Several villagers surrounding the Kevadia colony, the place where the Narmada dam is situated in South Gujarat, have come together to launch struggle under the banner of Kevadiya Area Development Authority (KADA) Virodhi Manch to oppose implementation of the notication, issued eight years ago, for developing water park, hotels, golf course, camping grounds, trekking trails, boating facilities, sunset viewpoints, resort clubs, etc in the region. "Originally this was planned on the lands of 16 villages. Now this has been expanded to be built on lands acquired from 70 villages", a KADA Virodhi Manch statement issued in the wake of a meeting on May 27 at Kevadia colony said.

A just-released report, “Reducing Inequality: Learning Lessons for the Post-1015 Agenda. India Case Study”, by Save the Children has regretted that “the rapid economic growth that Gujarat has experienced over the past decade has been of the nature of exclusionary growth where goals like social equality, sustainable livelihoods, access to education and health, justice and peace have been abandoned in the race for high-speed growth.”

A fresh survey, carried out by Ahmedabad-based rights group, Centre for Social Justice January between January and March 2013, and sponsored by Action Aid, has revealed that thousands of victims of Gujarat riots, who still remained displaced a decade after the holocaust, are unable to return to their original habitat as they fear they will not be protected. Carried out among 464 internally displaced persons (IDPs), a term coined by the United Nations to identify those who are forced to leave their habitat because of violent situations, as many as 364 of the surveyed IDPs continue living in rehabilitation camps, and another 100 IDPs live in alternative housing provided to them in different towns in eight districts of Gujarat.

 In a major exposure of the working of the Gujarat government, a right to information (RTI) reply to a senior activist has revealed that as many as 3,125 Dalit undergraduate students of Ahmedabad district alone have not been paid scholarship despite the fact that they were entitled to it. "The matter came to light after earlier attempts to get information through RTI on scholarship to Dalit students failed to yield result", said Kirit Rathod of the Navsarjan Trust, a Gujarat-based human rights NGO.

A recent study, titled “Are Disparities In Indian Agriculture Growing?”, by Gursharan Singh Kainth, Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies, has glaringly exposed the “high growth” story of Gujarat agriculture. The senior academic has found that growth rate in productivity of agriculture, at constant prices of 2004-05, has actually gone down in the state over the two decades. It was 4.7 per cent in 1990-91 to 1999-2000. But it went down to 3.4 per cent in the next decade, 2000-01 to 2009-10. Kainth has further said that the growth rate per hectare agricultural productivity at constant prices (2004-05), too, went down from 5.07 per cent in 1999-2000 to 2.09 per cent in 2009-10.

About four years ago, in 2009, three well-known experts, Ashok Gulati, Tushaar Shah and Ganga Shreedhar, published a paper, “Agriculture performance in Gujarat since 2000: Can it be a divadandi (lighthouse) for other states?”. Well-researched, the paper was prepared for the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), both world-renowned institutes.

Gujarat is witnessing perhaps one of the highest booms in the real estate sector. Not without reason, it is also attracting a huge population from vulnerable sections to work at construction sites. Despite existing laws banning child labour in hazardous sectors, the case of a 12-year-old boy who fell victim to a major accident, suggests officials and employers remain indifferent. This is the story of a 12-year-old boy, Hitesh Jemalbhai Machchaar, belonging to Sitavati village in Jhalod taluka of the predominantly Dahod district of Gujarat, who suffered from a major accident on July 15, 2011 at a construction site in Surat, which is the state’s second biggest city, next only to Ahmedabad. Hitesh’s parents and relatives, who are marginal farmers, migrate to Surat every year to work as construction workers. In July 2011 Hitesh accompanied his uncle, Choklabhai, who migrated to Surat to work at as a construction worker in Surat. On the fateful date, the contractor, Sureshbhai – finding H...

The last one decade appears to have witnessed a major change in Gujarat’s rural scenario. While there has been a sharp rise in the number of agricultural workers, perhaps one of the highest in India, there has been a simultaneous near-stagnation in the number of cultivators in the state. While it would be for economists and other experts to conclude what exactly this trend suggests, clearly, the latest Census of India data for 2011, released in early May 2013, go to suggest that there has been a sharp proletarianization of Gujarat’s rural areas, unprecedented in recent decades. The Census of India data show that in 2011 there were 45 lakh able-bodied population of Gujarat who had agricultural labour as their “main” activity. While this forms approximately 22 per cent of those who qualify themselves in the definition of “main workers” of Gujarat, what is significant is that the rise of agricultural “main workers” was to the tune of 50 per cent between the two censuses – of 2001 and 2011...

Cat is finally out of the bag. If early estimates in the top corridors of the Gujarat government are any indication, during 2012-13, or the last financial year, the state’s agricultural growth rate slipped into the negative after an average of the last five year plan (2007-12) showed it had already been pushed to a single digit (4.8 per cent). “Soon it will be announced that the agriculture slipped to around minus ( -- ) 13 per cent in 2012-13. In certain places in Gujarat, especially Saurashtra, agricultural growth slipped to minus ( -- ) 22 per cent”, senior state bureaucrat said, adding, “Already, crop failure on account drought during 2012-13 has been assessed to be around 50 per cent.”

There have been numerous arguments in favour of improving and upgrading the infrastructure of slum settlements, many of which are interrelated. It has been shown by studies that improving living conditions can bring gains to the quality of life, health, and productivity of slum residents. As a recent study by Benjamin Stanwix, a South African scholar, for Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, Ahmedabad, states, “ It can help to break the cycle of poverty, ease the burden on women, and can also be a public good with positive spill-over effects on the wider economy and society. These arguments have been discussed in more detail below.” The study, titled “Urban Slums in Gujarat and Rajasthan: Study of Basic Infrastructure in Seven Cities” (2009) notes, life in the absence of adequate access to basic services such as water and ablutions can be precarious. It is detrimental to health, safety and the dignity of communities. It quotes a UN Habitat study which shows that lack of safe drinking water and...

The Gujarat government is all set to form Gujarat Affordable Housing and Slum Rehabilitation Authority (GAHSRA), with sweeping powers, under the chairmanship of the the state chief minister to “manage” and “develop” state slums in the state's urban areas. Draft of the Gujarat Slum Rehabilitation and Redevelopment Policy, 2013, in my possession, at the same time, seeks to add yet another bureaucratic ladder at the local urban self-governing level under the chairmanship of municipal commissioner in municipal corporation area, chairman of the urban development in the urban development authority area, and the district collector in municipality area. The new structure would be called Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA)..

An anti-woman government resolution (GR) remains in currency in Gujarat for two years, yet nobody seems to to care. The Gujarat government issued this surprising GR two years ago, which seeks to undermine the authority of the woman as head of the family. The GR, issued on May 6, 2011, yet remained unnoticed for so long till a right to information (RTI) application was filed on December 25, 2012 by Pankti Jog of the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), Gujarat’s RTI NGO. Jog says, “The surprising GR comes from the department of food and civil supply. It says that woman can hold ration card in her name only if a male member of the family expresses his willingness.”

Has the Gujarat government adopted a "go slow" tactic vis-a-vis the gruesome incident in Thangarh, Surendrangar district, which took place in September last year, in which three Dalit youths died in police firing? Senior Dalit activist Kirit Rathod of NGO Navsarjan Trust appears to think this is very much the case, "While the Gujarat Human Rights Commission (GHRC) directed, on March 23, 2013, that the director-general of police (DGP) and the CID crime, who sit in Police Bhawan in Gandhinagar, to immediately provide a complete report on the firing incident, even a month after the order the state's top cops have not act", he has said in a statement.

Gujarat’s urban poor has gone up from 4.3 million in 2004-05 and 4.5 million in 2009-10 as a corollary to the state’s high-speed urbanization (35.83 per cent urban population in the last one decade, highest in the country) is enough reason to believe that Gujarat’s slum population would also be rising at an even higher pace. If Census of India’s 2011 figures suggest that Gujarat’s 42.6 per cent population lives in urban areas, a 2009 study, “Status of Urban Slums in Gujarat and Rajasthan: A Case Study of Seven Cities”, carried out by Benjamin Stanwix of the University of Cape Town, for the Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, Ahmedabad, has estimated that the “population of the slums in Ahmedabad has been growing faster than that of the overall population, almost doubling in the two decades since 1976 to over 41 per cent of the total population.” Other experts believe, as of today, as of today, around 45 per cent of Ahmedabad lives in slums. It may be lower than Mumbai, where nearly two-thirds ...

An agate worker After failing to implement its own government resolution (GR) on paying Rs 1 lakh as compensation to those who die because of silicosis, a deadly lungs disease which is common among agate polishing units in Khambhat town and taluka of Gujarat, the Gujarat government is now planning a new one to "amend" its error, which allowed insurance companies to cover only those under group insurance scheme who die in an accident. While nobody in the government has any idea of what this new GR would be and whether it would be able remove the "technical hitch" which supposedly is the chief reason why the year-old GR could not be put into action, voluntary organisations working with the silicosis victims believe, the year was "lost" because of official indifference.

Ahead of his proposed address to 18 US cities via satellite, scheduled for May 12,  Association for India's Development (AID), a US and Canada-based NGO, has asked Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to have a closer look at how vulnerable sections of society are suffering in his own state. In a letter to Modi  and state revenue minister Anandiben Patel, 54 AID volunteers, who support civil society efforts in India have asked him, in a signed letter, to urgently look into the plight of the salt pan workers in the Little Rann of Kutch. "You must already be aware of the recent untimely and heavy rainfall in the Little Rann of Kutch and surrounding areas", the letter reminds the CM.

The Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), Gujarat’s foremost Right to Information (RTI) NGO, has revealed that there is a whopping 41.2 per cent violation of RTI norms by the first appellate authorities (FAAs), who happen to be Gujarat government officials, which leads to a large number of cases piling up with the Gujarat Information Commission. Last year, it has said in a statement, there were in all 30,491 RTI appeals or complaints, out of which 19,130 could be disposed of.

The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, has, without doubt, become a major milestone to ensure that children aged 6 to 14 are able to get free and compulsory education. However, initially, Gujarat was one state which seemed extremely subdued in implementing it. In January 2012, it was one of the three states – West Bengal and Karnataka were the other two – who had failed to come up with rules to implement the Act. This came to light when the Government of India asked West Bengal, Gujarat and Karnataka to notify RTE rules in order to begin implementing the Act. Then human resources development minister Kapil Sibal wrote letters to these states, asking them to notify the rules in the “larger interest of the students”. By that time, as many as 30 states and Union territories had already notified their respective state rules or adopted central rules. Model rules under the RTE Act were shared with all states at a meeting of state education secretaries, held as early as in January 2010, and ...

Not that economists have not noticed urban poverty in Gujarat; but they have focused on urban Gujarat in passing. For instance, there is a calculation that the percentage of urban poverty in Gujarat during the second half of the decade ending 2010 has gone down by 2.2 per cent, from 20.1 per cent to 17.9 per cent. Which means, the annual poverty reduction in the state has been just about 0.44 per cent. Notably, this is lower than a dozen out of 20 major states, including Madhya Pradesh, which saw a whopping 12.2 per cent reduction in urban poverty, followed by Orissa (11.7), Rajasthan (9.8), Maharashtra (7.3), Tamil Nadu (6.9), Karnataka (6.3), Kerala (6.3), Andhra Pradesh (5.7), Chhattisgarh (4.6), Bihar (4.3), Uttar Pradesh (2.4) and West Bengal (2.4). The all-India average percentage in poverty reduction is 4.6. Obviously, huge investments and a high growth rate have not helped Gujarat’s downtrodden sections, in any way. In fact, one economist has calculated, in absolute terms, the ...

Gujarat’s rural poverty, if a section of the senior economists are to be believed, has gone down considerably. Prof Bibek Debroy, an economist who is particularly close to the present Gujarat establishment, has pointed towards how, thanks to a very high growth rate in rural areas, poverty reduction has come about as a “trickle-down effect.” Quoting National Sample Survey (NSS) figures, he says, “The real story is in rural Gujarat, where there has been a very sharp drop in poverty, significantly more than all-India trends. In rural Gujarat, the benefits of growth have trickled down. In 2004-05, the BPL number for rural Gujarat was 9.2 million. That’s still a large number, but is significantly smaller than the 12.9 million in 2004-05.” Even then, he is forced to admit, in his latest book, “Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development”, that “people may also be poor because they are stuck in subsistence-level agriculture and have no other employment opportunities.” Despite this, he is ...

The Gujarat government’s powerful state public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Public Corporation (GSPC), has faced a major environmental hurdle, putting its Rs 2,030 crore project to go in for commercial production of the gas it claims to have found in the KG Basin, off Andhra coast, in jeopardy. Asking the GSPC to “defer” the project till certain conditions are fulfilled, sources in Gujarat’s energy and petrochemicals department said, the expert appraisal committee (EAC) of the Union ministry of environment and forests has refused to give blanket coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance for laying down underground gas pipeline, optical fibre cable (OFC), an effluent disposal pipeline – all of which is proposed to pass through CRZ area of Yanam-Puducherry, along the Andhra Pradesh coast – as also the proposal to set up an onshore gas terminal off Mallavaram and a process-cum-living quarter platform at offshore in KG Basin, Andhra Pradesh.

A gyan shala school in Ahmedabad The Gujarat High Court, taking a serious view of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) School Board for failing to implement the right to education (RTE) Act provisions for 8,449 slum-dwelling children, has said that the board is “not following” the order and advice of the State Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) authorities to implement RTE norms. It ordered “immediate implementation” of RTE norms for these Gyan Shala children, who faced the predicament of becoming school dropouts only because the local body authorities refused to provide them a general register (GR) number, which would enable them to get admission in any school of their liking, government or private.

 Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Purshottam Rupala has threatened that he will take top human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, founder of NGO Anhad, to the court of law for “defaming” him. In a statement posted to Counterview, he has said, “Hashmi has leveled a very serious charge of forging the documents against me, which I deny. My letter to the Prime Minister was based on facts. I call upon Hashmi to retract her statement and issue an apology, immediately, failing which I will not hesitate to take a legal actions against her.”

Fresh indications have emerged which go to suggest that the latest economic reforms, under the “neo-liberal” guise, have not in any way worked in favour of the disadvantaged sections of the rural population in Gujarat. The latest National Sample Survey (NSS) data, put out by the Government of India, show that only 1.2 per cent Gujarat’s scheduled tribe (ST) households and 2.7 per cent of the state’s scheduled caste (SC) households owned more than four hectares (ha) of land. This is in sharp contrast to a huge 17 per cent of higher castes owning more than four ha of land. The figures find their place in “Employment and Unemployment Situation among Social Groups in India”, published in September 2012.

 A recent research paper, “Involuntary displacement: An analysis of the role and contribution of non-government organizations to the Narmada project affected communities in Western India” by Hinal Pandya of the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, Australia has found that 56 per cent of respondents were “satisfied” with the NGOs’ assistance in rehabilitating the victims of the project, while only 39 per cent appreciated the government’s assistance.

Shabnam Hashmi Making a serious allegation, top human rights NGO, Anhad, founded in the wake of the communal riots in Gujarat, has said that senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Purshottam Rupala "forged documents" to defame the organisation. In a statement, it has said, Anhad has been under "concerted attack" for the last few months, and the attack is lead by Rupala, who has written letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against Anhad, even as leaking "half-baked information against Anhad to various small time websites assumingly supported by them."