Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi said that the Chief Minister of Assam has misled the people of the state regarding the performance of Assam in the SDG report of 2020-21.
However, there were clear cut contradictions with what the NITI Ayog report said and the CM's claims, said MP Gogoi.
Gaurav Gogoi said that CM has misled the people by talking about Assam progressing from Aspirant category to Performer category. However, Assam's progress from 2019 to 2020 was of barely 2 points (55 to 57), making it the slowest overall progress among all states. In contrast, the highest growth of a state was 12 points, far from Assam's growth rate. Assam's overall rank in this recent survey also dropped from 23rd to 26th.
He further added that in the field of health, Assam has the lowest score of 59 among all states. It also dropped by 3 ranks from 25th to 28th place. Percentage of adolescents aged 10–19 years who are anaemic is 36.9, higher than India's score. States like Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal have much better scores. Assam also has the highest maternal mortality rate among all states with a score of 215, almost double of India's score.
In the education category, Assam has ranked 24 out of 28 states and its score has actually dropped this year from 44 to 43. Assam's drop out rates in classes 9 & 10 is the second highest among all states. It also has one of the lowest pupil teacher ratios of 11 among all states and almost half of India's score of 21, added Gaurav Gogoi.
Economically, Assam has a score lowest in the Northeast. Assam's rank dropped from 17 in 2019 to 22 in 2020. In fact, States like Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, who were lower than Assam in 2019 have surpassed Assam in 2020.
While addressing the Media, MP Gogoi said that the Chief Minister also tried to justify Assam's poor performance because the data was based on NFHS 4 and not recent NFHS survey 5. The justification does not hold because there is not much significant difference between NFHS 4 and the Phase 1 factsheet of NFHS 5.
Assam ranked lowest, 28th for women empowerment i.e. in the category of gender parity and equality. Firstly, the indicator of Gender parity is based on on "access to healthcare, education, nutrition, employment and asset ownership," informed Gogoi at the press meet.
According to the NFHS survey of 2018, states such as Rajasthan, Kerala, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh also shows women approaching the police station and having access to filing a case. However, their crime rates against women were much lesser than that of Assam in the SDG report, added the Congress Leader.
Overall, Assam is in the bottom rankings of all the essential categories of economy, healthcare, education and gender equality, informed Gogoi. There hasn't been any significant growth since 2018. The BJP government should be honest about its shortcomings instead of misleading the people.
