Surely Congress would have done something Right ?

I had missed this remarkable story till now - Andhra Pradesh (AP) HALVED the no. of poor people over just two years (from 176 lakh in '09-10 to 80 lakh in '11-'12). They did this by crop diversification on farms, branching out into dairying, and by MGNREGA pushing up wages in rural areas. The agriculture growth rate went up. 

The Congress Reddy Government had been in power in AP from 2004 to 2014 – while I had not thought much of Reddy’s Government earlier, I was forced to think it must have done some things right, after all.

No other Indian State came close to this rate of poverty reduction. Some experts compared Andhra Pradesh’s declining poverty rates to those of China, stated to have lifted more people out of poverty in the last 30 years than any country in history. 

In 1981, a staggering 88 percent of Chinese were extremely poor, but by 2013 that figure had dropped, incredibly, to just 2 percent. India’s figures, though not as drastic, are still impressive: In about the same period of time, India’s poor population declined from 54 to 21 percent.

In the 32 years from 1981 to 2013, BJP ruled India for 6 years, and UF / Janata Dal governments for 3.5 years. However the UF / Janata Dal Governments were still supported from the outside by the Congress. So Congress ruled India for a majority of this period - it must have done something right for poverty levels to drop by over 60 % over the 1981 base figure ?