With elections taking place in four Indian states currently, there has been an overdose of “development” propaganda in the Indian media. I have read the word development so many times and in so many outlets and articles that it’s almost nauseating. Narendra Modi, the BJP poster-boy, has evidently taken credit for this unique development (it’s contagious I tell you) in election campaigning and is exhorting voters in other states to vote for his party and indirectly vote for “Gujarat’s development model.”
Now, I’ve lived in Gujarat for a long time before I moved out of India. I’ve heard this story a lot of times. And don’t get me wrong, there have been some changes in the Gujarati economy. What I’ve been wondering about for a very long time is whether what I saw in Gujarat was merely economic growth, or investment driven growth to be more precise, rather than the slightly more elusive phenomenon of development. Of course, there has been phenomenal growth, all over India for that matter, but I feel development seems to be lagging. Case in point: you must have all heard of the deplorable sex ratio in Gujarat or the fact that nutritional poverty in Gujarat is higher than the Indian average. Is that a sign of a developed region? Of course, those are only a few examples, and there is no empirical study that proves (or disproves for that matter) this hypothesis. So I told myself, lets look for a few and write a blog entry about it.
You might feel that if the above was an introduction, it was rather long. I don’t fault you. However, here is where you were wrong. That was the main body. Reason: I found NO such academic article/study! I checked everywhere I could, and I generally pride myself on being able to find exactly what I want, but there is hardly any literature on this aspect since Narendra Modi came to power.
You have a whole nation espousing the benefits of development led politics, politicians using the newly created development plank to campaign for votes, the media going feral, as usual quoi, over this new and great change in Indian politics, parties accusing one another of not doing enough for development, and above all, (yes I don’t like Narendra Modi, hence I am not objective in this matter) the Gujarat CM smugly taking credit for it all. But goddamnit I learned in high school that growth DOES NOT mean development and I find nothing that would make me believe that this is contrary to what’s happening in Gujarat. I feel like more than a billion people are being taken for a ride. What do you think?
so glad you’re blogging again, zu! this is really interesting stuff.