle classes seems convinced of his capabilities as the Vikas Purush, so do the rich Indian and non-resident Gujarati populations. The vote of the middle classes may be all his, but the poorer sections have begun to have serious doubts about this progress. Modis inability to deliver on crucial fronts such as employment, education, health and water supply will rob him of the votes of the poor in the urban and rural areas.
According to Rev. Cedric Prakash, a human rights activist, malnutrition, hunger, unemployment, sanitation, water scarcity, and inadequate schooling facilities persist all over the State. He may talk of development, but statistics prove otherwise. The high growth rate is not in keeping with its patchy social development record, and if the social sector is not taken care of, it cannot be progress, says Prakash.
Every alternate year, Modi hosts a huge business summit, called Vibrant Gujarat, to attract investment from across the globe. According to the organisers of the 2011 summit, about 7,936 memorandums of understanding (MoUs), worth Rs.20,83,000 crore ($450 billion) in all, were signed then. Moreover, around 100 tie-ups were forged with leading institutions from across the globe for exchange of knowledge. The summit had representatives from over a hundred countries participating in it; several top Indian industrialists spoke.
Modi has repeatedly proclaimed that the summits have been a huge success for the State and that the model should be emulated by other States. However, a report titled Investment and Growth Patterns Across 20 Major Indian States, released in September this year by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), says Gujarat may have bagged the largest number of investments but has lagged behind when it comes to their implementation.
According to Assocham, Gujarat attracted Rs.16.28 lakh crore in investment until December 2011. However, 51.8 per cent of the projects are yet to pick up steam. The report says that of the total investment proposals, Gujarat attracted 39.2 per cent in power generation, 24.2 per cent in manufacturing, 16.2 per cent in services, 14.3 per cent in real estate, 5.2 per cent in irrigation and 0.9 per cent in mining space.
Because of the massive public relations exercise, the State is able to garner investments; however there are no significant results. Soon Modi will have to answer some tough questions from not just industrialists but also his vote bank, said an industrialist based in Ahmedabad.
The problem is that while Modi is efficient, his administrators are like any other in the Indian bureaucracy. These bureaucrats have to execute the projects for Modi to honour the promises. Otherwise he is going to look like a fool. For the vote bank, the kind of investment Modi is getting is not translating into jobs. These are heavy or manufacturing industries, which are not labour intensive. Therefore, no one is seeing the benefits, he added.
Gujarat needs to focus on increasing investments in the services sector, said Jay Ruparel, vice-chairman, Assocham. The absence of the information technology sector and the preference for [financial] capital over human capital by the State government, present and past, have affected investments in the State.
Gujarats industry consists mainly of sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, petrochemicals, oil and gas, power, gems, engineering, automobiles, food and agri-businesses. Owing to the focus on the manufacturing sector, employment is not being generated in the numbers required to show growth.
Admittedly, the Modi government has been more efficient than governments in other States. A third-generation industrialist from Maharashtra recently signed an MoU with Gujarat to start a unit producing pumps and compressors. It was amazing how smoothly and how fast the process went. We got land, power and labour issues resolved within months. I would have never moved from Maharashtra as we have all our units there, but we took this decision as Gujarat promised efficiency and delivered.
Gujarat has many advantages that other States do not have. And Modi has been shrewd enough to capitalise on that, says Vijay Parikh, who owns a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Vadodara. For instance, it has a massive coastline, which has been a boon for trade since historical times. An attraction for industry, particularly the oil and gas industry, are the ports. The State has a mercantile community, which makes matters easier. What Modi may have done is to make Gujarat a power-surplus State and ensure that it had a reasonably good infrastructure, says Parikh.
Modi has a penchant for yatras (road trips). Just before the announcement of the Assembly elections and the implementation of the code of conduct, Modi and his band of Ministers went on a month-long Vanthambhi Vikas Yatra (Non-stop Development Yatra). Travelling the length and breadth of Gujarat, the politicians propagated the States achievements. Officials say that more than 27,000 works involving an expenditure of Rs.30,000 crore were inaugurated or started during the yatra.
The month-long yatra ended on September 15, the same day as the Garib Kalyan Melas (GKMs), a scheme for the lower-income groups, ended. The State government claims it has distributed benefits worth Rs.13,000 crore in the nearly 1,000 GKMs held across the State.
He comes to us only during elections. The poor in Gujarat are not on his agenda, says Ramesh Solanki, who works in a denim factory in Ahmedabad.
Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel, who is Modis bte noire, said that the State was opening its treasury to companies such as the Tatas; it had given the company Rs.33,000 crore against an investment of Rs.22,000 crore for the Nano project, he said. He said the State had fallen to the sixth rank in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and had a debt of over Rs.10,000 crore. The number of farmers suicides had gone up to 5,000, and malnutrition was rampant in the poorer and tribal districts of the State, he said. Patel also said the State was run by an autocrat and that no one else had any powersthis was not healthy for the State, he warned.
The former Chief Minister may not be far from the truth. Several reports and studies by academics are beginning to bust Modis claims.
A paper called Myth of Vibrant Gujarat, written by Ram Punyani, a well-known human rights and communal harmony activist with the All India Secular Forum, says: Through conclaves like Guava Gujarat and the annual meetings of NRIs and industrialists, investment is being solicited, and more than the forthcoming investment, projections are being made of the flow of dollars, creating the image that it is during Modis regime that Gujarat has begun to progress. The fact is that there are some investments; there is some industrialisation, but it is far from what is being projected. In previous Vibrant Summits, claims of big capital investments have been made. For example, in 2005 claim for Rs.1,06,161 crore had been made. Out of that, investment of Rs.74,019 crore (63 per cent) was made as stated by the Chief Minister but in reality, as per the information availed under RTI, only Rs.24,998 crore (23.52 per cent) projects were under implementation.
Punyani says the growth rate of Gujarat was between 12 and 13 per cent two decades ago. The national average was 6 to 7 per cent then. In 2011, Gujarats growth rate was 11 per cent while the national rate was 10 per cent.
Sociologists agree that employment is a significant factor in signalling growth. The latest report released by the Labour Bureau says Gujarats unemployment rate has fallen to 1 per cent and it ranks first among the States. However, the activist Teesta Setalvad said this does not mean there is no unemployment. At the end of 2009-10, there were close to 8,32,000 educated unemployed, she says.
In Gujarat, the types of employment vary. While there is a tradition of self-employment and business, there is a massive category of informal workers. As many as 89 per cent of men and 98 per cent of women fall in the latter category, says Indira Hirway, director of the Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad. This section usually earns low wages and has poor working conditions and social protection.
According to Indira Hirway, as per the latest National Sample Survey statistics, Gujarat ranks 14th among 20 major States in India, in terms of daily wages given to rural casual workers (men). In terms of urban casual workers (men) wages, it ranked seventh. The State ranked 17th in regular rural workers (men) wages, and 18th in regular urban workers wages. Which means the State is practically at the bottom of the heap. The repressed wages mean that workers do not have the purchasing power to buy adequate nutrition. These indicators clearly do not make Gujarat the glorious State Modi makes it out to be.
* * *LIVE BITES'The real development of the State will begin after the election. During my 10-year-long tenure, I have been filling the ditches created by the Congress in its 45 years of rule. The real development of the State will begin from 2013.
Narendra Modiwhile campaigning in Rajkot in September.* * *Every time Modi makes announcements that businesses and factories are coming to Gujarat, I feel this is my chance to get a better job. But we never get those jobs. I dont think there are any. I have to look after my family of six . I earn Rs.4,000 a month from my denim factory job. There are no other benefits, and no job security. With the price rise, this money is not enough for us to buy food.
Ramesh Solanki,A denim factory worker in Ahmedabad* * *Rasheeda Ansari Social worker in the Juhapura area, which houses a large chunk of Ahmedabad's Muslims.
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