Gujarat’s marginalised voices – How do they fare? The ordinary people of Gujarat have paid a heavy price for its economic growth. Gujarat has one of the highest poverty levels of all the Indian states. Huge swathes of land allocated to corporates have displaced lakhs of farmers, fishermen, pastoralists, agricultural workers, Dalits and Adivasis. During Modi’s tenure, 16,000 workers, farmers and farm labourers had committed suicide due to economic distress by 2011 (Mishra: 2011). Gujarat has the highest prevalence of hunger and lowest human development indices among states with comparable per capita income, its implementation of NREGA is the worst among large states, and Muslims, “in particular, fare poorly on parameters of poverty, hunger, education and vulnerability on security issues”(Shariff: 2011) . Refuting Modi’s claim that the high level of malnutrition in Gujarat is a consequence of vegetarianism and figure-consciousness, an eminent scholar has pointed out that the real reasons are extremely low wage rates, malfunctioning of nutrition schemes, lack of potable water supplies, and lack of sanitation: the state ranks 10th in the use of toilets, with more than 65% of households defecating in the open, with resulting high levels of jaundice, diarrhoea, malaria and other diseases (Hirway: 2012) . Uncontrolled pollution has destroyed the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen, and subjected the local populations to skin diseases, asthma, TB, cancer and death (Gahilote: 2014). Contrary to the myth that Gujarat is a powerhouse attracting large FDI inflows, in 2012-13 its share in FDI was a meagre 2.38%, ranked 6th, compared to Maharashtra’s 39.4% (Khanna: 2013). Most damning of all, for a state that purports to provide a template for the whole country’s economy, is the Modi government’s “lack of financial discipline. The Gujarat growth pattern relies on indebtedness. The states debt increased from Rs 45,301 crore in 2002 to Rs. 1,38,978 crore in 2013... In terms of per capita indebtedness, the situation is even more worrying, given the size of the state: each Gujarati carries a debt of Rs 23,163 if the population is taken to be 60 million” (Jaffrelot: 2013).
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 09:30:06 +0000
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