Children of Cows

 

Source: unsplash.com

Prime Minister Modi declared the cow our mother last week while addressing a rally in Varanasi. I have my own mother and am certainly not interested in a surrogate especially at my age now. If some of my fellow citizens are in need of more mothers, who am I to object? My problem is not about having many mothers but about what Modi ji is doing for the cow’s children. Now that he is completing eight years in power, we need to assess his performance and see whether it is more mothers we need.

Let me tabulate a few indices to summarise Modi ji’s contribution to the nation in the last eight years as PM.

Index	Year & Rank	Year & Rank
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index	2014 - 27	2020 – 53
UNDP Human Development Index	2014 - 130	2020 – 131
IMD World Competitiveness Ranking	2013 - 40	2021 – 43
Freedom House’s Freedom in World Index	2014 - 77	2021 – 67
World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index	2014 - 66	2020 – 69
UN Sustainable Development Solutions World Happiness Report	2015 - 117	2021 – 139
Legatum Institute Prosperity Index	2015 - 99	2020 – 101
World Press Freedom Index	2014 - 140	2021 – 142
Georgetown Institute Women, Peace & Security Index	2017 - 131	2020 - 133
Fraser Institute Global Economic Freedom Index	2015 - 95	2020 – 105
Cato Human Freedom Index	2015 - 75	2020 – 111
World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index	2014 - 114	2021 – 140
World Bank Women, Business and Law Index	2014 - 111	2021 – 123
World Index of Moral Freedom	2016 - 41	2020 – 70
International Intellectual Property Index	2014 - 25	2021 – 40
Global Innovation Index	2014 - 76	2020 – 48
World Economic Forum Global Economic Competitiveness	2017 - 40	2020 – 68
Internet Shutdown Tracker [shutdowns by govts]	2014 - 6	2020 – 109
WB International Logistics Performance Index	2014 - 54	2018 – 44
Numbeo Quality of Life Index	2014 - 48	2021 – 65
Fund for Peace Fragile States Index	2014 -81	2021 – 66
Global RTI Rating	2013 - 2	2021 – 6
Global Hunger Index	2014 - 55	2020 – 94
WB Doing Business Report	2014 - 142	2020 – 63
Knight Frank Global House Price Index	2015 - 17	2021 – 55
Quality of Nationality Index	2014 - 88	2018 – 95
WEF Human Capital Index	2013 - 78	2017 – 103
Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index	2015 - 103	2019 – 120
AT Kearney FDI Confidence Index	2014 - 7	2021 – no rank
Yale Environmental Performance Index	2014 - 155	2020 – 168
Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index	2014 - 18	2021 – 7
Sustainable Development Index	2016 - 110	2021 - 120
Food Sustainability Index	2016 - 25	2018 – 33
Economics and Peace Positive Peace Index	2021 – Last out of 51 nations
Source: Aakar Patel, Price of the Modi Years

 

In every one of the above indices, India has slid down drastically during the Modi years. Some of the rankings are in ascending order and some in descending. So the numbers may confuse you a bit. But let me repeat: India came down invariably in every index.

Now tell me, is it more mothers or even fathers that we Indians need?

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 401: Cow is mother, sacred to us: PM Modi #CowMother