Rhetoric or reality: Focus on per capita
₹300 trillion. So, if both states have about the same—9.2% and 9.1%—shares of the Indian economy, that’s about ₹27 trillion each.
Divide that by the respective populations to find that TN’s residents are three times better off than UP’s. That’s the real story here.
Anything else is just propaganda. As Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, TN’s minister for IT, summed it up in a recent article, such propaganda has “removed every shred of intellectual content...and darkened the environment into one filled with a cultish, vacuous chanting of inane noise." So yes, if intellectual content matters, pay attention to the per capita.
Because let’s face it: Becoming collectively heavier than a numerically smaller family is, well, a pretty lightweight achievement. Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun.
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