Only those statistics favouring Manmohan Singh’s tenure are being compared with those not favouring Modi’s tenure - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 12, 2021
A post comparing the performance of Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh tenure as PM on different parameters like GDP, petrol & diesel prices, hunger index rankings etc. is being widely shared across social media platforms with a claim that Manmohan Singh’s government performed better than the Modi government on these parameters. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Manmohan Singh’s government performed better than the Modi government on different parameters.
Fact: Of the indicators mentioned in the post, only those statistics which are in favour of the Manmohan Singh regime are compared with those not so favourable to the Modi regime, making it a very selective comparision. Even under Modi, GDP growth was 8% in a particular year. Also in early 2009, the price of litre petrol stood at Rs 45.62 which increased to Rs. 71.52 in early 2014. Also, the price of litre diesel in 2009 was Rs. 32.86 which reached Rs. 53.78 in 2014. In many respects, the post only mentions those statistics that were not favourable for the Modi regime. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
GDP growth rate:
Although the GDP growth rate of 9% was reported during Manmohan Singh’s tenure, not all the years during his tenure recorded 9% growth rate. As per the RBI estimates, the GDP growth rate for the year 2019-20 at 4.18%. However, this is not the same every year of the Modi regime. In fact, during the year 2016-1, the growth rate touched 8.26%. From this, it can be inferred that only those numbers which are in favour of Manmohan Singh’s tenure are compared to that of Modi’s tenure, making this a misleading comparision.
Petrol & Diesel Prices:
As per the historical price data of petrol & diesel available on PPAC website, the litre cost of petrol and diesel was Rs. 63 & Rs. 53 back in July 2017, much lower compared to the present rates. Even Manmohan Singh’s tenure witnessed an increase and decrease in petrol and diesel prices. For example, the rate of litre petrol which was at Rs. 45.62 at the beginning of 2009 increased to Rs. 71.52 by the start of 2014. Generally, Prices of petrol & diesel depend on many factors like international crude oil prices, a general change in GDP, dollar rate, global politics, central & state taxes etc. Petrol prices are not as high as claimed in the post throughout Modi’s tenure as PM. Hence it is not logical to compare the prices during Manmohan’s tenure with that of prices during Modi’s tenure without taking these factors into consideration. However, the central taxes have increased during the Modi regime contributing to higher petrol & diesel prices despite a steep fall in global crude oil prices.
Railway platform Ticket:
As reported by news articles, taking COVID-19 pandemic into consideration some railway stations like Mumbai & Bhopal have increased the platform ticket to Rs. 50 which was earlier Rs. 10, which will applicable till July 2021. However, these rates are not applicable throughout the country.
Hunger Index:
In the 2020 Global Hunger Index, India ranked 94 out of the 107 countries. Prior to 2016, the calculation of these rankings followed a different methodology. The score of India in the year 2000 was 38.9 which improved to 27.2 in the year 2020 (a lower score means better performance). This shows that the performance of India in terms of the score is improving relative to the previous years. However, the ranking of India is worse compared to other countries.  As the methodology of ranking is different prior to 2016, a comparision of rankings between Modi and Manmohan Singh government would not be prudent.
SSC Recruitments:
SSC recruits for various posts by conducting recruitment exams for different categories like CGL, CSHL, Delhi police etc. As it is not particularly mentioned particularly about the specific category in the post, we took CGL into consideration and according to the information available on the SSC website, recruitment notification for a total of 15,146 posts was released back in 2013 and for 15,549 posts in 2014. In recent times the total number being recruited under this category decreased as the 2018 notification was released for 11,271 posts and for the year 2019, the total number of posts stood at 8539. The 2020 notification identified 7035 posts under this category. Hence,  it is true that the number of these posts has decreased during the Modi regime as compared to the Manmohan Singh government. The exact reason for this cannot be stated as the examination is usually conducted on the basis of vacancies in different departments.
From the above analysis, it can be inferred that only figures of the parameters which are in favour of the Manmohan Singh government’s regime are being compared to figures which are not so favourable during the Modi regime.
To sum it up, only those statistics which are in favour of Manmohan Singh’s tenure are being compared with the not so favourable figures of Modi’s tenure.