A path to prosperity

The Delhi Model by Jasmine Shah explores the national capital's transformative approach to public education, healthcare, and other six key sectors, contrasting it with the Gujarat Model. Excerpts:

- by Jasmine Shah

The Gujarat Model of development seized national imagination in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as Chief Minister Narendra Modi staked his claim to the prime minister's chair. So relentless and powerful was BJP's propaganda that many Indians, without understanding what the Gujarat Model actually was, came to perceive it as a catch-all for overall development and what the whole of India should aspire to. In the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey conducted in five states in 2014, Gujarat was ranked first when voters were asked 'In your opinion, which state in India is doing best on development indicators?'.

Over the past fifteen years, there has been plenty of discussion and dissection of the Gujarat Model in academic circles but not much of this has filtered through to India's middle classes largely because the media has failed to scrutinize its claims. To begin with, let's define what the model is or isn't. The Gujarat Model is an example of trickle-down economics that reduces the primary role of the state to facilitating rapid economic growth by promoting big industry at all costs and at the exclusion of almost everything else, especially expenditure on human development. The result has been stark: Gujarat experienced a sharp jump in growth rate over the decade 2001-02 to 2011-12—the Modi years—but simultaneously saw itself underperforming when compared to most Indian states in social indicators. This has led many critics like the French political economist, Christopher Jaffrelot, to define the model as 'growth without development'.