Vadodara, 15 March, 2013

Shashi Tharoor in a bid to cast aspersions on the Gujarat story for the umpteenth time, cut out a sorry figure after alert citizens on Twitter discovered that the data he shared to compare Gujarat and Kerala as on ‘today’ was sourced to an Outlook article from 2007, which in turn was taken from various sources and dated back to 2001 to 2005. That is before or just after Narendra Modi had taken over as the CM of Gujarat. In cricketing terms, he tried to defeat Modi by an innings even before he started playing. In the end, it seems, Tharoor has got himself out Hit Wicket!

Shashi Tharoor and Twitter controversies go back a long way. Having already lost his job once after getting embroiled in a Twitter generated controversy, it doesn’t seem that his recent tweet about Narendra Modi is done nonchalantly. With changing political demographics, Shashi Tharoor’s bane has suddenly become a boon for him. The Congress Party has finally woken up to the challenge of the Social Media and realised that Tharoor is probably the best person to lead its Social Media charge. The common sentiment regarding Tharoor was that he was the right man in the wrong party. Most perceived him as an intelligent, elitist leader, who stands out in the flock! But his recent escapades on Twitter prove otherwise. He has taken the shortest shortcut available to please the High Command i.e. to target Narendra Modi and Gujarat! Nobody expects a person who has previously worked in the United Nations and is presently the MoS HRD to share an article without comprehending the facts properly. Even after he realised that the damage has been done, he fails to own up, labelling it as ‘chest thumping’ from a Kerala MP.

He soon tweets that Kerala recorded an economic growth rate of 9.5% in 2011-12. Again factually wrong. Kerala achieved this growth in 2010-11. We expect a well-educated, suave Minister in the Central Government to know better, don’t we? In his ignorance, he has eradicated all differences between him and the likes of Sushil Kumar Shinde and SM Krishna who are known for their gaffes. Infact he has joined fellow MoS RPN Singh, who had tried to belittle Modi’s ‘India First’ slogan and his ignorance was exposed here.

And, this is isn’t the first time he has taken a dig at Modi. Have a look at his previous Tweets.

Now, the premise of his tweet appears flawed because he is not a common citizen or a routine columnist. He is a Minister of the Union of India. Nor is his tweet merely against a politician. It involves the states of Gujarat and Kerala. How can an Indian Minister differentiate between two states of India just in order to push his political prejudices? The state of Kerala has been one of the front runners when it comes to various social parameters. Isn’t that a matter of pride for all Indians? Right from school days, we took pride on hearing about Kerala’s high literacy rate irrespective of who governs it. But the ideology of a sibling rivalry between two states is a rather unpleasant surprise.

Now coming to the statistics, it would be interesting to look at the advances made by Gujarat and Kerala in the last decade, keeping in mind that Kerala is way ahead of the National Average in various categories since decades.

The most widely accepted criterion of calculating growth in a state would be to compare the Growth Rates (GSDP%). In the period from 2004-05 to 2011-12, Gujarat grew at the rate of 10.08%. On the other hand Kerala grew at the rate of 8.52%, which is pretty close to the National Average of 8.28%!

Similarly, an effective method to know the Per Capita Income would be to glance through the Per Capita Net State Domestic Product . Gujarat’s Per capita Income was Rs 17,226 in 2001, while Kerala stood ahead at Rs, 19,854. After 10 Years of Modi’s rule,in 2010-11, Gujarat stood at Rs 52,708, surpassing Kerala’s Per Capita Income of Rs 49,873.

Regarding Employment, it’s a well known fact now that Gujarat has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. According to the Report on Employment and Unemployment Survey 2011-12, Gujarat had 1o people unemployed per every 1000 people. On the other hand, Kerala had a whopping 99 people per 1000 people unemployed, much higher than the national average. With the high literacy rate, it would be no surprise if Kerala also has the highest number of educated unemployed youth! Gujarat accounted for more than half the jobs provided in the country via the employment exchanges in the last decade.

In the last 10 years, Gujarat made rapid strides in the field of literacy and the literacy rate shot up from 69.14% to 79.31%. It is interesting to note that Kerala had a similar literacy rate in 1981. During the last decade, Kerala increased it’s literacy rate from 90.86% to 93.91%. Gujarat made great progress in the field of Female literacy in the last decade with the Female literacy rate shooting up to 58.60% to 79.31%.

Similaly, Gujarat is making fast advances in the field of reducing it’s Infant Mortality rate. It has also managed to drastically reduce the drop-out rate among school children. An article on Gujarat’s progress on various fronts can be seen here.

An intriguing comparison would be the Household Access to Safe Drinking Water. According to Planning Commission , Gujarat has 97% of the households with access to safe drinking water. But Kerala lags behind with only 39.4% households with access to safe drinking water.

The Legatum Prosperity Index, an unique prosperity index which calculates the well-being of a state/country taking into account various factors, ranked India at no 138. But Gujarat managed to top the charts yet again, with a rank of 15. Kerala on the contrary lagged behind at no 40.

I would like to reiterate that such Guerrilla Attacks on the Gujarat Story are very unfortunate. Ministers like Tharoor, with a penchant to score a brownie point by taking pot-shots at Narendra Modi must understand that, when in power, it is the country they represent first, then the Congress Party. Hopefully this latest data would desist him from such misadventures in the future.

The Author can be reached on Twitter at @niravshah112