No one told Congress that the race has begun. As it is, the race seems to be between a race horse and a three legged donkey. Despite of media’s best efforts to ignore Modi’s virtuoso performance at extremely well received rallies, he has created an electricity in the air. The ditry tricks department of Congress has now gone into an overdrive. They realize that no one is in the mood to buy their lies about Modi or BJP anymore. Congress Bureau of Investigation’s attempts to smear the man are not bearing any fruits. They tried half truths by employing these so called experts who are crunching numbers to show that there is no way the BJP can win more than 180 seats and so Modi cannot become the PM. This is being done with the sole intention of creating a doubt in the minds of voters and demoralize the BJP worker. What these experts do not tell you is that if you go by their numbers, Lok Sabha seats are going to go empty.
Half truths have failed. Lies have failed. Damned lies are also not working out. What is left is Statistics which is now being thrown around by men with alleged expertise. No less a failure than P Chidambaran has started to spew numbers about Modi’s performance and those of the BJP. Like the other key posts, the CAG is also occupied by someone with Congress ties. So we get to hear about issues like malnutrition in Gujarat. No one says that everything is right in Gujarat. After all, it still is part of a developing country. What we want to see if the state is on the right path and there is a discernible difference made over a period. Congress and other Modi haters would have you believe that the improvement made over the last ten years in Gujarat is either a lie or attributable to other factors.
To me Atalji ran a good government but he was no match to Modi when it comes to implementing a vision and forward leaning policies. His claim to fame was to run the NDA smoothly. What I want to tell the Congress mandarins is that forget Modi, you cannot even come close to Atalji’s government performance. Here are some statistics from Economic Times which is no friend of the BJP. Minhaz Merchant bases his article on information from the Economic Survey of India, UNDP, IMF, Planning Commission of India. Merchant chooses ten key criteria and crunches the numbers.
1.GDP growth: Average GDP growth in 1998-2004 (NDA) was 6% a year. Average annual GDP growth in 2004-13 (UPA), up to June 30, 2013, was 7.9%.
Caveat 1: The Vajpayee-led NDA battled US-led economic sanctions following the Pokhran-II nuclear test in May 1998. It faced a short but expensive Kargil war in 1999 and the dotcom bust in 2000. When it took office, it had the lag effect of the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 to contend with.
Caveat 2: The UPA government, in contrast, benefited from the economic momentum of the high (8.1%) GDP growth rate of 2003-04 – the NDA government’s final year – and rode that wave.
Despite these caveats, the UPA government’s average annual GDP growth rate of 7.9% in 2004-13 clearly scores over the NDA government’s average annual growth rate of 6% (though high inflation boosted the former significantly). First strike to UPA.
2. Current Account Deficit:
2004: (+) $7.36 billion (surplus).
2013: (-) $80 billion.
3. Trade deficit:
2004: (-) $13.16 billion.
2013: (-) $180 billion.
4. Fiscal deficit:
2004: 4.7% of GDP.
2013: 4.8% of GDP.
Not much to choose between the two.
5. Inflation:
1998-2004: 5%.
2004-2013: 9% (Both figures are averaged out over their respective tenures).
6. External Debt:
March 2004: $111.6 billion.
March 2013: $390 billion.
7. Jobs:
1999-2004: 60 million new jobs created.
2004-11: 14.6 million jobs created.
8. Rupee:
1998-2004: Variation: Rs. 39 to 49 per $.
2004-13: Variation: Rs. 39 to 68 per $.
9. HDI:
2004: India was ranked 123rd globally on the human development index (HDI) in 2004, with a score of 0.453.
2013: India has slipped 13 places to 136th globally on the HDI in 2013 with a score of 0.554.
10. Subsidies:
2004: Rs. 44,327 crore.
2013: Rs. 2,31,584 crore.
Here again, profligate welfarism, as the ADBI report quoted earlier shows, has led to a rising subsidy bill. Worse, a significant amount is siphoned off by a corrupt nexus of politicians, officials and middlemen.
Conclusion: UPA scores above NDA on one of the 10 parameters (GDP growth), is level on one other parameter (fiscal deficit) while NDA does better than UPA on the remaining eight parameters.
The next time Finance Minister P. Chidambaram wishes to stage an encounter with facts, he would do well to be aware of those facts.
Just like Congress. The recent cyclone did not turn out to be (Thank all the Gods) the horror as was expected. The devastation was managed due to good forecasting (we had help from the US) and the Indian navy. Jaipal Reddy was all over the place, crowing about the good performance. Where was he oe the rest of the party, when things really went bad in Uttarakhand?
The Merchant article can be read at: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/headon/entry/upa-vs-nda-setting-the-economic-record-straight
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