“When Done Nehru Bashing, Debate Unemployment”: Priyanka Gandhi’s Top Quotes

You can find the entire speech on YouTube : LIVE: Smt. Priyanka Gandhi ji speaks in Parliament on the 150th anniversary of ‘Vande Mataram’.

Ram Guha has said multiple times that if Rahul and Priyanka were to leave the INC, the charge of dynasty and sins Nehru and Indira (real and alleged) wouldn’t pull the INC back as much as it does. But i think we are at a point where even firm BJP supporters are fed up of BJP’s Nehru bashing and its bound to have diminishing returns.

Its been 12 years and Nehru bashing brings cheers from only the hardcore supporters and none others. Maybe we are at an inflection point, maybe not.

Personally I remain an admirer of Nehru while disagreeing with his decisions profoundly. Maybe i will expand upon my criticisms and praise at some point but i do not think Gandhi erred massively in choosing Nehru over Patel. While i do think Gandhi shouldn’t have gone against democratic nature of congress (which had chosen Patel), I do think Nehru would have been a better PM had Patel remained alive longer into Nehru’s term. A bit cliched but Nehru’s life kind of reminds me of famous lines from Dark knight trilogy.

You die a hero or you stay alive long enough to become a villain.

I am not into fortune telling but i think the path Modi is following is very similar to his great opponent (atleast in his own mind), Jawahar Lal Nehru. I think they’re a bit more alike that their followers think. But all thats for another time.

(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.

RV is famous for having said that he was a mango man in a banana
republic. Now that he is truly an Aam Admi, he should be also thoroughly
investigated for his sources of wealth. Let the witch hunt begin (we use the word advisedly). (For those who are not familiar with Hindi, we observe an teacher who is fed up with a troublesome student. Asked about his ambition in life, the student replies: I want to be a son-in-law)

Also there is a lot of push-back from Congress and elsewhere about the (educational) qualifications of the cabinet ministers. Here is one comparison the sycophant army may want to think about (Ashok Khemka has been the main man behind the effort to unearth corruption linked to Robert Vadra and his associates, he has been harshly treated just for doing his job):

……

With the Gandhi family out of power, son-in-law Robert Vadra may lose his exalted exempt-from-frisking-at-airports status.

Last week, the Air
Passengers’ Association of India had written to aviation secretary Ashok
Lavasa why was Vadra getting this special privilege that is reserved
for Constitutional authorities only. The list of exempt people is
displayed prominently at all airports and the inclusion of Vadra’s name
in it led to many people writing to the Association, asking it to take
up the matter with the government.

…..
Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-govt-may-strip-Robert-Vadra-of-special-status/articleshow/35740410.cms
….

regards

regards