Whatever else won UP for BJP it wasn’t development and good governance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office ostensibly on a plank of economic and administrative ‘acche din’. Sadly, he has not delivered. So voters either don’t know his record or they voted for BJP for quite different reasons.

What is the prime minister’s record on development and governance? In three years of BJP rule at the Centre, GDP has grown by 7.4% on average (if you accept the method of calculating growth brought in by the Modi government). The record of UPA was 7.8% in its first 5 years, 7.5% in the next 5 years, and 7.65% over 10 years. UPA achieved these figures despite the 2008 financial crisis and dipping growth in 2011-13. It also recorded rates of 9.3% in 2005 and 2006 and 10.3% in 2010 – Modi has come nowhere close.

Attracting FDI is supposed to be a great success story for the BJP government. In 10 years of the UPA government, FDI as a proportion of GDP averaged 1.86%. This is after the 0.76% of the Vajpayee years. Over the past three years, the NDA government has averaged 1.83% – hardly a breathtaking pace.

The prime minister promised to ‘Make in India’. Has manufacturing boomed and produced jobs for the tens of millions entering the labour market? The figures for both are not that easy to access – which raises questions of its own. But no one would say that there has been much improvement.

Even before demonetisation, it was clear that manufacturing was stagnant. If you go to the Make in India page, you will read a lot about all the initiatives of the government, but you won’t find figures on manufacturing growth. On the other hand, RBI figures reveal that in 2015-16, manufacturing actually shrank, to the tune of 3.7%. As for jobs, 1.35 lakh jobs were created in 2015 – also the lowest in 7 years. Again, there are no figures available for 2016, as far as i can tell.

The one thing i credited Modi with when he came to power was his bluntness on sanitation. Here was a prime minister willing to talk about an almost taboo subject, especially open defecation, and the horrible state of Ganga. After that brave start, what’s the record?

The government claims that a lot of new toilets have been built. Under UPA-II, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that 16 states exaggerated the figures on individual household toilets, by 190%. There is no reason to suppose that reporting has improved. In the meantime, bafflingly, funding to the public education campaign on open defecation and overall funding to Swachh Bharat has been reduced. Over half of India still defecates publicly.

On Ganga, the government allocated Rs 20,000 crore in its first year, 20 times more than all the spending on the river since 1985. No one seriously claims anything has been achieved – hardly surprising if you put Uma Bharti, the great administrator, in charge.

If development remains in the doldrums, has governance improved? Cronyism involving senior ministers and high officials at the Centre seems to have reduced. That is probably all that can be said. On the other hand, the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh, under a BJP government, has seldom excited the Modi government’s attention. Governing through secretaries to the government of India is the prime minister’s trademark. It has not been a success, and has alienated senior members of BJP and the joint secretaries (who everyone knows are the workhorses of administration).

If demonetisation is anything to go by, the BJP government has a lot to learn about governance. Whatever it achieved, notebandi made absolutely no impact on black money. And what does it say about good governance to appoint as chief minister of UP one of the most communally polarising figures ever in the state’s history?

The prime minister is a formidable politician and election campaigner. He could do a lot for India. Unfortunately, he rode the tiger of divisive politics to power and now he cannot dismount.

Poor old UP, my ancestral state, and poor old India. Not much vikas ahead.