Friday, February 27, 2009

The Left symptoms are key diseases in West Bengal and in India

There is a news on new report by two Indian economists at Indicus Analytics which state that: 

  • “In the early 1960s, West Bengal was one of the more successful states in India. What happened since the 1960s. One answer is the Left Front government and its policies. Even in instances of central schemes like NREGA and RTI, the delivery mechanism is not there at all,” Mr Debroy said releasing the report. The Left has been claiming NREGA was an outcome of its pressure on the UPA. West Bengal’s per capita GDP was Rs 29,457 which made it 18th in the country, he said.  
  • In 2005-06, only 27.9% of West Bengal’s households had access to safe drinking water. In Maharashtra, this figure was 78.4% and in Tamil Nadu 84.2%. “In a state often called the intellectual capital of India, the school dropout rate was 78.03%... Only Bihar, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Sikkim fare worse,” it said.  
  • While for India, 10.1% of households were rich, 54% middle class and 35.9% poor, for West Bengal 5.6% were rich, 41% middle class and 53.4% poor. This time, the finger will have to point inwards. The report quoted NSS data to say that in 2004-05, 47.3% of Bengal’s poor had no subsidy card while 43.3% of non-poor had BPL or Antyodya Anna Yojana cards. “This doesn’t say much about a government that is supposed to work in the name of the poor,” the report said.  

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