http://www.firstpost.com/politics/the-confused-criticism-of-narendra-modi-638466 .

html/2 The confused criticism of Narendra Modi Feb 25, 2013 With Narendra Modi increasingly taking centre stage as BJPs possible Prime Minis terial candidate, the voice of Modi baiters is becoming shriller. Most critics have two sticks to beat him with 2002 riots and malnourishment. Let s take a few recent articles in this genre: India, as dreamt up by Modi by Salil Tripathi in Mint All the perfumes of Arabia by Markandey Katju in Outlook What makes Modi unacceptable by Rohit Pradhan in Outlook Salil Tripathi says that Modi had no big idea for India when he spoke at the Shr i Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi. Modi spoke of exports, education, teache rs training, agricultural growth, industrial development, employment generation and Tripathi could see no big ideas. Modi s biggest idea is to spur people on to r ealise their dreams and aspirations. Tripathi completely missed it and he may ha ve done well to read Sandipan Deb s Modi s motivational message in the same paper. Of course, it is true that Gujarat existed before Modi, and Modi has never claimed that before him Gujarat was a barren land of illiterate, poor people whom he has shown the light. He has never claimed to be the Moses that his critics say that he claims to be. Modi with the audience after speaking at the SRCC. PTI What he has rightfully laid claims to is that under the BJPs rule Gujarat has pe rformed better than before and governance is much improved. Time and again vario us central ministries have lauded the state of Gujarat for its implementation of various central schemes and held it up as a model to follow. Modi has achieved all this without pandering to the lowest common denominator of electoral politic s free distribution of TVs, mixers and grinders, power, reservations based on re ligion etc. If only in this, then Modi stands alone and head and shoulders above his contemporaries. What are Tripathi s big ideas or the ones that he would have loved to hear? Tripathi goes on to accuse that the youth wing members of the BJP heckled the fe w hundred protesters outside SRCC. He conveniently forgets to mention that a cou ple of thousand students were cheering him inside the auditorium and that the pr otesters outside also belonged to different political parties. And for a person who can see nothing right with Modi, he goes on to say that some of the women p rotesters who were arrested have said that they were groped at the police statio n. Tripathi sitting in London probably doesn t know that Delhi is ruled by the Con gress and the Delhi police is under the control of the central government, also run by a Congress led alliance. He goes on to write, And is that the shape of things to come, of a leader address ing the cult, while some women protesters got molested . So the SRCC students are n ow part of an imaginary cult and women protesters were molested! Where did Trip athi source his information from? His allegation sounds more and more like Rahul Gandhi s discovery of graves in Bhatta-Parsaul ahead of the elections in Uttar Pr adesh. In Rahul Gandhi s favour at least is the fact that he travelled to BhattaParsaul, which is more than what can be said of Tripathi. Today this passes off for journalism. India, as dreamt of by Modi, was very well articulated by Modi i n his speech at SRCC, if only Tripathi had listened to it. It is an India which is prosperous, and without vote bank politics, whether that is based on caste, c

reed, religion, gender or age. Markandey Katju in his piece writes, To those who talk of development of Gujarat under Modi I ask this question: Should the malnourished children of Gujarat eat the roads, electricity and factories which Modi has created? And in the survey conducted by Katju (what else can it be since he has so emphat ically written about it), The truth today is that Muslims in Gujarat are terroriz ed and afraid that if they speak out against the horrors of 2002 they may be att acked and victimized. In the whole of India Muslims (who are over 200 million of the people of India) are solidly against Modi (though there are a handful of Mu slims who for some reason disagree). So Katju has surveyed over 200 million Musli ms. But then what explains BJPs victory in Muslim dominated constituencies in re cent Gujarat elections as well as the recent municipal elections? Probably in Ju stice Katju s views, a silly question by an Indian idiot. Has Guajrat s industrial growth improved. AFP How many Muslims in Gujarat has Katju spoken to? During my visit to Gujarat in N ovember, I spoke to two for considerable length of time. They certainly did not look terrorised and discussed politics quite freely. While Katju may not know th e reason why some Muslims disagree, these two Muslims very clearly said that com munalism has been a scourge of Gujarat, like the rest of India, for long and thi s is the first time that ten years of tranquillity and peace has been enjoyed in Gujarat. Both these individuals run businesses one is Nadeem Jaffri who runs He arty Mart enterprises, a retail venture and the other is Talha Sareshwala, CEO & MD, of Parsoli Motors. Of course, there are Muslims who would not discuss polit ics and would shy away from it. But even in the lanes of Juhapura, during an ear lier visit, small entrepreneurs like tentwallahs happily said that business was booming since Gujarat was growing. Since Justice Katju is extremely knowledgeable about most things from the percen tage of Indians who are idiots to what 200 million plus Muslims want, maybe he s hould speak to those very few Muslims and try and understand why they are ok wit h Modi. I am sure if Modi were to lose power tomorrow many of these same people will come out and criticise because they did lose property and businesses when t he 2002 riots happened. While at it, Justice Katju has one final mystery to solv e as to what exactly happened in Godhra, and who was responsible for the killings . Didn t the kar sevaks burn themselves, as per a committee appointed by the then R ailway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav? Katju has criticised the human development indicators of the people of Gujarat a nd has rightly asked should they eat electricity, roads and factories. Like all of Gujarat s development has not happened in the last ten years, similarly Gujarat s human development indicators are not necessary a reflection of what has happene d only in the last ten years. It s a legacy of the last sixty years of development . Gujarat s human development indicators (HDI) in most cases is better than the all India average. While it is not the best in India, it is nowhere close to being t he worst and its improvement in the last ten years is in most cases among the be st. That is why it features among the top performing states in India Today s annua l rankings consistently. However, there is no gain saying that the HDI indicator s of India and Gujarat as well are appalling. When starvation deaths happen in T hane district, what can be more shameful than that for India. And for those who want to quote Modi s remarks to Wall Street Journal on malnouris hment of figure conscious women, please go and listen to the audio recording ava ilable on the Journal s website. Modi said that the dietary habits of Gujarati s has lacked proteins and then half in jest his comment as about middle class and upp er middle class women. His comment was not on all malnourished children. Further it may be worthwhile for the critics to see what the BJP government has propose d in his year s budget and the amount of resources allocated to improve healthcare

and nourishment. Modi set to lead BJP poll campaign, will focus on good governance US won't give visa to Narendra Modi yet Retd judges in statutory bodies can't write political pieces: Jaitley As far as eating factories, roads and electricity is concerned, people in Gujara t do not need to do that. People in Gujarat will have enough jobs if there are p roper roads, electricity and factories so as to earn decent and respectable live lihoods to afford balanced and healthy diet and have access to other facilities like education and healthcare. Gujarat s growth is not all about big industries, even though headlines would suggest as such. Read this excellent piece from Mint The Surat Fashion Matrix . While Tirupur and Coimbatore are losing out, thanks to very poor power availability and environmental challenges, Surat and Gujarat are winning. While criticising the HDI of Gujarat, the same people fail to ask similar questi ons of other governments, both at the states and the Centre. Often it is written that Modi s treatment of minorities has been unfair without providing any basis f or the same except that in 2002 riots took place. See what Sachar Committee has to say about Muslims in West Bengal, where BJP has virtually no presence and onl y secularists like the Left Front, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress domin ate the political firmament. AFP Twice senior policemen have been assassinated in broad daylight in Kidderpore, a nd 48% of prisoners in jails are Muslims (when their share of population is 27%) . The HDI of Muslims in the state? The less said, the better. Read Sunanda K Dat ta Ray s Bengal s rough and tough underbelly . Without economic growth, there can be no upliftment and improved HDI whether for any community or for the entire populat ion of a state or of a country. And Modi talks about that growth and not about r eservations, financial and other hand outs. No noblesse oblige for him. The frui ts of growth and better infrastructure are available to everyone irrespective of gender, caste, creed or religion. As much as critics would like to allege that the Gujarat or Modi model is based on just marginalisation of Muslims, the Gujarat model is about good and efficien t governance. During my visit in November we had appointments with two bureaucra ts. An hour before each of the meetings, I received calls from their office reco nfirming the appointments and also a SMS on my cell on the time and venue of the meeting. Which other state have you experienced this efficiency? I have no idea whether such efficiency will continue after Modi ceases to be the CM of Gujarat one day, but this in itself is phenomenal. Corruption is less. A Cato Institute study recently rated Gujarat as the No 1 state in economic freedom. Ask any of your friends who have had any kind of business dealings, small or large, in Guja rat and they will tell you that corruption is significantly less in Gujarat than in any other state in India. Rohit Pradhan writes, India can survive poor governance for the next few years bu t what it cannot survive is the further estrangement of its Muslim minority. Inde ed after the loot of the last five years, as evident from the daily scams that a re being unearthed, I am not too sure that India can survive another five or ten y ears of such loot. I fervently pray that whoever comes to power next believes in better governance and less loot. And is the Muslim community feeling estranged just because of Modi? I have no doubt that India is much polarised today along r eligious lines. While most Indians have moved beyond 1992 an 2002, there is a se gment which derives its sustenance from dividing India and they will not allow t he fault lines to heal. Last November when I was in Gujarat for few days, one person (representing one

of the leading industry associations) was reluctant to meet me since I had writt en a few pieces in praise of Gujarat s development story. Sensing that finally I h ad found someone who will give me the other side of the story (beyond the clichs of 2002 riots), I convinced this person to meet me. And now I quote him, There is a lot of hype and exaggeration (in the Gujarat story) even as Gujarat has done a lot of very good things. There you have it. Of course, there is hype and PR, bu t then that is the job of PR. The other thing he mentioned was that enough jobs were not getting created and SMEs were not growing as fast as they could. Note t hat the adjective is enough, when India has enjoyed jobless growth for the last five years and more thank to the UPAs policies. A final word on what even some Modi supporters feel is a valid criticism against him he has not expressed regret for what happened in 2002 when he was the chief minister. I have felt that he probably didn t apologise because that wouldn t suit his constituency in the state and also he didn t want an apology to be used as an admission of guilt by his numerous critics. But a recent article by William Dalr ymple Apologising for Amritsar is pointless. Better redress is to never forget - has me rethinking. If Modi is proven guilty in the court of law, let him get t he severest of punishment under whatever provisions of the penal code he is conv icted. That will be the best lesson to ensure that something like what happened in Delhi in 1984 and Gujarat in 2002 (both Godhra and post-Godhra) is not repeat ed. But this charade of apologizing 20, 30 and 200 years later for electoral and / or trade gains is something that can be stopped. The Congress apologised for 1 984 and at the same time gave tickets to the accused for elections even in 2009 till a Sikh journalist threw a shoe at Chidambaram. What are such apologies wort h and why demand them? Meanwhile judge the Gujarat model for what it has achieve d and for it has not and not on the imagined views of 200 million Indians across India or molestation of women protesters in a Delhi police station.

Anirudha Dutta is the former head of research at CLSA. Now spending his time wit h his family and pursuing his interests in writing while wondering what else to do.

References: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/23/apologising-amritsar-teach-b ritish-empire http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/H4RXX8qZBm8SBJPDOcLIYO/Narendra-Modi-in-Delhi.ht ml http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?283979 http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/pxDO59SC4aD1HCHe0VbZsL/Modis-motivational-messag e.html http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/lHdpZ2XbSfUQCWoqCMDNON/Ground-Report--The-Suratfashion-matrix.html http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sunanda-k-datta-ray-bengal-s-ro ugh-and-tough-underbelly-113022200672_1.html