The hype over Yogi’s L&O record is justified

Hello everyone! I would like to thank Omar Sb for providing me this platform. Some of you may know me as the guest poster at BP or as @Saiarav on X. One of my earliest posts on BP was on Yogi’s economic track record – an unflattering take which got me a fair bit of grief from Yogi supporters on X. But fact is, I am not really a Yogi hater – I just went where the economic data led me. I am actually modestly constructive about Yogi. He has got a herculean task on his hands, turning around a mammoth state (UP would be the 5th or 6th most populous country if it was an independent country) which has a historic record of being terribly governed. In my now suspended avatar on X , I had written about Yogi government’s phenomenal performance in dramatically changing the educational outcomes in government schools – a highly critical area which has scarcely received any attention, as his supporters obsess over more “sexy” issues like infrastructure & economy and law & order. As I keep pointing out, Yogi’s record on economy is highly overrated. What about law & order? Is the hype justified? The data on crime appears to suggest that Yogi has indeed brought in significant improvement to L&O in the state and especially has been extremely effective in clamping down on riots, which has traditionally been a major bane in the communally charged polity of UP.

(I plan to do a follow up post on Yogi’s economic record and Yogi’s performance in the education sector, but that is for a later day)

UP, of course has the image of being a lawless badland swarming with bahubalis of dominant communities, with the writ of the State being quite tenuous. The general perception among political watchers is that the Samajwadi Party is especially terrible at enforcing the law whereas the Dailt CM, Mayawati is seen as relatively better. Yogi supporters have, for long claimed that, he has totally transformed the L&O situation in the state with his tough-on-crime policies and zero tolerance for bahubalis. There is obviously an element of exaggeration in this narrative considering UP BJP itself houses bahubalis. So what does data say about how much the situation has changed on the ground since Yogi took over as CM in 2017?

I look at the data on crimes from the National Crime Records Bureau’s annual reports for some clues. I pick the data for the last year of governance by Maywati (2011) and Akhilesh (2016) to assess their record as CM for 5 years. For Yogi, I look at the change in crime levels between 2017 and 2023 (the latest year for which data is available). Admittedly, the analysis is seriously constrained by the high degree of under-reporting of serious crimes with the scale of under-reporting varying significantly over time. Take cases of kidnapping, for example. Up reported only 3,318 cases of kidnapping during calendar year 2006. By 2011, the last year of Mayawati’s rule, that figure had jumped to 8,500 and by 2016, the figure had moved up to ~16,000. Clearly, a case of improving reporting of kidnapping rather a 5x increase in kidnapping over a 10 year period. I therefore focus on some specific categories of violent crime, where arguably, there is lesser scope for underreporting.

Murder rates have fallen sharply

Let us start with murder rates. In 2006, the number of murders in UP per 100K population was 2.96. Mayawati delivered a solid 16% decline in murder rate during her rule, which slowed down to a more modest 10% under Akhilesh. But under Yogi, there is a step-change in the trend. A massive 39% drop between 2017-23 (for those more mathematically minded who insist I should be doing annual change, the figures are -3%, -2% and -7% respectively). Important to highlight here that, during the Yogi era, murder rate has fallen dramatically below the national average (2.0 in 2023).

The data for attempted murder rates throws up similar results for Yogi era while the Akhilesh period shows zero improvement.

Incidents of riots are down dramatically

There is one category of violent crime that requires special attention given its impact on public order. Between 2006 and 2016, the state saw a structural increase in incidents of rioting spanning both the Mayawati and Akhilesh governments. We see that trend continuing into the first two years of the Yogi government and then a preciptious fall from the third year. The highly controversial bulldozer justice appears to have a had a salutory effect. Incidents of rioting is down almost 60% per from the peak.

Enforcing state monopoly over violence

There is a lot of data in the annual reports to parse through which might explain how Yogi government has been able to clamp down on violent crime. But I will stop for now with highlighting the Yogi government’s endeavor to enforce state monopoly over violence by coming down hard on illicit firearms. Going back to 2006, UP witnessed ~2200 murders executed via firearms, almost all of it from unlicensed firearms. Bihar accounted for another ~1,100. These two states together accounted for >60% of all murders by firearms, validating the image projected in Bollywood movies. By 2016, the UP figure had come down to ~1500 though it still remained disproportionately high. The government stopped publishing this data in later years but it is a fair bet that the sharp decline in murders, rioting and other violent crimes has to do with the massive operations of Yogi government in confiscating illegal arms. This data is being reported only from 2013 but one can see the step change in they way Yogi has approached this problem compared to Akhilesh. Number of arms seized (almost all of it unlicensed) during the Yogi era has averaged 37K per year, 50% above the 2013-16 levels. And one can see that Yogi has hit the ground running with the step change visible by the second year of his rule.

P.S: My curiosity about crime data was triggered by this piece by SA Aiyar about the exceptionally low levels of violence in Indian society despite high poverty and poor governance. As it turns out, even the two poorest states with a reputation of lawlessness has surprisingly low murder rates.