Sutanu Guru
What was once thought of as impossible, has now turned true! The per capita income of Odisha is now higher than that of West Bengal.
As a youngster belonging to a humble financial background and living in Bhubaneswar, a trip to Calcutta (now Kolkata) was almost magical.
Eden Gardens, Park Street, Victoria Memorial, Kalighat Dakhsineshwari…enthralled you. The trips were a cultural and culinary delight, occasionally marred by nasty remarks about Odias by some racist Bengalis.
Coming from a hopelessly poor state, the names Shaw Wallace, ITC, Hindustan Motors, Bata, Dunlop et al evoked awe. Back then, if someone had suggested that Odisha will one day become richer than West Bengal, I would have been compelled to think that person needed to be sent to a lunatic asylum. Yet, the seemingly impossible has happened. The per capita income of Odisha is now higher than that of West Bengal.
Numerous opinion pieces have been written about Naveen Patnaik breaking the record held by Jyoti Basu of being the longest continuously serving chief minister of a major state (The longest is Pawan Chamling of Sikkim). There has been both praise and criticism. Being human beings, commentators and analysts have used their fundamental right to inject subjective opinions about the phenomenon called Naveen Patnaik.
Having left Odisha in 1983, I am not really familiar with the intricacies of local politics in the state. But I do understand and respect data. Across the world, there are two measures of how a state, a nation and a leader has performed. The first is per capita income. The second is human development indicators. The green line in the chart shows the per capita income of Odisha from the 2000-01 to 2022-23; the red one is for West Bengal.
Naveen Patnaik became Chief Minister in 2000 when the per capita income of West Bengal was 60% more than that of Odisha. After 23 odd years, it lags behind Odisha. By any yardstick, this is a stupendous achievement by a state and leader; forget the flaws that are bound to be there. Some will argue that the stability afforded by the long tenure of Naveen Patnaik has helped the state. But then, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi ruled Bihar continuously for 15 years in Bihar.
In Bengal too, just two chief ministers have ruled since 2000-Buddhadev Bhattacharya and Mamata Bannerjee. Travel north and you will see Haryana having many opportunistic alliance governments between 2000 and 2022 conjured up by Congress, BJP and Lok Dal while Punjab has seen stable governments in the same period. Yet, Haryana has raced ahead of Punjab in economic performance.
Along with per capita income, human development indicators are another globally accepted measure of economic well-being. In my previous column, I had written about the latest multi-dimensional poverty report released by the Niti Aayog where Odisha has shown spectacular improvement.
The multi-dimensional poverty report takes into account 12 parameters that range from nutrition to years of schooling to maternal health to access to clean cooking fuel, electricity, toilets, water and bank accounts among others. It is now widely accepted in the arena of development economics that a measure of these indicators is superior to just taking per capita income as a barometer.
It is because of this that Kerala is considered to be the success story of India though many states have much higher per capita incomes. Most of it has come during the tenure of Naveen Patnaik. As per this report, West Bengal is still ahead of India. But that’s probably because the Niti Ayog report inexcplibaly shows Odisha performing very poorly in access to clean cooking fuel and sanitation. Even if you and I agree with the numbers, trends clearly indicate that Naveen Babu’s Odisha will outperform Mamata Didi’s Bengal vein on this measure in a few years.
Even the ideologically blinkered will have to agree that Mamata Bannerjee is immensely popular amongst voters in Bengal, just as Naveen Patnaik is in Odisha. The question to be asked is: how has Mamata Didi harnessed her popularity to transform the economy of West Bengal? At least compared to what Naveen Babu has done. I have previously demonstrated with data how Naveen has outperformed the much hyped Nitish Kumar of Bihar in a way that should embarrass the latter. But now, even Mamata Bannerjee is losing the economic race.
For decades, prime ministers ranging from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Dr. Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi have stated how India cannot become a middle income country with decent standards of living until and unless the eastern states of India improve their economic performance.
For long, analysts have virtually given up on that happening. But look at Andhra Pradesh in the chart. It has a per capita income that is almost four times that of Bihar. It was three times that of Bihar in 2001. The Andhra number was 80% higher than that of Odisha in 2001.
Now, Odisha is about 30% ahead of Bihar. The numbers tell their own story. The chart also shows how Odisha now ranks second in eastern states when it comes to per capita income. Almost all of it has happened during the tenure of Naveen Patnaik.
I have no idea about the politics of Odisha. But as I say repeatedly, I trust data. And data gives a thumbs up to Naveen Patnaik; not Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee.
(Author has been a media professional for over 3 decades. He is now Executive Director, C Voter Foundation. Views are Personal)