'Gujarat model' will bring 'vinash' not 'vikas': CPI-M

The party takes a jibe at Modi through an editorial in 'People's Democracy'

BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi's pledge to create a 'vibrant India' a la the Gujarat model cannot result in 'vikas' but only 'vinash', the CPI-M said today.

"In a public rally, a day after his anointment, (Modi) declared he wants to create a 'vibrant' India a la the illusory 'vibrant' Gujarat," an editorial in the CPI-M mouthpiece "People's Democracy" said.

It said the 2002 communal violence of Gujarat "is sought to be replicated for the rest of India as the foundation to achieve such a 'vibrancy'.

"This is the debt the Gujarat's chief minister claims to have repaid to his state and now wants to repay for India," it said.

The editorial said "such disinformation ... conceals the fact that Gujarat has human development indices that are much lower than the national average.

"The country today is asked to endorse the extension of this Gujarat model for the whole of India. If this is the case, then what is in store is not vikas (development) but vinash (destruction)."

The editorial said the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, which have claimed more than 40 lives, had served as the perfect backdrop for the BJP to anoint Modi as its prime ministerial prospect.

The CPI-M also mocked at Modi's decision to erect a gigantic statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat as a "Statue of Unity" by collecting iron pieces from across the country.

The editorial recalled that it was Sardar Patel who banned the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) following the 1948 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

"Such a misappropriation of Sardar Patel is part of the overall objective of re-writing Indian history in order to straightjacket it into a monolithic record of the glorification of the 'Hindu Nation'.

"Such an effort is integral to advance the RSS project of the metamorphosis of the modern Indian secular democratic Republic into their version of 'Hindu Rashtra'."