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Showing posts from 2013

Forcibly displaced from their village due of upper caste attacks, Gujarat agariyas face government wrath

A agariya house destroyed by authorities The Agariya Hit Rakshak Manch (AHRM), an NGO working among the saltpan workers of the Little of Kutch in Gujarat, has strongly protested against a demolition drive carried out by the local administration against a settlement of 78 houses of agariyas bordering the Rann. In a statement, AHRM has said, “On December 27, 2013, the block revenue officer of Patadi taluka, district Surendrangar, got bulldozer and police to a demolish settlement of 78 agariyas. When people started lying down in front of the bulldozer, police forcefully made them sit in vehicles, and then started demolition.”

Gujarat financial inclusion index slips, only 10 districts perform better than national average

Despite wide talk of Gujarat being No 1 in things financial, top rating agency Cisil has found that the state is failing to improve upon its financial inclusion index compared to most of India.  A new report by the top consulting firm, Crisil, has revealed that the financial inclusion index, called Inclusix – a concept it worked out in alliance with the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, to find out how deep is financial penetration among larger sections of population – has revealed that Gujarat has failed to improve its performance over the last four years in providing the three critical parameters of banking services, viz. branch penetration, deposit penetration, and credit penetration. Titled “Crisil Inclusix: An Index to Measure India’s Progress on Financial Inclusion”, this is the second report in a year brought out by India’s authoritative consulting firm, which is supported by the well-known US rating agency, Standard & Poor. Dated January 2014, the report – which...

Discharge from Gujarat chemical estates' effluent treatment plants is "much higher" than norm

  The latest figures released by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) suggest that the levels of industrial effluents discharge through the common effluent treatment plants (CETP) in chemical industrial estates across Gujarat continue to remain “high” and “worrisome”. Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti’s Rohit Prajapati and six other environmental activists in a statement, quoting CPCB figures, have alleged, more worrying is that the situation "has not changed much after the problem of industrial pollution first came to light in the nineties.”

Investments in realty sector declined by 20% in a year in Gujarat as against by 6% nationally: ASSOCHAM

Predicting that the realty sector will continue to bleed till the first half of 2014, an Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) survey has found that the situation in Gujarat is likely to be particularly bad, if the current trend is any indication. In a statement, the apex industries body said, “Outstanding investments attracted by the real estate sector in Gujarat have plummeted from over Rs 2.37 lakh crore as of September 2012 to about Rs 1.90 lakh crore as of September 2013 thereby registering significant drop of about 20 per cent”.

Dalit rights activists demand Ambedkar's statue should be higher than Sardar Patel's

Symbolic burning of Manu Smriti on a four feet candle light Senior Dalit rights activists in have Gujarat declared that, while they do not oppose Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s decision to build the world’s highest statue in the memory of Sardar Patel, they would want that Dr BR Ambedkar’s statue should be even higher. Making the announcement amidst a huge applause by the Dalits from several villages that had come to attend a non-political meeting at Badarkha village, south of Ahmedabad, senior human rights activist Martin Macwan, founder of Navsarjan Trust, said, “Dr Ambedkar’s contribution stands taller as he fought casteism in all its manifestations and created a constitutional framework for India providing equality to all.”

New NSS report points to poor sanitary conditions in rural Gujarat

Rural Gujarat is known to have poor malnutrition levels. Malnutrition and sanitation are both interrelated. A new National Sample Survey Organization report has suggested that the state’s performance in providing sanitation to its rural population is not up to the mark.  In a major revelation, the new National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report, “Key Indicators of Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Condition in India”, released in December 2013, has found that Gujarat’s performance in providing sanitary and hygienic conditions to its rural population is not progressing well enough. In fact, if the data are indication, Gujarat’s performance on this score cannot be said to considered “vibrant” in any sense. The NSSO survey data suggest that Gujarat is an average performer, especially on issues related with sanitation. If the report is to be believed, a whopping 58.7 per cent of the rural households of Gujarat have no access to toilets – which means that majority of...

Gujarat’s urban slum policy fails to make impact on dwellers’ living condition

The latest National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report, “Key Indicators of Urban Slums in India”, released in December 2013 and based on survey the top statistical body carried out in the second half of 2012, has once again suggested that Gujarat’s slums are one of the worst in India insofar as providing basic infrastructural facilities are concerned. Rajiv Shah takes a closer look at the report: While Gujarat’s slums, numbering 2,923 (both notified and non-notified), form 8.72 per cent of all slums in the country (33,510), the three states with higher number of slums than Gujarat are Maharashtra (7,723), Andhra Pradesh (3,956) and West Bengal (3957). Despite a relatively higher number, what is particularly appalling is, Gujarat slums fail to score better than most states whether it is pucca houses, tapped water, electricity, pucca roads, latrines, drainage, or garbage disposal. While the survey results do not show a complete all-India picture, as results of only in a dozen sta...

National Green Tribunal thinks the "polluter pays" principle should be applied selectively on industrial units

Does the National Green Tribunal (NGT) believe that the well-known polluters pay principle should be applied in exceptional cases only? It would seem so, if a recent judgment it delivered is any guide. Giving its order in a case filed by Gujarat’s environmental body, Paryavaran Mitra, against Hanjer Biotech Energies Pvt Ltd (HBEPL), contracted to dispose of solid waste by the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC), the NGT has reluctantly said the principle be applied on HBEPL. In an order delivered on December 20, it said it believes that the “polluter pays principle” ought to be applied in “peculiar circumstances” alone.

Industry should return subsidies provided by Central, state govts for pollution control: Environmental body

Acting on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed jointly by the top Gujarat-based environmental body, Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS), and the Farmers’ Action Group (FAG), the Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the chief secretaries of 19 Indian states, including Gujarat, seeking response on the demand by the petitioners to implement the prescribed pollution control norms, even as ensuring implementation of the “polluter pays” principle in its real spirit,  instead of providing huge subsidies in the name of controlling pollution.

Gujarat's Group of Ministers has "no time" to finalise the route for Ahmedabad metro, complain insiders

Long wait for metro rail in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s business capital, is now bogged into yet another indecision – a group of ministers (GoM) appointed by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is unable to finalize the route in order to put afloat the Rs 22,000 crore project for three months now. Well-placed Gujarat Sachivalaya sources say, the ministers are so busy in such "non-issues" like collecting iron all over India for the Statue of Sardar Patel, planned in the midst of Narmada river, that they have "no time to look into the metro project."

Official Gujarat negligence in implementing RTE: Refusal to build school despite HC order

NGO Sahyog Charitable Trust has found the hard way how Gujarat’s authorities refuse to implement the right to education (RTE) Act unless judicial intervention is sought. How negligent Gujarat authorities have been towards implementing the RTE Act was revealed by the manner in which they have treated the Gujarat High Court order of February 9, 2012, in which the Municipal School Board, on the basis of the affidavit it filed, was directed to construct a new school in Vatva area within two years’ time, where poor and neglected children could study. The order had said, till the school began, the children should get the benefit of Special Training Programme Centre, where they had been provided an alternative. So far, the board has not begun the construction work of the new school, which is proposed to be situated about 1.4 km away from the slum area. While the deadline is to expire in February 2014, for all practical purposes, non-implementation of the order should mean, the school-going sl...

5-yr-old report predicted displacement around Narmada dam despite PESA

Though prepared by Bangalore-based tourism NGO Equations in 2008, the five-year-old report, “Public Purpose?”, suggests how relevant its observations are even today at a time the entire Kevadia Colony, next to the Narmada dam, alongside the surrounding rural areas, are being proposed as a major tourism site in Gujarat. The report had predicted that the tourism project would dispossess tribals of 51 plus villages of their land, even as pointing towards how the project is being promoted in complete violation of the laws which make tribal self-rule mandatory in tribal-dominated areas.  What makes the Equations report, “Public Purposes?”, particularly intriguing is that the tourism project around the Narmada dam is today in the eye of storm, five year after Equations, the tourism NGO, brought it out. It is being developed as part of the Gujarat government decision to build world’s highest statue, Statue of Unity, in the memory of Sardar Patel. Already, work for the project has begun, e...

Will the Sardar statue withstand Narmada water current of 20 feet per second? Top state insider doubts

Apprehensions about viability of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s pet Rs 2,500 crore project, to built as the world’s tallest statue in the memory of Sardar Patel, are now coming from unexpected quarters, albeit “off the record.” One of the topmost government officials, known to be close to Modi, told Counterview on condition of anonymity that several “issues” about practicality of the project – which is part of the overall Modi drive to turn the area surrounding the Narmada dam into a major tourist attraction – have “yet to be resolved”.

"Illegal" release of unused Narmada waters to help North Gujarat rich farmers harms saltpan workers

  The Gujarat government’s failure to develop the Narmada canal network to take irrigation waters to the footsteps of the farmers’ fields in North Gujarat and beyond has begun to harm hundreds of saltpan workers in the Little Rann of Kutch. According to the latest information available from the Rann, the Narmada waters, considered the lifeline of Gujarat, are allowed to flow relentlessly into the Rann’s wide expanses via Banas river without taking into account whom is it may harming. In fact, government officials’ explanation is, in case they do not release the unused waters into the Rann, it might “harm the canal” – hence they have “no other option but to release them.”

Under 5 mortality: Gujarat’s performance worst among rich states, says study

A new study, carried out by a group of scholars led by Prof Usha Ram of the Centre for Global Health Research, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, “Neonatal, 159 month, and under-5 mortality in 597 Indian districts, 2001 to 2012: estimates from national demographic and mortality surveys”, has found that Gujarat’s performance in achieving the millennium development goal (MDG) for bringing down mortality rate of under-five children has been the poorest among the group of 11 rich Indian states. A complete study of all Indian states and their districts, the big richer states focused are – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karantaka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh. The scholars – who include Prabhat Jha, Faujdar Ram, Kaushalendra Kumar, Shally Awasthi, Anita Shet, Joy Pader, Stella Nansukusa and Rajesh Kumar – have found that in Gujarat, in 2012, the under-five mortality rate (U5MR), w...

Agricultural land in Dholera SIR proposed to be reduced from 47 to 12%

The proposed Dholera special investment region is likely to lead to large-scale changes in livelihood patterns, as and when the plan to convert the area into an industrial-urban hub succeeds. The “Draft Environmental Impact Assessment of Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR) In Gujarat” – prepared for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd by the Senes Consultants India Pvt Ltd for environmental public hearing on January 3, 2014 – has suggested that there will be large-scale impact on the livelihood patter in the “sparsely populated” 930 sq km area, consisting of 22 villages, which will form the DSIR, and which is proposed to be converted into a modern industrial urban township over a period of three decades. The report says, “As per the land use/ land cover (LU/LC) studies carried out for Dholera SIR, highest LU/LC class is agriculture land, constituting 47.46 per cent of the study area, comprising of fallow land (39.97 per cent) or cropland (7.49 per cent...

Tridip Suhrud's Mahatma

It was a lovely evening in Ahmedabad, and I decided to go to Gandhi Ashram with a friend to have a chat with a senior Gandhi scholar who sits quietly in a modest, less than 10x10 room – Tridip Suhrud. Suhrud is currently involved in digitizing anything and everything related to Mahatma Gandhi. “We have already digitized nearly five lakh pages and put them online, including Gandhiji’s complete works. Once we have finished digitizing around 25 lakh pages, which would include works by all those who have worked and interacted with Gandhi, you wouldn’t need to go anywhere to do research on Gandhi. All you would need to do is to go online”, he tells me modestly as I begin talking to him. A reputed social activist, Achyut Yagnik, known as an expert on Gujarat and Ahmedabad (Penguin has published his books on the cultural history of both), introduced me to Suhrud in mid-1990s. At that time, Suhrud was a faculty at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Thereafter, I would meet Suhrud a...

Rich farmers of Mandal-Becharaji area "regret" taking part in agitation against special investment region

Rich farmers "opposing" SIR The Gujarat government may have gone on the back foot by excluding 36 of the 44 villages from its proposed special investment region (SIR) in the Mandal -Becharaji area of North Gujarat, but now there is enough reason for it to "cheer". Sharp rise in the land prices in the eight villages that will now be included in the newly-formed SIR – Bhagapura and Shihor of Detroj taluka, Hansalpur-Becharaji, Sitapur, Udhroj, Udhrojpura and Ukardi of Mandal taluka, Chandanki village of Becharaji taluka – is leading to a situation where a section of the rich landowners of rest of the 36 villages are said to be regretting why they protested against SIR.

Of 27 persons hacked to death for using the RTI tool, 'four were from Gujarat alone'

The Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), the state’s premier Right to Information (RTI) campaign body, has expressed dismay over the fact that during the last eight years, as many as 27 RTI whistle blowers were hacked to death all over India, out of which four were from Gujarat. Those who were killed in Gujarat after fighting for their rights under RTI were -- Vishram Dodiya, Amit Jethva, Jabardan Gadhvi, Nadeem Saiyyad. Suggesting that this is a “poor record” for a state which calls itself progressive, a presentation on the eighth anniversary of the RTI Act said, in the country as a whole over 155 whistle blowers were “brutally attacked” in India but survived, of which 24 such attacks took place in Gujarat.

Gujarat govt's programme to reduce maternal deaths, infant mortality failed to deliver, says WHO study

A high-profile study, carried out by half-a-dozen scholars associated with the Duke University, Rand Corporation, World Bank, Stanford University and Stanford Medical School (all from US), and Sambodhi Research and Communications Pvt Ltd (New Delhi), has come to the drastic conclusion that the Chiranjeevi yojna of the Gujarat government, launched to reduce infant and maternal deaths in rural areas, has been largely unsuccessful. Published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO), it suggests that the samples collected by the scholars have put a question mark on the project’s aim of encouraging mothers to deliver in private hospitals, with the government subsidizing the costs.

Dream city Dholera SIR may become even more flood prone due to urbanisation

The new environment impact assessment report proposed for the development of Dholera special investment region, being planned as a “dream city” by the Gujarat government, admits that the area where the new industrial township is being planned is flat, low lying and is prone to flood, and things may aggravate in case of urbanization.  The new draft report, “Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR) in Gujarat”, prepared by SENES Consultants India Pvt Ltd, for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, New Delhi, for environmental public hearing slated on January 3, 2013, has identified “flooding from inundation by the sea and from seasonal monsoon rains” as one of two most important problems to be reckoned with while developing the area. The other problem is that of seismicity. The DSIR is to be developed south of Ahmedabad city on a 900 square kilometer area as a modern industrial township with a population of 20 lakh in th...