Skip to main content

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
41 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart
14 comments
Read more

A Priest Chooses Death

AI-generated illustration The parish priest of my neighbourhood committed suicide this morning. His body was found hanging from the ceiling. Just a week back a Catholic nun chose to end her life in the same manner at a place about 20 km from my home. In a country where about 500 persons choose death every day, the suicide of two individuals may not create ripples, let alone waves. But, non-believer as I am, I was shaken by these deaths. Christianity is a religion that accepts suffering as a virtue. In fact, the more the suffering in your life, the better a Christian you can be. Follow the path shown by Jesus, that’s what every priest preaches from the pulpit day after day. Jesus’ path is the way of the cross. I grew up in an extremely conservative Catholic family in an equally conservative village in Kerala. I had a rather wretched childhood. But I was taught to find consolation in the sufferings of Jesus. The Passion of Jesus, that’s what it is called in Catholic theology. Tha
10 comments
Read more

Romancing with Nature

  Kingini and Plato have no aesthetic sense. They are killers by instinct, I think. Sadistic too. They catch the prey and play with it until it is rendered lifeless. Once the prey is dead, Kingini and Plato will abandon it and go in search of another victim.  Kingini and Plato are my cats. Mother and son, both together have driven quite a few creatures here to extinction, I think. Lizards and chameleons are their usual victims. The cicadas have fallen silent in the bushes. Once in a while Kingini and Plato discover a small snake too to play with. Highly venomous ones! What worries me these days is their newfound fondness for butterflies. They have become experts in catching butterflies. They just sit and watch a butterfly for a while and then one jump - the butterrfly will be in their mouth. By the time I rush to save the little creature, it is usually too late. Most of the time I don't see these hunts. I see only the dead remains of the tiny beauties.  Nature is full of such cruel
12 comments
Read more

Generation Gap

AI-generated illustration I always believed that generation gap wouldn’t be a problem for me because I had failed to grow up psychologically. My hairs greyed and my skin has begun to show some wrinkles. But I can climb up the stairs with greater ease than a teenager of today. I can challenge my young students to go on a trek in the mountains and I’m sure I’ll conquer greater heights than them with much ease. More importantly, I can smile more sweetly than them. I am more open to new ideas, my blood boils at injustices unlike theirs, I have dreams, ideals and principles… I was condemned to go back to the classroom. It’s for a short while, of course. I’m substituting someone. Initially I was excited. I thought I was getting an opportunity to be young once again. But the actual classrooms have all been terrible disappointments. The teenagers in front of me look so senile, behave like grumpy octogenarians who yawn all the way from morning to evening unable to understand or appreciate a
8 comments
Read more