Arvind Kejriwal's Delhi model beats BJP's Gujarat model on every parameter

A 17-member delegation from Gujarat would have found that the Delhi aces it on key welfare parameters

The “Delhi model” that formed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s and the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) campaign plank in Assembly elections in states such as Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa, rests on providing quality affordable healthcare, education and power supply, often free of cost to the residents of the capital. The AAP has managed to pull this off while reducing its debt unlike many other states where social welfare schemes have caused a deterioration of their finances.

As a 17-member Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation from Gujarat completed a two-day tour of the city-state on June 30 to dissect the “Delhi model”, a sequence of events played out in Delhi. Bhojpuri actor turned BJP parliamentarian Manoj Tiwari chaperoned the delegation to schools, mohalla (street) clinics and residential colonies across Delhi after which Yagnesh Dave, a member of the touring party said, “Although many mohalla clinics were functioning well, many didn’t have doctors or were simply lying vacant. PM Narendra Modi’s Ayushman Bharat scheme that provides Rs 5 lakh to every beneficiary hasn’t even been implemented in Delhi.”

It would seem odd that BJP members from Gujarat, a state 100 times Delhi’s size and home to three times its population, parachuted to the national capital to dissect this “Delhi model”.  A look at figures would show that over the last few years, Gujarat has trailed the Delhi model on virtually all parameters (see table). With elections scheduled in Gujarat later this year, the success on these fronts have become AAP’s clarion call to the electorate to vote for it in the western state that has been in the BJP’s grip since 1998.

One of the transformations that the Kejriwal government brought to Delhi when it came to power for its first full term in 2015 was the overhaul of its government schools.

Official figures paint a contrasting picture of the development of the government school education system in Gujarat and Delhi over the past few years. While enrolment in Gujarat’s government schools declined from 2015-16 to 2020-21, it increased by over 50 per cent in Delhi. The overwhelming interest of parents in sending their children to government schools in Delhi came even as the Kejriwal government closed over 280 government schools to streamline the system during this period. Existing schools were revamped by adding classrooms, recruiting more teachers, enhancing safety by installing CCTVs and in some cases even providing 24 swimming pools in government schools. A spill-over effect is that enrolment grew slower in private schools than the government ones during this period.
 

Gujarat took a different trajectory. While the state saw a rise in the number of both government and private schools, student enrolments in state-funded schools declined from 2015-16 to 2020-21. Private school admissions, on the other hand, rose by a third. Surprisingly, though the number of government schools increased, the number of teachers teaching in them declined during this period, a parameter that has worsened since 2015. With burgeoning admissions, Delhi enhanced school infrastructure with classrooms being less crowded than in the past. In Gujarat, the student-classroom ratio has worsened over the years even as government school admissions have declined.

In 2015, Kejriwal also announced that every Delhi resident was eligible for free treatment at its 38 state-run hospitals. Official figures show that the cost of hospitalisation at government hospitals was around Rs 2000, less than what it costs to be treated in a government hospital in Gujarat. But Gujarat still remains more affordable than Delhi when it comes to providing childbirth and post-natal care to women at state-run hospitals. 

Despite being geographically smaller, Delhi has more state-funded hospitals than similar district hospitals in Gujarat. These are also better manned than the BJP-ruled state. Delhi has thrice the number of beds available at state-run facilities than Gujarat. The availability of beds has declined in Gujarat since 2015, in consonance with the rest of India as private hospitals have ramped up capacity to meet demand. Delhi seems to have bucked that trend by increasing the number of beds at government hospitals and other state run centres by over 11 per cent to over 27,000 beds from 2015 to 2021. With the opening of 520 <mohalla> clinics in addition to a similar number of community health centres that already existed, Delhi now has more facilities that provide “walk in-walk out” doctor consultancy and medicines to people with ailments that do not require hospital intervention than Gujarat.

The last facet of the “Delhi model” that has caught the eye of the BJP is the provision of 200 units of free power to all residents in Delhi. Kejriwal recently announced that free power and other electricity subsidies will be available only to those who choose to opt for it from October. This freebie was announced by him in 2019 in the run-up to the Assembly polls. Delhi residents who consume 201 to 400 units of power also get a 50 per cent subsidy on their bills, making power tariffs one of the most affordable in the country. Delhi has five slabs in which any household consuming over 200 units of power pays Rs 4.5 to Rs 8 per unit based on the amount of electricity consumed. Gujarat has a three-tier slab system and no provision for free electricity when households use it in moderation. Consumers are charged Rs 3.2 for every unit of electricity up to 50 units. The maximum charge for every unit, irrespective of consumption, in cities like Ahmedabad is capped at Rs 5.

The BJP delegation worked out the numbers. Dave said, “We applied Gujarat’s power slab to Delhi and found that bills would be 30 per cent cheaper if our slabs were applied here. Those using more power are cross-subsidising others and you are paying your neighbour’s bill.”

Most strikingly, official figures show that the Kejriwal government has achieved the advancements in education, health and doled out power subsidies without making a dent on its finances. Gujarat has fared worse over the years. Since 2015-16, Delhi has increased its tax revenues six times to over Rs 29,000 crore. Gujarat which rakes in four times as much in revenues has managed to do so by less than a third. Delhi’s per capita income is much higher with every resident paying more indirect taxes to the state than Gujarat.

This favourable tax-per capita income dynamics and other factors such as not having to spend on maintaining a police force have given Delhi considerable fiscal leverage to allocate more resources to the social sector. It spends more than a fifth of its budget on education; considerably higher than Gujarat. It allocates 13 per cent of its budget to education, higher than the six per cent Gujarat sets aside. Where the proportion of the budget allocated for education has increased in Delhi, Gujarat’s has stagnated since 2015-16.