PM Modi’s ‘bluff’ called on Twitter

At the beginning of his two-day visit to Gujarat on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Kutch as “one of India’s fastest growing districts.” However, the claim was soon punctured on Twitter, as fellow users started questioning the source of PM’s information.

The statement was soon rebuffed as “bluff”, as a Twitter user even pointed out that Modi had made the same remarks back in 2012. While he was still the CM of Gujarat in 2012, Modi had said, “Kutch has emerged as the fastest growing district over the last few years which no other district in India can match.”

While there have been surveys ranking Indian cities on their pace of growth in the past, there hasn’t been a similar survey on the district-level yet. A survey was carried out by United Kingdom (UK)-based global finance forecasting company Oxford Economics in 2015, which ranked Delhi as the fastest growing city on the planet.

Another widely cited city-level survey that ranked Indian cities was carried out by a global urban affairs think-tank The City Mayors Foundation back in 2011. According to that survey, Ghaziabad was the fastest growing city in India at the time, which was largely in line with the assessment of Oxford Economics, considering both are part of the National Capital Region.

As of now, there is no comprehensive data, neither government nor private, recording the economic progress of India’s districts. The closest one gets to these numbers is in the socio-economic data recorded by private website www.indiastat.com.

The information presented by the website, however, fails to paint a complete picture of the the economic growth, with the statistics also refraining from making as bold a statement as made by the Prime Minister. For instance, here’s what the data says:

Another analysis of India’s districts, ranking them on financial inclusion, was published in English daily Mint in August 2014, which was based on the findings of the 2011 Census. The Mint report concluded that Chamba and Kullu in Himachal Pradesh were the most banked districts in the country in 2011, with West Sikkim featuring as the most improved district in terms of banking access, when compared to 2001 Census figures.

Sukhadeo Thorat, the Professor Emeritus at Centre for the Study of Regional Development at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), told National Herald that he couldn’t think of any survey that ranked India's districts on economic growth.

“There have been studies measuring agricultural growth and productivity in different regions in the past, but none on districts,” he said.

Past controversies

Prime Minister Modi has found himself in similarly embarrassing situations in the past too. In December 2015, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) posted a picture of Modi carrying out aerial survey of flood-hit Chennai, which later turned out to be photoshopped. The picture was taken down after social media users called it out.

On another occasion in December 2013, Modi had claimed that former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah flew over his rally in Jammu in order to ascertain the number of attendees. Abdullah had to take to Twitter to reject the claim.