BJP election symbol flag on the wall of a hut in Devrajiya village in Saurashtra region, Gujarat | Photo credit: Vijay Soni
with gujarat assembly election Scheduled to take place in two phases on December 1 and 5, an analysis of economic, social and environmental indicators brings out contrasting results. While Gujarat is one of the most advanced states in India economically Poor performance on social indicators, even some of them are appearing at the bottom of the list. The state tops the list of indicators related to manufacturing. But it has come at a cost as Gujarat is at the bottom of the list of many environmental measures.
Table 1 Shows Gujarat’s rank on social indicators and its actual score in one parameter in 2019-20, 2015-16 and 2005-06. The table also lists the change in rank of Gujarat in 2019-20 as compared to 2015-16. The top three states in one parameter are also given for comparison. For example, Gujarat had 39% stunted children (short for age) in 2019-20 and was ranked 26th out of 30 states. The three best states that year were Kerala (23.4% underweight), Punjab (24.5%) and Tamil Nadu (25%). On this indicator, Gujarat’s ranking fell two places in 2019-20 from 2015-16, the year the state was ranked 24th out of 30 states.
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Notably, in most of the social indicators, there has been no significant improvement over the years. For example, the female population attending school was 72% in 2015-16 and increased to 72.9% in 2019-20. Only females aged six years and above were considered.
The share of wasted children (low weight for height) improved marginally from 26.4% to 25.1%, while the share of stunted children (low weight for age) increased marginally from 39.3% to 39.7% . On both these indicators, the state ranks 29 out of 30 states analyzed in 2019-20.
What is shocking is that the relative performance of the state in 2019-20 is worse as compared to 2005-06 on most of the social indicators. In share of female population who had ever attended school, the state ranked 15th out of 28 states in 2005-06; In 2019-20, it was ranked 19th out of 30. In the share of wasted children, the state’s rank deteriorated from 16 out of 28 states to 29 out of 30 states. In fact, on all social indicators analysed, the state’s ranking worsened over a period of 15 years.
However, Gujarat’s economic performance was among the best in the country. In both 1993-94 and 2020-21, the state ranked 6th out of 27 states in per capita net state domestic product (current prices) as shown below Table 3,
Furthermore, its economic strength is mainly supported by the manufacturing sector, which employs 20.8% of the state’s workforce. This is the second largest share among the supposed 30 states ( Table 4,
While the state leads the country in terms of economic performance, it lags behind on indicators related to the environment ( Table 5, The state generated the highest amount of hazardous waste and the fourth highest amount of plastic waste in the country. Per capita consumption of fossil fuels also ranks third. Only 80% of the industries comply with the waste water treatment norms.
In educational indicators, Gujarat is among the worst performing states ( Table 6, In 2018-19, it was above 20 out of 30 states on indicators such as enrollment in primary, higher secondary and college level education. The drop out rate was also high at the secondary level.
Given its superior economic performance and low social and environmental ranking, Gujarat’s position on the Human Development Index was moderate in 2019 and 1990 (16 and 17 out of 30 states, respectively). it is seen in Table 2,
Source: NFHS, MOSPI, Global Data Lab, NITI Aayog
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