Guwahati: Member of Parliament and Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi on Wednesday alleged that Assam Chief Minister has misled the people of the state regarding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) report.
Gaurav Gogoi stated, ” The Chief Minister first claimed that Assam had progressed from being an Aspirant category in 2018 to Performer Category in 2020. However, the truth is all states have made some amount of progress. In fact, Assam’s progress from 2019 to 2020 was of barely 2 points (55 to 57), making it the slowest overall progress among all states. In contrast, the highest growth of a state was 12 points, far from Assam’s growth rate. Assam’s overall rank in this recent survey also dropped from 23rd to 26th.”
Gogoi added that in terms of health, Assam has the lowest score of 59 among all states. It also dropped by 3 ranks from 25th to 28th place. Percentage of adolescents aged 10–19 years who are anemic is 36.9, higher than India’s score.
“States like Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal have much better scores. Assam also has the highest maternal mortality rate among all states with a score of 215, almost double of India’s score”, he added.
Gogoi alleged that the BJP government has continuously been misleading the people of Assam.
As per the statement by Gogoi, Assam has ranked 24 out of 28 states and its score has actually dropped this year from 44 to 43. Assam’s drop out rates in classes 9 & 10 is the second highest among all states. It also has one of the lowest pupil teacher ratios of 11 among all states and almost half of India’s score of 21.
Economically, Assam has a score lowest in the Northeast. Assam’s rank dropped from 17 in 2019 to 22 in 2020. In fact, States like Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, who were lower than Assam in 2019 have surpassed Assam in 2020.
He also said, “The Chief Minister also tried to justify Assam’s poor performance because the data was based on NFHS 4 and not recent NFHS survey 5. The justification does not hold because there is not much significant difference between NFHS 4 and the Phase 1 factsheet of NFHS 5. For example- Population (female) age 6 years and above who ever attended school in NFHS 4 was 75 and in NFHS 5 is 78.”
“Assam ranked lowest, 28th for women empowerment i.e. in the category of gender parity and equality. Firstly, the indicator of Gender parity is based on on “access to healthcare, education, nutrition, employment and asset ownership”, Gogoi added.
Speaking about issues related to crime against women, the MP added, “The Chief Minister, however, stated that the high rate of crimes against women in Assam was due to the fact that more cases are registered by women for crimes against them. But, according to the NFHS survey of 2018, states such as Rajasthan, Kerala, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh also shows women approaching the police station and having access to filing a case. However, their crime rates against women were much lesser than that of Assam in the SDG report.”
As per the SDG report, Assam is in the bottom rankings of all the essential categories of economy, healthcare, education and gender equality and there hasn’t been any significant growth since 2018. The BJP government should be honest about its shortcomings instead of misleading the people.