UP Government has been proclaiming through front page advertisements in leading newspapers that per capita income in UP has doubled in the last four years since the BJP government came into power in 2017. In an interview to Economic Times in March CM Yogi Adityanath had said, “the GDP of the state was Rs 10.90 lakh crore in 2015-16 (when the state was being run by the Samajwadi Party govt) which has grown to Rs. 21.73 lakh crore in four years. He went on to assert, “when we come to power after 2022, UP will become the largest economy”. In an interview to The Week in April the chief minister again asserted, “At the time of independence, per capita income in the state was at par with the national average. In the last 70 years, it became one-third (of the national average). In the last four years, it has more than doubled.” Doubling of per capita income in four years requires a compound growth rate of 18% annually, which means that the state economy must have been growing at 20% per year during the period. Such a miracle has not been witnessed in history in any national or state economy. The tall claims of the state government, therefore, need to be scrutinised critically.The claim of Yogi was based on the apparently fudged figure of GSDP in the Budget documents of 2021-22. In the budget estimate for 2020-21 the projected GSDP of UP was shown at Rs. 17,91,263 crore. In the revised estimates for 2020-21 the GSDP figure was also revised upward to Rs. 18,415,27 crore (UP Budget 2021- 22, Khand 2-Part I), implying an increase of 15% over 2019-20. How the miracle happened in the Covid affected year is nowhere explained. On top of that, for 2021-22 GSDP figure for UP was put at Rs. 21,73,390 Cr, an increase of 12%. This was done by finance ministry officials to show that the debt/GSDP ratio remained in the permissible limit of 4.17%.
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