Data miracle?: Rural Gujarat "improves" its position in govt's "fresh" survey results

A new set of data of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 has contradicted the income data released by it previously. They surprisingly go to suggest that Gujarat’s rural story may not as grim as it seemed. While the earlier data still remain on the SECC site (click HERE), showing that just about 5.19 per cent of households have highest earning members earning more than Rs 10,000, the fresh data revises this percentage to 9.57 per cent (click HERE).
It is not known as to why, even after releasing the new set of data, till Thursday afternoon, the earlier data, which seemed flawed, have still not been removed from the SECC site.
There is no official explanation why two set of data remain on the SECC site, even though it was clear to any cursory observer that the previous data did not seem reliable and the figures did not match. In fact, if the previous data were to be believed, Gujarat farmers’ incomes were one of the worst in India, which is not the case with the new set of data. It has shifted to become a little above average performer.
The new set of data on the SECC site may have drastically upgraded the percentage of the top-earners of the rural Gujarat households vis-à-vis other states (click HERE for Counterview story based on earlier data). Yet, the fact remains that with the revised data there are eight out of 21 major states with households having highest earning members earning more than Rs 10,000.

Thus, the “revised” set of data put up on SECC site show that Himachal Pradesh has 24.36 per cent such households, followed by Jammu & Kashmir (18.03), Punjab (17.5 per cent), Haryana (16.28 per cent), Uttarakhand (14.72 per cent), Kerala (12.35 per cent), Maharashtra (11.05 per cent), and Rajasthan (9.61 per cent).
Then, the fresh data show that there are 21.76 per cent rural households in Gujarat whose highest earning member earns between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000. This is lower than six other states (Punjab 24.89 per cent, Haryana 24.68 per cent, Karnataka 22.27 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 22.15 per cent, Bihar 22.14 per cent), and Uttarakhand (21.86 per cent).
The all-India average here is 17.18 per cent. The previous figure for Gujarat was 11.5 per cent – suggesting here again, with the “revised” data, Gujarat has “improved” its position.
However, there is little to cheer in the lowest income group, of less than Rs 5,000. The revised data suggest that Gujarat’s position has gone down somewhat. Ironically, if the earlier data had suggested that Gujarat had just 45 per cent of rural Gujarat’s households, whose top earning members earned less than Rs 5,000, in the new set of data revise this to 68.56 per cent!

Under the earlier data there were only two states, Telangana (40.02 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (29.26 per cent), who ranked better than Gujarat (45 per cent). But now there are five other such states – Himachal Pradesh (53.48 per cent), Punjab (57.56 per cent), Haryana (58.96 per cent), Uttarakhand (63.41 per cent), and Jammu & Kashmir (67.45 per cent), followed by Gujarat with 68.56 such households.

Screenshot SECC website showing the data released previously

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog