Telling Tall Tales is a fortnightly column by Tara Krishnaswamy on matters that matter.
It may sound strange, but Gujarat governance is a conundrum. Stay with me.
The state has a high per capita income, in the top five. The average income of a person in Gujarat is more than 2.5 times the income of an average Indian, in the same league as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Haryana.
Gujarat is also a top five Goods and Services Tax (GST) contributing state, in the same league as the three states above. It boasts of one of the highest labour force participation rates and lowest unemployment rates in the country. It has almost 12% of all factories, the second highest in India, behind only Tamil Nadu, and leads the country in industrial output.
Gujarat is a financially well-off state by typical measures. However, it does not reflect in development outcomes.
See, for instance, the gender paradox in Gujarat.
Of every 100 girls conceived in Gujarat, only 95.4 females are actually born. This is the female birth rate, not counting miscarriages and natural mishaps, meaning that nearly five of every 100 female foetuses are wilfully destroyed by their own families. Gujarat's sex ratio at birth is much lower than India's average of 97.05 females per 100 males, and is the third worst in the country. Even its very poor neighbours Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh do better than or meet the India average.
With infant mortality rate, per the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), Gujarat at 31.2 per 1000, is closer to Rajasthan at 33 than Karnataka at 25, or Tamil Nadu at 18.6.
The under-five mortality rate (U5MR) for females in Gujarat is 23 per 1000 births, bringing the total girls alive after five years to 93.2%. Gujarat is not one of the nine states that have already attained the Sustainable Development Goals' target of U5MR, a list that includes Jammu and Kashmir, and West Bengal.
Of the children who survive five years in Gujarat, 25-39% do not thrive. As per NFHS-5, a quarter of Gujarat's children are wasted, and 39% are stunted. That implies that 23 girls out of every 93.2 are stunted, while 36 are wasted, leaving them atrophied for education, and later, productive work. Every single state in the country provides its five year olds better nutrition than Gujarat.
Similarly, 79% of children between five to 12 years of age, and 65% of women in Gujarat are anaemic; not even the poorer states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan are as affected.
This cannot be explained away by the state’s high vegetarianism. Rajasthan and Punjab are much more vegetarian, yet have much better health outcomes.
In fact, Gujarat has half the number of registered medical doctors as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Its health indicators resemble states with a paucity of both individual and public financial resources to devote to basic nutritional needs. How can this be, for such a rich state?
Measures in education, like the secondary drop-out rate (2021-22), show Gujarat at 17.9%, closer to Bihar at 20.5%, and worse than Madhya Pradesh at 10.1%, Rajasthan at 7.7%, and Uttar Pradesh at 9.7%.
Gross enrollment rate for high school is 46.6% for females in the state, far below the national average of 58.2%. Gujarat is in the same league as Madhya Pradesh (44.6%) while Uttar Pradesh (51.7%) does much better in sending its girls to high school.
This means that in Gujarat, of the 93.2 girls for every 100 eligible for school education, less than half – 43.4 – graduate high school. The majority of Gujarat's girls, 56.6 of every 100 conceived, do not even enrol in class 11.
The state has less than half the number of colleges per lakh of eligible population as Karnataka, and 25% less than Tamil Nadu. The gross enrollment rate for college education is 22.7% for women in Gujarat, worse than Rajasthan’s 28.1%, Madhya Pradesh’s 28%, and below the India average of 28.5%. Given that only 43.4% girls graduate high school, it means that only 9.85% girls enrol in college.
The net is that less than 10 of 100 females conceived in Gujarat make it to college. Fewer than that graduate, and fewer still join the workforce as skilled, educated workers.
There are even more anomalies.
In the land of financial acumen, the per capita bank deposits plus credits, derived from the Economic Survey 2023-24, amounts to Rs 1.25 lakhs. Gujarat's is 28-37% lower than Karnataka at Rs 1.73 lakhs and Tamil Nadu at Rs 1.99 lakhs, states with comparable per capita incomes.
Despite Jan Dhan Yojana and Digital India, NFHS-5 says that only 70% of women in Gujarat have their own bank account and 48.8% own a mobile phone. Contrast this with Tamil Nadu at 92.2% and 74.6% respectively, and Karnataka at 88.7% and 61.8%.
What does all this reveal?
A state is somewhat like a large, extended family. Ideally, everyone is healthy, educated, employed, and has access to good physical infrastructure, like a nice home. When you see an extended family living in a spacious mansion, with a fancy car, bejewelled, and buying luxury goods, you know they have access to income and wealth. You expect them to be well educated and have access to best-in-class healthcare.
Gujarat's financial data is scented, while its people data is pungent.
As per the National Multidimensional Poverty Index, 11.6% of its population is multi-dimensionally poor, like West Bengal and Rajasthan, and unlike Tamil Nadu and Kerala. How does this add up, when Gujarat's per capita income is nearly double that of states like Rajasthan and West Bengal?
Gujarat is a high-revenue state, and its tax collections prove that but that still begs the question: Is Gujarat really as rich in per capita income as claimed?
Gujarat is one of the states with the largest number of high net-worth individuals, as with Tamil Nadu. However, the much higher incidence of poverty suggests that incomes are skewed in Gujarat, much more so than in Tamil Nadu.
The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey is very revelatory. It shows that the average monthly spend per person in rural Gujarat is Rs 3,798, close to Rajasthan's Rs 4,263, Bihar's Rs 3,384, and Madhya Pradesh's Rs 3,113, and quite a far cry from Tamil Nadu's 5,310, Kerala's 5,924, or Haryana's Rs 4,859. Its urban-rural gap in consumption spend is 74%, worse than Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal, belying uneven incomes.
The measure of Gross Domestic Product per capita as a proxy for individual incomes is known to be problematic. A few with extraordinarily large earnings, whose incomes per minute exceed the per capita income of the entire population, could conceal the real financial status of the population. Gujarat has quite a list of those.
However, it is clear that as growth continues to be asymmetrical, switching to median incomes, rather than averages, would help assess states, development, and policies in true light. Further, devising an index that combines both median incomes, and key health and education indicators may lead us in a better direction in a country that needs to grapple with socio-economic extremes.
This column still leaves the question open as to why Gujarat's education and health budgets are not delivering commensurate outcomes, like its peer states. That requires more investigation — of policy, budgets, administration, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports, and such, and I urge readers to have a go at it!
Views expressed are the author’s own.
Tara Krishnaswamy is a political creature with an urge to write. She works on political and policy communication.