Why business-minded Gujaratis back Modi!

In 2002, In 2002, when I was with Mid-Day, the communities-focused editor Aakar Patel sent me on a 10-city tour of Gujarat to give the Gujaratis of Mumbai a feel of ground reality back home.

The wounds of the riots were fresh, the anti-Modi sentiment was at its peak and his loss in the upcoming assembly elections was a foregone conclusion.

After starting from Somnath, my photographer colleague Santosh Harhare and I reached Rajkot on the third day and, as luck would have it, found that Narendra Modi was kicking off his election campaign that day from that very city. We managed to get an audience with Modi, and my concluding question of the impromptu interview was if he had any message for the Gujaratis of Mumbai.

Modi said, please convey my best wishes to my brothers who have had to leave their homeland to earn a living. Three days on, we landed in Gandhi Nagar and were again lucky to meet Modi’s bête noir and his opponent in the election, Congressman Shankarsinh Vaghela.

When I asked the same question to the Congress’ regional leader, as Digvijay Singh would define him, he enthusiastically said Gujaratis in Mumbai are welcome to contribute with their tan, man and dhan. Obviously, he was not interested in the tan and man. It’s anybody’s guess whom the business-minded Gujaratis would bet their money on.

Never mind the sentiment of the secularists in Mumbai, or the activists in Delhi, as far as the enterprising Gujarati is concerned, Modi is the best man do business with. While those in Gujarat have endorsed their faith in Modi by giving him thumping majorities in the two elections since the riots, the Gujaratis – and their business partners — outside Gujarat are putting their money where their mouth is. Right from Ambanis and Tatas, to the Shroffs and Godrejs, thousands of crores have been pumped into the industrious, industrialist-friendly neighbouring state in the 10 years that Modi has helmed it.

While Mumbai is stumbling from one deadline to deadline, Gujarat is not only growing by the year, but is also simultaneously creating new infrastructure to sustain the growth in the years to come. And Gujarat’s gain could well be Maharashtra’s – and Mumbai’s – loss. The corporate headquarters of many firms may be in the financial capital, but the business is happening in Gujarat.

For every one job in the corporate office, tens of jobs are being created on the shop floor. And jobs are the harbingers of growth, drivers of economy. Thousands of industrial units have closed down in Maharashtra’s industrial belts like Thane-Belapur and opened shop in the Daman-Vapi industrial belt of Gujarat.

While the southern states are dominating the service sectors, there has been a steady flight of the brick-and-mortar business to Gujarat over the years and if things continue at this rate, the day may not be far when the Gujaratis wake up to the benefits of shifting not only their manufacturing, but their entire base back home.

They may well realise that instead of having just the best wishes of Modi, it would be much better to be part of his Gujarat with tan, man and dhan.