A peek into Modi’s Gujarat

Once again Narendra Modi has won the Gujarat elections. Once again people have been waxing eloquent about good governance. But this time it seems to be accompanied by a certain belief that Mr Modi is here to stay. Maybe even as the next Prime Minister.

Which is worrying on several counts. But primarily, to me, because it seems to suggest that we live by and see our world through endorsements. If a rich and famous filmstar says a toothpaste is great, we buy it. If the rich and famous industrialists say Mr Modi has great governance, we buy it too. We are entering an age of propaganda, where we may readily ignore unpleasant truths to embrace an attractive mix of half-truths and untruths as our reality of choice. And this make-believe world has no patience for boring rules of democratic rights and freedoms.
Mr Modi is saluted for his apparently fantastic governance skills, his contribution to development, his performance as chief minister that has led to Gujarat’s amazing economic growth. It is true that Mr Modi has made Gujarat a honeytrap for industry, offering incentives that many other states cannot risk. States that have more democratic freedoms, or where land scams are better exposed and investigated, for example. In return, leaders of industry, who sadly seem to have very little interest in larger reality, have been endorsing Mr Modi and Modi’s Gujarat. But being investment-friendly is not enough. We need to see socially relevant returns on that investment, we need to witness the change in people’s living standards and in democratic freedoms. Has that happened? Not as much as advertised.
Sure, there has been good economic growth, but that has been happening for two decades, and to let Mr Modi hog all the credit for it would be wrong and very unfair to his predecessors and the general ethos of the state. Besides, Mr Modi and friends talk incessantly about giant strides in human development. So let’s take a quick look at the condition of women, always a good indicator of how well a state is actually doing.
According to the 2011 census, the sex ratio in Modi’s Gujarat is 918 females to 1,000 males, which is way below the national average of 940. And if we look at the 0-6 age group, there are only 889 girls to 1000 boys, abysmally low even for a country like ours. The female infant mortality rate is higher than the national average. There are also more illiterate teenage women in Gujarat than the national average. And where on an average in India 19.9 per cent of workers in the organised sector are women, in Gujarat — apparently bubbling with industrial and development activity — only 14.7 per cent of workers in the organised sector are women.
Okay, enough of women talk. Let’s move on to another disadvantaged group, particularly in Mr Modi’s state. Muslims, the brutalised minority of Gujarat. The wealth of vibrant Gujarat seems to have escaped them. Their standard of living is not better than before and Muslim neighbourhoods still lack a host of basic facilities. In Modi’s Gujarat that seems so keen on education, Muslim students have fewer educational opportunities than Hindu students. Reportedly, they are also deprived of government scholarships.
In any democratic state committed to inclusive growth, Muslims would have been a priority after the 2002 massacre. First they were systematically and brutally killed in that carefully orchestrated sectarian violence. Then their pursuit of justice was choked for years by the justice delivery mechanism, till more and more cases were shifted out of Gujarat for a fair trial. And even now, a whole decade later, the rehabilitation of the displaced and affected is pending.
The “clean” government of Mr Modi, focused on getting quick results — often through short cuts like fake “encounter” killings — targets Muslims with impunity. They are routinely denied their rights, often clapped in jail for crimes they did not commit. The powerful get away with it all. Even after the various players in these extra-judicial killings — like in the much publicised murders of Ishrat Jahan and friends, and Sohrabuddin and family — are arrested and implicated, they have nothing to lose. Take Mr Modi’s close aide Amit Shah, also implicated in the Sohrabuddin case, who was charged with murder, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, extortion, destroying evidence, threatening and influencing witnesses. As junior home minister he is said to have pressured officers to suspend the enquiry, taken away the enquiry papers, and asked for the list of witnesses whose statements were to be recorded. Is this what clean governance is about? Maybe. Because Amit Shah too has been voted back to the Assembly and is likely to be a minister again soon.
So does “good governance” not include protecting people’s right to life? When the state government fails to protect minorities, can we really praise Mr Modi’s governance skills?
Perhaps. Because you define “good governance” exactly as it suits you, then lay claim to it. Is this the face of a state that needs to be worshipped for its development? Perhaps not. But then, why are the people of Gujarat repeatedly voting Mr Modi back to power?
Maybe because Mr Modi is an exceptionally clever player backed by a party desperate for political power. Maybe because enticed by the lure of majoritarianism we are moving away from the idea of democracy as we knew it. Maybe because the Gujarat experiment shows how voters can be polarised and the minority grandly ignored to romp to victory.
Even if Mr Modi is not the next Prime Minister, he would certainly continue to be one of India’s key leaders, and not just in Gujarat. It is rather scary when the country is led by someone whose idea of India is very different from the idea enshrined in the Constitution. It is always scary when there is a possibility of a huge, destructive shift in political, social and ethical priorities. Unfortunately, the grand success of the BJP’s Gujarat experiment under Mr Modi may lead down that path, to a steady crumbling of our democracy. In the interest of self-preservation, we need to move out of the culture of endorsements, and make informed and responsible choices when deciding what to believe.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine.