At least 3 lies decorated Modi’s speech at FICCI Ladies Organization….

This man is a compulsive liar. That should make him a consummate politician! Unfortunately for him, there is a battery of critics (including me) who will not let him get away with his lies. I wrote about his five massive lies in a post earlier (March 11, 2013: 5 Modi lies that must be nailed….).Consider three more from his yesterday’s speech (there may have been more, but his speech was so boring I moved away after a while).

The first lie: Modi said that he considered the “mother” to be the starting point of humanity itself (my words). Blah blah. Then, aware of the barbs that would come his way, he quickly rushed to say that even in his state, women were treated badly. Then, smartly some would say, he pointed to history (from the 18^th century) to pass the buck on for this sordid state of affairs in his state. He could have gone further and blamed the Mughals (always a good idea for this muslim basher), but maybe the idea didn’t strike him! He could have blamed the Congress’s “60 years of misrule”, but maybe he got worried that the statistics would reveal otherwise. So he made just a vague comment about some 18^th century. When in doubt, blame the Brits!

Well, Modi lied. The fact is that things have progressively worsened in Gujarat since he has taken over. Take just one statistics of sex ratio, the ratio of females to males. The sex ratio at an “overall” basis indicates that Gujarat fares poorly compared to India, with the ratio standing at just 918 to India’s 940. But a little more analysis reveals Modi’s unique contribution to this figure.

In the last ten years (2011 v/s 2001 census) mostly covering Modi’s rule, the sex ratio for Gujarat has dropped from 920 to 918, while India’s (largely under UPA) has increased from 921 to 940. So clearly, Modi has “actively” contributed to skewing the ratio.

Want more evidence of Modi’s doing? Consider the “juvenile” sex ratio (children 0-6 years) which is a more relevant statistic since it indicates whether the trend is increasing or decreasing. Well, the data is pathetic to say the least. The child sex ratio is a very poor 886 in 2011 (source: census website: http://preview.tinyurl.com/canyxsd). So more and more Gujju couples are resorting to unfair means against the girl child. But what is worse, and what really nails Modi is that in 2001, this ratio was a healthy 964. So the child sex ratio has just plummeted. This CM is highly effective one must say! Such a precipitous drop (almost as steep downwards as he claims his growth is upwards!) is almost completely attributable to the social policies of Modi’s “governance” style.

But Modi did not tell the women that he was responsible for this. He passed the blame onto history. When it comes to development though, even those that his predecessors were responsible for, he is right there at the forefront to take credit.

The 2^nd lie: But take the other lie that he dished out yesterday, which was nailed in the night when Shaktisinh Gohil, ex Leader of Opposition in Gujarat and a senior Congress leader, brought it out on Arnab’s show on Times Now. Modi claimed that he had passed the 50% reservation bill in his state assembly, but the Governor had held it back. The liar didn’t say that he had smartly clubbed it with a provision of “compulsory voting”, which is inherently unconstitutional. Using that excuse, which he knew would not pass muster, he tried to burnish his pro-women credentials. When the lie was brought out in the show, the BJP’s three spokespeople on the panel (I cannot even understand how Arnab can have 3 spokespeople from the BJP out of 6 – Smriti Irani, Devang Nanavati and Subramanian Swamy, an ally, but really a lapdog of the BJP – and only 1 from the Congress, but that speaks more about our journalistic depths and biases than anything else) went ballistics, not knowing how to take on the issue. Smriti Irani did what she is best at – shouting inanities and getting personal with the two journalists on the show, calling them Congress stooges (Sankarshan Thakur and Vinod Mehta). Devang Nanavati gave a convoluted answer that the Gujarat government was so wise as to consider all issues “holistically”. This means that when the central government passed the stronger anti-rape laws recently, they should have clubbed female nutrition and child welfare into it to make it holistic! Anyways, the main point is that Modi lied about the 50% reservation.

The 3^rd lie: The third massive lie that Modi spoke about was Lijjat Papads. The organization was started in 1959, when Modi was 9 years old! It was started by 5 women in Mumbai, not Gujarat! It is still headquartered in Mumbai, not Gujarat! But Modi wanted to associate his name with this fabulous award winning organization! No one in media brought this discrepancy out, and Modi counted on our media’s deficiencies to go ahead and speak it nonetheless! Ditto with Jasuben Pizza. The ET brings out this interesting fact that the pizza business was started by one Andarben and her husband some 20 years back in the 1990s! Andarben then apparently went to Pune and developed some secret sauce. What has Modi got to do with any of this????? And Induben Khakrawala’s business is 35 years old! So this is the “gujarati enterprise” that Modi nurtured???? And he thinks he can get away with such lies????

Not to mention the various other women related statistics that Modi skipped. The malnutrition levels, which prompted him to make the ludicrous claim that gujarati women were beauty conscious. Or the social backwardness of the CM when he called Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda a “Rs 50 crore girlfriend”. This man is a minority basher….but he is also a women basher of sorts. Women find no place on his development plank. Its just their numerical strength in the voter base that made him think about women.

The real truth is that Modi lied at least three times yesterday. How do you even compare the speech of a liar with that of Rahul Gandhi, which was an honest assessment of where the country is and where it needs to go. He spoke of an inclusive agenda, and his inclusiveness was meant to include the outliers like SCs, STs and minorities. Maybe for Modi, inclusiveness should start by including the “inliers” first….the nearly 50% of population – the women – for whom clearly he has scant regard. That would be a good beginning for Modi. Can he do it???? I doubt it….