No Mr Jaffrelot, the Gujarat Model is not why the BJP lost in the rural civic polls

In his opinion piece in The Indian Express on December 4, cheekily titled “Blowin’ in the Gujarat wind”, Christophe Jaffrelot attempts to find reasons behind the Bharatiya Janata Party’s drubbing in the recently-concluded panchayat polls in Gujarat.

Mr Jaffrelot lays the blame for this defeat almost entirely on the so-called “Gujarat Model”, a thinly-veiled reference to Narendra Modi’s policies while he was the state’s chief minister. The author claims that this model had a threefold impact on the state: it made minorities and socially-backward groups worse off, widened the gap between rural and urban regions of the state, and resulted in jobless economic growth.

He cites a flurry of statistics to prove his point. Unfortunately, these numbers are only half-truths, selectively presented to push through his preconceived notion that the “Gujarat model relies on a twofold process of polarisation, religious as well as social”.

For almost every statistic cited, the author commits two cardinal sins: he provides no reference points (data from other states or the country) for comparison and he skips the bits that show the Gujarat government in a favourable light.

The most obvious example of this is his assertion that Gujarat’s rank among Indian states slipped from 10 in 1999-2000 to 11 in 2011, based on Human Development Index, or HDI. He glosses over the fact that this period entailed the creation of three new states. This means that Gujarat actually climbed up by two places. Not a stark achievement for a state with such high agricultural and overall growth during this period, but not the failure that Mr Jaffrelot intends to portray it as.

To prove his point of alienation of Muslims, the author quotes data from the Sachar Committee report on representation of the community in Gujarat’s government. Undoubtedly, the community is under-represented in proportion to its 9.7 per cent population in the state (as per Census 2011). However, while numbers from the education, home, and health department are mentioned to show under-representation, data from the transport department, which has 9.4 per cent and 16.3 per cent Muslims in the higher and lower positions, respectively, is not presented. (See page 171 of the Sachar Committee report.) It is also not mentioned that the corresponding numbers for most states are equally, if not more, anaemic.

Sachar Committee report goes on to state that Gujarat shows the highest representation of Muslims in public sector undertakings at 16 per cent (see page 175-76). It also notes the state’s superior coverage of Muslims under Integrated Child Development Services Scheme, as well as the higher prevalence of contraceptives in the community. (See page 181 and 285, respectively.) These facts are also missing from the article.

Further, the author fails to mention that Gujarati Muslims show much lower levels of infant and under-five mortality rates than their Hindu counterparts. (See page 283 of the Sachar Committee report.)

Next, Mr Jaffrelot trains his guns on education levels of Muslims in Gujarat, again presenting data sans comparisons and the positive bits. As mentioned correctly, only 26 per cent of Muslims in Gujarat reached matriculation, 14 percentage points behind the state’s “other” community (largely referring to Hindu general castes). However, this is still better than most other states’ numbers and the national average. The best performing state is Kerala, where 37.5 per cent of Muslims reached matriculation, though Kerala’s Muslim community still massively lags behind the state’s other community, 64.3 per cent of which reached matriculation. (See page 299 and 300.)

Since more recent numbers on matriculation are unavailable, it is instructive to look at Gujarat’s progress in elementary education, which the author has not done. In 2006-07, only 4.11 per cent of Gujarati students at the primary level were Muslims (see page 17). This proportion almost doubled to 8.81 per cent in 2013-14, bringing it close to the share of Muslims in general population (see page 36). The progress is similar for upper primary level. That’s good reason to believe that matriculation numbers have also improved greatly. While some states show higher representation of Muslims in proportion to their population, Gujarat’s catch-up can’t be brushed aside.

As per poverty of Gujarati Muslims, the author rightly states that urban Muslims in Gujarat are far poorer than other communities. However, the fact that their rural counterparts are much less poor (see page 160) and have higher consumption than the overall average, is missing from the article.

Coming to urban-rural divide, Mr Jaffrelot correctly mentions that the gap in urban-rural MPCE (monthly per capita expenditure) has widened from 49.8 per cent in 1993-94 to 68 per cent in 2007-08, and remained the same in 2011-12.

In this case, it would be more prudent to look at data starting 2001-02, when Modi took over as CM. Comparing data between 2001-02 and 2011-12 shows that the increase in consumption gap reduces to 14.5 percentage points, as opposed to the 18.5 percentage point gap cited by the author. This is much worse than national performance (a decrease of 3.4 percentage points) but still far better in absolute terms, where the all-India gap in urban-rural consumption in 2011-12 stood at 84 per cent (see page 10).

Going further on the issue of urban-rural divide, Mr Jaffrelot makes tall claims of 56 per cent of rural households in Gujarat being indebted in 2004-05, and still higher proportions of the same in the SC/ST community. It is unclear from where he got these statistics. The latest stats on rural and agricultural indebtedness show that only 26 per cent (see page Table 2-R, Appendix A) of rural households and 42.6 per cent (see page 24) of agricultural households in Gujarat are indebted. The report also mentions (see page 18) that, nationally, the ST community has the least proportion of indebted households among all communities, which makes the figures cited by the author seem dubious. Further, data from Socio Economic Caste Census 2011 also show Gujarat’s SC/ST community to be doing better than their counterparts in most other states if you look at metrics such as share of SC/STs with government jobs, income over Rs 5,000, land-holding and so on.

On almost all accounts of rural and agricultural indebtedness, Gujarat performs much better than most other states, including Tamil Nadu, which the author cites as a competing model of development. The debt-to-asset ratio of Gujarat is much healthier at 1.39, compared to Tamil Nadu’s 6.81 and national average of 3.23 (see Table 2-R, Appendix A). The average outstanding debt per indebted rural household is Rs 98,382, which is lower than the corresponding figure for most big states.

Lastly, the author raises questions on jobless economic growth spurred by the Gujarat Model. The first assault is on Gujarat’s MSME policy. Mr Jaffrelot mentions halving of share of bank credit to MSME sector, but fails to highlight that this is an all-India, and not Gujarat-specific, statistic.

Then, he claims that the 48,000 sick MSMEs in Gujarat in March 2014 form a fifth of the country’s total sick units. This is patently false. In reality, Gujarat takes up only about one-tenth share of the country’s sick MSMEs. This proportion has reduced slightly in March 2015, and is not too different from those of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, though there is no doubt that Gujarat’s MSME sector has shown greater deterioration over the past few years.

Further, the author commends industrial development in Tamil Nadu, saying industries in the state have “a much higher share in the number of factory jobs created.” While this claim is true, it hides the fact that in 2012-13, Tamil Nadu had 36,869 factories, as compared to 22,587 factories in Gujarat. A closer look at evolution of industrial employment since 2001-02 shows that Gujarat has had a faster annual increase in employment of factory workers than both Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, India’s other two industrialised states.

In fact, Gujarat had shown a steep decline in number of factory workers in the three years before Narendra Modi became CM, but has shown improvement ever since. Since Modi’s days, wage per factory worker in Gujarat has grown at an annual pace lesser than Tamil Nadu’s but higher than Maharashtra’s.

A more wholesome look at the stats, as opposed to the biased view presented by Mr Jaffrelot, suggests that reasons for BJP’s drubbing lie beyond the alleged horrors inflicted by the Gujarat model, and need deeper probing.