It was October 29, 2009 evening, around 5.00 pm. I had just reached my office in Gandhinagar after my routine round of Sachivalaya. A journalist-colleague, representing a vernacular daily, came down to me and told me that Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, back from Russia, was suffering from swine flu. As a newsperson, I didn’t believe what he said, yet I tried to frantically find out whether this was true, but all in vain. Then sitting in the same building, Akhbar Bhavan, this journalist told me frankly, he had filed a story about this to his paper, but it was not being carried as his bosses in Ahmedabad found the information “humbug”. Hence, in retaliation he had decided to pass on the “exclusive” information, to which he alone was privy, to me and others.  Thanks to this journalist, several newspapers quietly pushed out a news item about Modi suffering from swine flu as some sort of rumour with a punch-line (not uncommon) that there was no confirmation from official sources....

In a major expose, a top consulting firm, Prestels, which is an expert in industrial safety and health, disaster management, environmental consulting and energy audit, has ranked two of Gujarat’s industrial clusters – Ankaleshwar and Vapi – as the worst polluters out of a total 88 clusters, for which it has collected data. A recent report submitted to the Planning Commission to India by Sumeet Patil, project manager, Prestels, has found that Ankaleshwar tops in comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) with a score of 88.5, closely followed by Vapi’s 88.09. The next high polluter is Ghaziabad in UP with a CEPI of 87.37, followed by Chandrapur in Maharashtra with 83.88, Korba in Chhattisgarh with 83.0, Bhiwadi in Rajasthan with 82.91, Angur Talcher in Orissa with 82.09, Vellore (North Arcot) in Tamil Nadu with 81.79, and Ludhiana in Punjab with 81.66.

  A recent survey has made the drastic revelation that nearly 20 per cent of all unorganized sector manufacturing enterprises in Gujarat’s urban areas are sick, belying those who believe that sickness has not touched the state’s lower rung manufacturing. Indeed, if the survey is to be believed, the sickness has hit women the most, as they own majority of these enterprises. In fact, the data, which found their way in the National Sample Survey (NSS) report, “Operational Characteristics of Unincorporated Non-agricultural Enterprises (Excluding Construction) in India”, released in November 2012, suggest that Gujarat leads among Indian states in this sickness.

Top Gujarat government public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals (GSFC), has been charged for fleecing the farmers by not providing them with fertilizers at a subsidized rate, despite the fact that it was bound to do it under Government of India (GoI) rules. In a letter dated March 18, 2013, the Union ministry of chemicals and fertilizers, has regretted that “the subsidy paid by the government to GSFC has not been passed on to the farmers by the company”, adding, “This (has) defeated the very purpose for which the subsidy is paid by the government.”

Taking a serious view of large number of premature deaths of workers working in the agate industry in Gujarat, especially Khambhat, a recent analytical article released by an American news site, GlobalPost, has warned that “much of the inexpensive jewelry in US malls features polished ‘agate’ stones, which are leaving a trail of death in India.” Written by Jason Overdorf and titled “How the shiny 'agate' stones in jewelry and rosary beads are killing workers”, the article regrets, “Nobody keeps official statistics for India's total agate exports.”

Much against the loud claims of the Gujarat government of the state being No 1 in providing jobs in the country, latest figures, made available in the state’s new budget documents, have made the drastic revelation that employment opportunities in the organized manufacturing sector, instead of increasing, have actually decelerated. The document, “Development Programme 2013-14”, released in the Gujarat state assembly, shows that in one year, between June 2011 and June 2012, there has been a deceleration in the total number of employed persons in the organized manufacturing sector by minus ( -- ) 0.68 per cent. In fact, figures suggest that this deceleration has come about in the aftermath of steady fall in employment growth in the sector over the last five years. 

This piece of news should make power policy makers of the Gujarat government – wanting to put Gujarat at 11.2 per cent rate of growth per year for five consecutive years, 2012-17 – set out to think if they were not hyping out their claims a little too high. Latest information available from authoritative sources has suggested that Gujarat would be back to single digit growth for the second consecutive year, in 2012-13, which is quite unprecedented in the last more than a decade. In fact, available figures suggest, that the actual rate of growth of Gujarat economy is all set to be the worst since 2006-07.

  The Independent People’s Tribunal (IPT), inquiring into on the functioning of the Gujarat State Human Rights Commission (GHRC), has recommended that the GHRC should have its own investigative wing composed by personnel independent from the security forces and not from the same police force against which cases abound. Based on queries sent to the GHRC and the latter's reply, the report underlines, "The state of Gujarat has witnessed large number of human rights violations over the past few decades and as the protector and safeguards The GHRC has completely failed to discharge its duty towards the people, was the common echo during the meet. In the neo-liberal economic era the rights have been grossly violated and the victims have not been protected."

Martin Macwan This happened in 1995. Prof Indira Hirway, then working at the Gandhi Labour Institute, Ahmedabad, as senior faculty, handed over to me over a study she had just prepared on foreign funding of Gujarat NGOs, which I promptly reported in the Times of India without thinking about its repercussions. A highly sensitive issue, many activists were extremely angry with the report, more so because till then I had reported only on those realities of Gujarat which activists tried showing me — poor wages, caste divisions, impact of 'development' on vulnerable sections. They had found in me a "great friend" on whom one could rely upon.  However, this report seemed to embarrass them. So much so, that the then Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR) director, late Prof Pravin Visaria, a top demographer, angrily refused entry to me in a seminar on development which he had organised with Gujarat NGO support. "You have already obliged us enough by your piece...

Ania Loomba This event took me back to my good old student days – mid-1970s. One of those who played a key role in the campaign against Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s aborted video-address to the Wharton India Economic Forum happens to be Ania Loomba, an active member of the left-wing student body in Delhi University to which I also belonged during my post-graduation days. When Ania’s name appeared, I instantly informed about it to two of my other student-colleagues, Neeraj Nanda, who edits Melbourne-based South Asia Times, and Khursheed Latif, a Mumbai-based film-maker, who spends half the time in US. Neeraj was happy, saying it was “great news”, forwarding me her email ID and complete profile, while Khursheed curiously phoned me up to know more about Ania, and what she was doing. Ania is right now Catherine Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and her academic interests are wide ranging, including histories of race and colonialism, postcolonial studi...

A recent Policy Research Working Paper of the World Bank’s Sustainable Development Network Finance Economics and Urban Department, “Ahmedabad: More but Different Government for ‘Slum Free’ and Livable Cities” by a team of experts led by consultants Patricia Clarke Annez and Alain Bertaud, has reached the drastic conclusion that the flow of new private formal housing of all types is very low in Ahmedabad, probably only about 10 percent of total new production, which is itself only 2.4 percent of the existing stock. Therefore, it insists, “Shifting the share of new private housing into ‘affordable housing’ through reservations or public private partnership schemes such as in-situ slum rehabilitation will have only a very small impact on the large share of the population living in slums.”