Gujarat has always been active in attracting industrial investment, and while it lagged behind Maharashtra with the second largest share of industrial investment proposals in India till 2004, it was in the last three years that Gujarat’s share in investment proposals has zoomed up to first place in the country with Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh behind it. In recent months, there has been more interest in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra but when it comes to the crunch of implementation of the proposals, Gujarat is way ahead of these states with an implementation ratio of 15 per cent (the figures for Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are 8 per cent and 3 per cent respectively). These figures gel with anecdotal and media reports of the ease with which industry translates its proposals into concrete form on the ground.

There has been a massive thrust on the infrastructure front in the state and Gujarat was the first in the country to privatise the construction of ports and to announce a separate port policy in 1995, integrating industrial development, power generation and infrastructure development. The results have come to fruit now and the famous “It’s stupid if you are not in Gujarat” line attributed to Ratan Tata quite neatly encapsulates the relation between government and industry in this state.

One of the areas of concern has been agriculture with its high dependence on rainfall. But efforts to irrigate have raised the percentage of net sown area that is irrigated from 29 per cent in 2000 to 34 per cent in 2005, a five per cent rise every year. The government’s active efforts to bring the waters of the Narmada to fill the rivers in the state have done wonders in some parts and much more has been planned. But with almost 60 per cent of the population still engaged in the primary sector, this has not been enough to offset the rural-urban divide and on this front Gujarat has not been doing too well.

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