The verdict on who will rule Gujarat for the
next five years will be out on Sunday.
Most surveys suggest the going could be tough
for the current chief minister Narendra Modi, but statistics suggest the state
has done well under him on a number of parameters.
A recent Reserve Bank of India report says that
Gujarat under Modi was the favourite destination for investments in the country
in 2007 -- it ranked first on the list with proposed investments of Rs 73,170
crore in 86 projects, accounting for 25.8 per cent of the total.
At a time when state after state is grappling
with a deteriorating industrial relations situation, Gujarat lost just 1.03
man days in 2006.
This is better than Maharashtra (2.41), Tamil
Nadu (3.33) and West Bengal (152.62). While Nandigram and Singur were on a boil
this year, there has not been a single major land dispute in Gujarat during
the past few years.
In the last six years, the Modi government has
worked on 72 initiatives including public-private participation in health care,
adult education, urban development, rural infrastructure and farming and gender
equality apart from encouraging investments into the state.
The state's Plan expenditure has grown at an
annualised rate of 32.25 per cent between 2001-02 and 2006-07 and its non-Plan
expenditure for the same period reduced by 8.98 per cent.
The annualised growth in revenue expenditure
over the period was 4.75 per cent, while revenue receipts grew 13.66 per cent,
indicating the state has not indulged in financial profligacy. Modi has cut
energy subsidies from Rs 3,536 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 1,747 crore in 2006-07.
The average cost of Gujarat's debt is projected
to come down from 12.1 per cent in 2001-02 to 9.33 per cent in 2006-07. What's
more, the state has moved from a revenue deficit of Rs 4,037 crore in 2004-05
to a revenue surplus of Rs 1,803 crore in 2006-07.
"The government had set a target of fiscal
deficit of not more than 3 per cent by 2008-09. It achieved the target three
years in advance by achieving a fiscal deficit of 2.89 per cent in 2005-06,"
said a senior government official.
The Modi administration has also turned around
some ailing state-owned units like Gujarat Alkali & Chemicals Ltd and Gujarat
State Fertilizer and Chemicals Ltd by avoiding political appointees and bringing
efficient bureaucrats at the helm. It was during his tenure that the Gujarat
State Petroleum Corporation struck gas in the Krishna-Godavari basin.
His political rivals laughed at him when Modi
initiated the reforms in the power sector -- Gujarat was the first state to
successfully carry out the unbundling of its state electricity board in April
2005. As a result, the Gujarat Electricity Board turned the corner and reported
a profit of Rs 219 crore in 2006-07.
A study conducted by the CII and the Institute
of Rural Management on the Jyotigram Yojana, the state government's rural electrification
scheme which promises 24-hour, 3-phase electricity to villages, says there is
an increase in the level of average employment and reduction in migration from
rural areas by 33 per cent.
On the urban development front, the state spent
Rs 600 crore on 8,500 projects in the span of just one year. Projects like Rs
the 1,200-crore Sabarmati Riverfront Development project and Bus Rapid Transit
System have been hailed by experts the Riverfront project bagged the Prime Minister's
Award for Excellence in Urban Planning and Design in 2003.
While Modi's social initiatives such as the
Sagarkhedu Sarvangi Vikas Yojana for the coastal belt and Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana
drew flak from various quarters for being politically motivated schemes, an
innovative experiment of evening courts has disposed off over 50,000 cases from
November 14, 2006 to March 31, 2007.
Data provided by the state government suggests
that the Kanya Kelavani Yojana, which focuses on literacy of the girl child,
has seen the net enrollment ratio of state go up to 97 per cent -- the drop
out rate has fallen from 30 per cent to three per cent in five years.
