Yesterday, the Ease of Doing Business ranks were announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and the state of Andhra Pradesh stood first in the whole of India. And as soon as those rankings came out, the race for ownership of that rank began in Andhra Pradesh.
The YSRCP started to credit itself and the vision of Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy as the reason for why AP stood in the first place. Minister Gautham Reddy was the first to respond to this news, and said that the policies that YSRCP introduced have been instrumental in this rank.
On the other hand, the TDP too started to claim that they are the ones responsible for AP ranking first in Ease of Doing Business, based on what Chandrababu Naidu had done before the YSRCP came into power, in 2019. Nara Lokesh took to Twitter to even criticise the Jagan government on their failures, and reminded them that AP would develop even further if Jagan stuck to Chandrababu’s vision and carried on with what Babu had started.
While both the parties are continuing to credit themselves, fact remains that it was YSRCP and Jagan who criticised the ranking system not so long ago. Jagan had even gone on to say that he doesn’t understand the importance of these rankings, and that he doesn’t see the point in being ranked somewhere on the list of Ease of Doing Business.
Netizens have now started to question why the YSRCP government has started to credit themselves with the ranking that’s now been given, when it didn’t matter to them previously. Well, that is indeed a very valid question.