Vibrant Gujarat

Gujarat no longer competes with the rest of India in terms of growth. It now competes with China. As per the data of the Central Statistical Organization the growth rate of Gujarat’s SGDP from 2002 till date is 12.8%. It is at par with Chinese GDP and way above the Indian average of 7.7%. Gujarat is the driving force of Indian progress. In terms of proportion of Indian output, Gujarat accounts for 67% of petrochemical production, 40% of pharmaceutical products, 39% of industrial output, 25% of textile production, and 20% of exports. Some are bravely saying that the roads in Gujarat are even better than the famous American interstate joining the Great Lakes to the inter-mountainous regions – the I-94!

Remember how people were agitating against the Tata Nano project in West Bengal, and the Tatas shifted their factory to Gujarat? Well, here is the latest, the Tata Group now employs 5,000 people in Gujarat and has the potential of indirectly employing many thousand more. There is a chain reaction of progress. But what about the poor farmers whose land lay around the Tata Nano project in Gujarat? Hold your breath. The land that was going for about Rs. 2 lakh per acre is being estimated to now going for Rs. 60 lakh per acre. And the poor farmer? Well the poor farmer of Ahmedabad and Sanand drives an Audi now. Metamorphic marvel of Modi’s magic? It seems that the corporate attraction towards Gujarat is on full swing. The Tatas are now intending to sign an MoU to provide rural transport. Gujarat’s per capita income has grown by 13.8%. Not only the Tatas, but also the international rail wagon manufacturing company Bombardier that has setup shop in Gujarat.

Why does an Anil Ambani promise to invest Rs. 50,000 crores ($11 billion) in Gujarat in front of some of his elder brother(s), Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra, Ajit Gulabchand, the Adanis – some of the biggest wealth creators in India? The reason is simple: Gujarat! In the 2009 Vibrant Gujarat summit MoU’s worth a whopping Rs. 12 lakh-crores ($266.67 billion). The 2011 Vibrant Gujarat summit is expected to witness MoUs worth Rs. 15 lakh-crores ($ 333.33 billion) being signed. Someone may say that perhaps Homosapiens no longer live in the state, but a curious evolutionary mix of the Homoeconomicus (Economic man) and the Homoreciprocans (Cooperative man) dwell here! With 83 Pharma companies committing to invest in Gujarat, the state is well on a trajectory into the outer space of business investment! It may be true that not all MoUs result in actual investment, but it is also equally true that a lot of MoUs are indeed converted into actual investment.

But more than the lure of the moolah, the astronomical increase in land prices in Gujarat, and better employment opportunities for Gujaratis, is the socio-cultural revolution that Narendra Modi has ushered in rural Gujarat. The “Dikri Devo Bhavah” (the girl-child is divine) program has ensured that Gujarat’s male:female ratio has improved tremendously. Female literacy in poor families has improved. Modi and his entire team of ministers and officers go to villages before the commencement of the academic year and ask people to pledge to ensure that the girl child is sent to school and educated. Narendra Modi has focused on the emancipation of women as a means to make the Gujarati progress. His logic is simple, if you educate a son, you educate one person, but if you educate a girl, you educate an entire family. It is a woman afterall who ensures that if she is educated her family progresses too. In the 3Es (emancipation, empowerment, and education of women) lies Narendra Modi’s secret to the socio-cultural progress of rural Gujarat.

Gujarat is afterall the land of the Mahatma, no wonder the business savvy Chief Minister has named the main enclosure of the Vibrant Gujarat 2011 summit as the “Mahatma Mandir” or the temple dedicated to the Mahatma. It was one of the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi to uplift the poorest of the poor. And Narendra Modi is well on his way to achieve this. The investment coming into Gujarat and the progress that the state is making is helping even the most economically impoverished sections of Gujarati society. But the progress of Gujarat is not just a one-time phenomenon.

Narendra Modi has brought in a work-culture change in the state. At a time when Indian bureaucracy has been rated as one of the worst in Asia, the bureaucracy in Gujarat has a very different work culture. Here, the bureaucratic creature is a proactive being working overtime to ensure that he can deliver. Why? Because Narendra Modi focuses on accountability and deliverability. The entire Gujarati society is rising up injected as if by the steroid of development.

Welcome to the Mahatma Mandir! No Adarsh scam here, no 2G-spectrum ghotala, no coalition compulsions to permit the wholesale loot of the people, no CWG scam, no Bofors, no giving land to son-in-laws, no Reddy brothers here. This is the domain of the Gujaratis and their leader Narendra Modi, a socio-economic reformer in the garb of a Chief Minister – perhaps a modern-day quintessential Lee Kuan Yew (the man who made modern Singapore into what it is today).