What is Adityanath's winner for UP elections that nullifies Covid impact

With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections barely six months away, the main opposition parties — the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and Congress — have sharpened attacks on the Yogi Adityanath government over alleged Covid-19 mismanagement and economic hardship in the last four years.

Although the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has deployed senior cabinet ministers as also top party leaders to counter the opposition onslaught, the plausible of the pandemic on the socio-economic canvas of the state is far too wide to underestimate.

However, the government can mount its defence by highlighting the sizeable credit flow of about Rs 2.2 trillion to the state’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the past four years.

A top UP government official said the infusion of this amount since 2017 had a massive multiplier effect in the state and resulted in industrial sector investments of almost Rs 4 trillion. This, in turn, generated 25 million direct and indirect jobs and self-employment opportunities.

The MSME sector is the largest provider of employment in UP after agriculture. It contributes more than 60 per cent of the state’s industrial output and 40 per cent to the export basket. The state logged exports of more than Rs 1.21 trillion during 2020-21.

According to the UP additional chief secretary (MSME and export promotion), Navneet Sehgal, even as the pandemic hit in 2020-21, the state government facilitated a credit infusion of about Rs 73,765 crore to the MSME sector, which helped in overcoming the crisis.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while inaugurating the Indigenization Summit on Defence & Aerospace (ISDA 2021), organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and UP Expressway Industrial Develo­p­ment Authority, had stressed that the state was coordinating with banks to en­s­ure that industry, especially MS­M­Es, did not face a working capital squeeze.

“We have recast more than 30 investment-related policies in the past four years to spur industrialisation. The state now ranks second in terms of ease of doing business while it is today the country’s second-largest economy (after Maharashtra),” he said.

Even as the pandemic has hit MSMEs the hardest, the UP government is bracing itself up for an aggressive outreach strategy in the weeks and months ahead to communicate as to how a proactive stance had turned the crisis into an opportunity, and provided timely relief to the sector for catalysing economic activities and job creation.

“Compared to the credit offtake of Rs 28,136 crore in 2017-18, the infusion of Rs 73,765 crore in 2020-21 indicates the quantum leap in credit facilitation by the UP government,” Sehgal said, adding that about 7.4 million units had benefited from this.

Public finance and policy expert Yashvir Tyagi said the state government’s efforts to make UP a preferred destination for foreign and domestic investors had started bearing fruit. “Such investment is not confined to the developed regions only, but industries are now being established in the comparatively backward eastern and Bundelkhand regions as well,” he said.

Moreover, the government has been holding virtual loan fairs since last year. So far, five such fairs have been organised, providing working capital support of Rs 33,338 crore to nearly 680,000 entities.

BJP UP unit secretary Chandra Mohan said: “The Yogi government has embarked upon an agenda to restore the past industrial glory of UP, when it was among the leading states in India. The state has launched schemes to boost the local economy and create mass jobs, and the government has been working to provide an easy finance window to the MSME sector, which is the backbone of the country’s industrial base,” he said.

Meanwhile, UP Congress leader Zishan Haider debunked the claims of the state government regarding new employment avenues, terming them a bundle of lies.

“Why don’t they provide official data regarding fresh employment opportunities created in the public and private sectors?”