How the ‘double engine’ delivered ‘double growth’ to UP

By calling the prayers by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the rejuvenated Kashi Vishwanath temple a circus, calling saffron an exaggerated colour, calling Hindus as semi-literate and ahistorical and by comparing the lights of the aarti to disco lights, Singh has taken a leaf out of the outdated “How to tease Hindus” playbook. The only data point she provides to support her sweeping arguments is her one call with some anonymous priest of Varanasi. But let me present some hard verifiable data to the readers on how the double engine government of Modi-Yogi has transformed Uttar Pradesh.

In March 2017, when the BJP named Yogi Adityanath the Chief Minister after its landslide victory in UP, many political pundits wrote him off even before he took the oath of office. Analysts thought a saffron-clad mahant can only teach lessons in dharma, and governance is not his cup of tea. This was a lazy analysis or perhaps hate for his saffron attire. In four-and-a-half years in office, Yogi has proved them wrong.

What the Yogi Adityanath government has achieved in a state like UP, which was at the bottom of all the development indices, is nothing short of a miracle. The only index UP topped during the tenures of Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati was “crime”. Yogi, a five-time member of Parliament, knew that to bring prosperity back to UP, to reinstate the trust of entrepreneurs in the state, he needed to fix the law and order of the state. He took the task head-on. By adding 1.5 lakh police staff in the rank and file, strategically bringing history sheeters and mafia to book in each district, protecting businesses from land grabbers and extortionists, he was able to convince industrialists to come back and expand in UP.

A safe UP under Yogi started getting investment proposals to the order of Rs 5 lakh crores every year and a high percentage of them started seeing ground-breaking ceremonies. In the last 4.5 years, UP jumped to the second spot in the Ease of Doing Business ranking from the 12th position in 2017, beating industrialised states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Telangana.

Tightened law and order was coupled with the fast-paced development of infrastructure, increased availability of power and de-cluttering the red-tapism faced by entrepreneurs. This resulted in massive job creation in the state. Large-scale government recruitment is done transparently and fairly. Providing impetus to MSMEs through an innovative scheme like One District-One-Product (ODOP) added to the state’s employment generation drive. The per capita income in the state has almost doubled and the unemployment rate has come down to 4.1 per cent in February 2021, compared to 17.5 per cent in 2017, when Akhilesh Yadav left office. As a result, UP is now rapidly moving towards becoming the largest economy in the country. The state has jumped to the second position in Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) from the seventh position in Akhilesh Yadav’s time.

Whenever PM Modi invokes “double engine ki sarkar” in state election campaigns while urging people to elect the BJP, to work on the same frequency with the central government, many people see it as mere political rhetoric. But Yogi proved that “double engine” means “double growth” for the states. All the Centre’s development schemes have worked superbly well in UP and succeeded in meeting the targets under the Yogi government. UP is number one in almost 45 central government schemes. Yogi constantly brought senior cabinet ministers to the state to iron out pending issues and take on steeper targets for his state to complete. Now, be it gas stove distribution, or the construction of toilets or houses for the underprivileged UP is among the top achievers.

Instead of “give them circuses”, PM Modi and CM Yogi have given a new mantra to the Indian polity — “give them welfare and governance, and they will bless you”. And this new beneficiary vote bank has been giving its blessings to the Modi-led BJP in multiple state and central elections since 2014. One has to just come out of Khan market coffee shops and smell the cow dung in the hinterlands of Uttar Pradesh to notice this change.

This column first appeared in the print edition on December 30, 2021 under the title ‘The welfare mandate’.
Gupta is author of Yogi Adityanath’s biography, The Monk Who Became Chief Minister