Narendra Modi?s electoral victory is mostly self-made. But still more remarkable is what Gujarat?s chief minister has made his own. Just about everything positive in sight, that is. Plenty has been made of Modi?s fashionable charisma and dot-to-dot determination to develop the state, and it is foolhardy?even silly, given the scale of his victory?to deny him his due in pushing up its growth rate to double digits with his famed organisational skills. But it would be equally preposterous to ignore the set of fortuitous circumstances that lent credence to his ?vibrant Gujarat? electoral spiel. Take the case of agriculture, a sector with the highest potential for poverty reduction. During the first five years of Modi?s rule, agriculture growth revived to a spectacular annual rate of 17.8%, a startling turnaround for a sector that had declined at an annual rate of 2.9% in the previous five years. The big reason for this was the irrigation facilities provided by the famous interstate Sardar Sarovar project, which was initiated decades ago. In the first three years of Modi?s rule, the state?s irrigation potential went up by more than half to 6.6 lakh hectares, something other water-deficient states can only dream of. Modi?s biggest role in this was to keep the rhetoric high and charged against anyone seeming to oppose the project. The stupendous progress in agriculture has not helped alleviate rural poverty, however, with Gujarat?s share of rural poor stagnant at around 13% from 1999-2000 to 2004-05 (though FY05 was a bad year for agriculture, which saw output fall 9%), even though the share of urban poor went down at twice the national rate.
Next, consider industrial growth. Here, too, Gujarat is ahead of other states. About 512 industrial projects, worth nearly Rs 50,000 crore in investment, were implemented in unlicensed sectors during the first six years of Modi?s governance. But Gujarat?s share of industrial projects went up only marginally, from 18% to 19% over the period; the gains came in terms of investment value, on which the state?s share doubled to 30%. This was mainly on account of the large petrochem and refinery projects executed in a period of rising oil prices, with the state?s locational advantages playing a key role in the decisions. Should Modi have been credited for all this? He laid his claim anyway. He won.