Beware the Gujarat Model in India’s Covid-19 Recovery

Modi’s Gujarat reconstruction model, combining muscular Hindu nationalism with hi-tech modernity and neoliberal privatized development, threatens India’s COVID recovery.

At the height of the hastily announced nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, Prime Minister Modi forged his own “tryst with destiny” through a series of speeches that have drawn ire, admiration, and ridicule.

There was hardly any substance worth taking away from Modi’s speeches during the initial lockdown, except for a stray but significant remark in his speech from May 12: the alleged success of the reconstruction program after the Gujarat earthquake in 2001. This period has become a defining historical moment in Modi’s, and consequently the nation’s, political trajectory. On the surface, Modi’s claim that the spectacular reconstruction of Gujarat post-earthquake resulted from the “aatma-nirbharta” (self-reliance) of its people is an innocuous, if subtly self-aggrandizing, move. But we must look deeper beneath the malba (rubble) he referred to in order to unearth the sinister roots of the political management of “natural” disasters.

The 2001 Earthquake and Gujarat’s Shifting Fortunes

On January 26, 2001 at roughly 9 am, as many were tuned in for the Republic Day Parade, large parts of northwestern India and Pakistan shook with a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, considered one of the most devastating in recent history. It caused nearly 25,000 deaths and property damage over 4.5 billion USD.

At that point, Modi’s political transformation from a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak (political campaigner) to a key Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was just beginning to take shape. While he had been appointed the BJP general secretary in 1998, it was his specific management of the earthquake response that firmly cemented his position at both the national and local levels. Kesubhai Patel, the Gujarat chief minister at the time, had begun to be viewed as inept at managing the reconstruction effort. In October 2001, he was replaced by Modi, on the Prime Minister’s recommendation, without a democratic election — heralding a new era of the Gujarat model of development and the Modi brand of leadership. In practice, this meant a political vision that deftly combined a celebration of muscular Hindu nationalism, technological and infrastructural modernity, and a firm commitment to neoliberal, privatized, and industrialized development.

Mainstream Indian and international media analyses of Modi’s chief ministerial tenure presented a triumphalist narrative of Modi’s policies giving fillip to a “quantum jump” in Gujarat’s economy. His less than stellar record on other fronts like the human development index and in facilitating the Godhra riots was minimized. Modi’s management of Gujarat’s reconstruction immediately following the earthquake has received far less attention than it should, but has gained tremendous significance as we brace ourselves for a crisis-ridden future.

The epicenter of the Gujarat earthquake was in Bhuj, in the district of Kutch. Kutch, a former princely state, has a complicated history with Gujarat, which it became culturally and politically clubbed with only post-independence. There have been separatist claims from various groups in Kutch due to longstanding political neglect. However, Modi chalked up Gujarat’s resurgence entirely to its residents’ enterprise and grit without acknowledging these underlying political contestations. This narrative is now being further celebrated as a BJP-led miracle, and evidence for a bright post-pandemic future for India. Does that claim really hold up, though? 

To critically analyze the claim, one needs to understand the politics of post-disaster rehabilitation and relief in economic as well as cultural terms, while being attentive to the history of Gujarat and Kutch. The illusion of a miracle fades away fairly quickly upon further investigation. The reconstruction success story hinges primarily on large-scale infrastructure projects in Kutch and redevelopment of Bhuj as an industrial-urban center.      

This “multi-pronged” approach included building housing at an “astonishing” rate and developing industrial and agricultural output in the region aided by irrigation and infrastructural work. On the surface, this seems impressive by all records, but the terms on which it was achieved, and the means used, warrant closer consideration.

Capitalizing on Crisis: Between Then and Now

Anthropologist Edward Simpson, whose work focuses on Gujarat, closely studied the reconstruction efforts in Gujarat for his book, The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat. He pokes many holes in the dominant narrative of the success of reconstruction and its branding as the “Gujarat model of development”. He shows how the visible “positive” changes of modernity and progress— such as wider roads, rebuilt houses, and industrial activity— were in fact strongly contested and allowed the Modi government to assert and consolidate its power in a unilateral manner. 

Modi’s celebration of the economic recovery in Kutch obscures how the BJP government strategically strengthened their hold over the region while championing Hindutva as an ideology of aid and philanthropy. The RSS, the primary vehicle of Hindutva, and its partner organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), joined the government in rebuilding many areas. The RSS, which has branded itself as a social service organization since pre-Partition riots and a champion of disenfranchised Hindus, carries that mission forward through the pandemic as well. The palpable fear amongst Muslims with the RSS and VHP at the helm of relief efforts led to many of them wanting to live together, which irrevocably impacted the cultural fabric and urban design of the area. The magnification of the Hindu-Muslim divide through the state relief and rehabilitation efforts was a huge factor leading up to the Godhra riots of 2002. The earthquake thus became a ruse for the BJP to assert its cultural power within the framework of a neoliberal political economy. 

There are many echoes of the Gujarat reconstruction effort in India’s response to the COVID crisis today. In her COVID economic package, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman outlined a large-scale, long-term plan to provide urban rental housing for migrant workers. It remains to be seen whether this program will effectively address the devastating mass migrations of workers to rural homes triggered by the sudden lockdown. However, the government’s plans to fulfill this promise reflect a familiar strategy from Gujarat — reliance on public-private partnerships — which benefit the private sector far more than the populations they are intended to serve.

Furthermore, while such partnerships in Gujarat did allow for rebuilding houses in entire towns and villages, they also effectively absolved the government of future liability in the event of another natural disaster. They also paved the way for industrial activity which was disruptive to the everyday lives of local residents and destabilizing for the delicate ecological balance of local flora and fauna. Much of the housing constructed by corporate and non-profit organizations used inferior materials and failed to account for climatic conditions, harming environmental and human life long-term. 

Crises allow the state to further their political agendas under the well-veiled guise of economic and infrastructural solutions. This is what Simpson calls “hyperbolic capitalism”— the gradual retreat of governmental protection and relief in the wake of catastrophes, creating space for advancing market interests in the name of economic growth and industrial development.

The environment often takes the biggest hit from these measures. As we are witnessing in India at the moment, the central government is surreptitiously pushing forward the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, even as activists and citizens vocally oppose the deregulation of existing environmental protections. What is equally, if not more, worrying is the social exclusion and majoritarian politics at play in these contexts where economic and infrastructural recovery is viewed as the ultimate goal.

Weathering the Converging Crises and Beyond

Alongside a historic pandemic, South Asia has encountered another season of the climate crisis over the past several months. The hydra-headed nature of this moment forces a reckoning in several ways. There is little doubt, based on past precedent, that Modi and his supporters will leave no stone unturned in rewriting a redeeming account of the current crisis. It thus becomes imperative to reflect on how such historical junctures allow for political alibis to be pushed forward without much scrutiny. 

From floods in large parts of Bangladesh, India ,and Pakistan, and two major cyclones over the past several months, climate change-induced extreme weather events continue to ravage large swathes of the subcontinent. Governments take little responsibility for these events as they are seen as acts of “nature”, much like the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as we have noted, neoliberal and majoritarian policy-making exacerbates our vulnerability to future crises even if it glibly affirms its commitment to addressing mitigating factors, like inequality and climate change. 

In his Independence Day speech this year, Modi reiterated the spirit of aatma nirbharta that he referenced in May, and spoke of how the Ladakh, Leh, and Kargil regions will soon be “carbon neutral”. These areas are now under direct control of the central government since its takeover of Kashmir last year, violating constitutionally guaranteed protections and international agreements. It comes as no surprise that there is now an active effort to rebrand the region through an environmental consciousness while glossing over the gruesome violation of the democratic rights of its residents before and ever since the takeover. Indeed, this government has been facilitating crony industrialists in their trampling of environmental norms and indigenous rights across many parts of India, under the guise of economic and infrastructure development, overriding local concerns and any opposition to such development. 

The crises we are battling today may appear to be “natural”. They also may come with scientific and economic “solutions”, which have proven multiple times to be short-lived, highly extractive, and exclusionary. As we brace ourselves for more uncertain futures in South Asia, we must be alert to the manipulation of crisis for the blatant advancement of political ideologies and profit grabs, inevitably manufacturing more crisis, and evading social and ecological prosperity for the greater good. 

Archit Guha researches the histories of climate and disasters in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.