-TheWire.in The Gujarat election results are a wake-up call for the key political parties, as they gear up to draw strategies for the ensuing elections to three states. The years 2018 and 2019 are going to be hectic with elections scheduled for some state assemblies and to  parliament. The issues that confront the citizens are many, ranging from financial to livelihood, farm operations to health and education to rural development. The performance...

-TheWire.in Maharashtra cannot retain its position as a progressive state if health budget cuts become a characteristic part of its budgets. Massive budget cuts and budget under-spending in the social sector have been reported from Maharashtra over the last two years. The state spent as less as 0.49% of its Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) on the public health sector in 2017-18. Incidentally, the state also witnessed high malnourishment, rising leprosy cases,...

-Down to Earth Shockingly, the state’s infant mortality rate is worse than Jharkhand; it also has the fourth lowest teacher student ratio in the country “Social Development Indicators have not been able to keep pace with economic development in this state of over 60 million people," UNICEF had observed about Gujarat back in 2013. Four years later, Maitreesh Ghatak of London School of Economics writes about Gujarat’s development model: “When it...

-TheWire.in The model of development that was presented as a success story relies on patronising and providing incentives to large businesses while simultaneously suppressing wage incomes. By now, almost everyone in the country knows the one thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the team around him excel in – the art of public relations and media management. This is the reason that the ‘Gujarat model’ of handling a state’s economy became such...

-PTI The economist said Gujarat almost always comes around the middle when it comes to any ranking of Development Indicators, whether it is social indicators, human development index, child development index or multi-dimensional poverty index. New Delhi: Development economist and activist Jean Dreze on Sunday said there was "no evidence" that the so-called "Gujarat Model" was a model in any sense, pointing out to the state's backwardness in social indicators. "If you look...