Farmer leaders of Gujarat have come together in solidarity to express in one voice that they oppose the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill. They have asserted that under no circumstances they can afford to lose their freedom and sovereignty and risk the takeover of their food, farms and livelihood by multinational companies like Monsanto. The meeting was attended by farmer leaders such as Badribhai Joshi of Gujarat Khedut Samaj, Prafulbhai Senjaliya of the Organic Farming Cell of Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, and Sarvadaman Patel, president, Organic Farming Association of India and Kapil Shah of the Jatan Trust.

Given India’s low per capita consumption base, food and beverages continue to account for a large part of any households’ final consumption expenditure. If economists are to be believed, the distribution of consumption expenditure between food and non-food items reflects the actual economic well-being of the population. In general, poor households are expected to spend substantially more on food items as against non-food items. Indeed, the share of expenditure on food items is expected to decline with development and economic prosperity. The latest monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) figures, released by the National Sample Survey (NSS) in its report “Key Indicators of Household Consumer Expenditure in India”, released in June 2013, suggests this trend. Whether it is India or its states, the percentage spending on food items has gone down across the board, which signifies overall prosperity of the population, and the ability of people to spend more on non-food items. NSS identifies n...

The latest National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) figures, released recently by India’s most powerful statistical body, has once again reiterated the long-standing view that Gujarat’s salaried classes as well as casual workers earn much less the all-India average, in fact most other Indian states. Whether it urban areas or rural areas, the NSSO has found that things are not very different for Gujarat. While rural regular wage earners and salaried employees make up not a very big percentage of the working population in Gujarat, the survey, which was carried out over two years, 2011 and 2012, suggests that rural Gujarat’s regular wage earners and salaried employees, on an average, earned Rs 254 per day, as against the all-India average of Rs 298.96. Several “backward” states were found to be performing better in their respective rural areas — Bihar (Rs 411.82), Assam (Rs 302.22), Rajasthan (Rs 305.59), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 276.13), Jharkhand (Rs 478.61). In fact, the survey shows that r...

A Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)-sponsored study has found strong discrimination against poorer sections of women -- irrespective of whether they belong to scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST) or general category -- in the delivery of maternal health care services in Gujarat.

In a recent analysis, Shipra Nigam, consultant economist with the Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, has said that “there is little that is new in Gujarat’s developmental model.” Quoting extensively from a book, “Poverty Amidst Prosperity: Essays on the Trajectory of Development in Gujarat”, published this year, Nigam says, “Gujarat’s market led growth operates within the new-liberal paradigm that has for some decades been touted by the IMF, World Bank and inc as the panacea for all ills in developing countries. It is a frame that has been widely contested, critiqued and discredited for its abysmal failure in bringing in sustainable, equitable and participatory growth within the developing world.”

A recent Planning Commission-sponsored study, “Refining State Level Comparisons in India”, by Pranjul Bhandari, who works as economist at the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, has found that a “refined” analysis of the performance across 21 major states suggests that Gujarat ranks 16th in health, 14th in education and 11th in infrastructure. The analysis is already creating flutter against the backdrop of the claim by those favouring Gujarat’s neoliberal model, that state’s alleged poor performance in the social sector is more an outcome of “fudged” figures, dished out by the Government India’s different ministries. The “refined” analysis for comparing states is considered a new and a more scientific methodology, adopted in order to find out how well states perform given the availability of resources at their disposal. It differs from the “raw” analysis, under which Gujarat ranked 12th in health, 10th in education and 6th in infrastru...

In a major setback to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's proposal to collect iron from farmers all over India to build the Statue of Unity in the name of Sardar Patel in the downstream of the Narmada dam, a a top aide of the Gujarat CM has said that the iron from the farmers “cannot be used for constructing the world's highest statue.” The aide, who wanted not to be named, told www.counterview.net that the “iron collected from the farmers will obviously be of different types and suspected quality. Some of it may be simply scrap or junk. Obviously, it cannot be used for constructing a quality Sardar statue.” 

A new study, “Inequity in maternal health care service utilization in Gujarat: analyses of district-level health survey data”, carried out by four prominent scholars, Deepak Saxena, Ruchi Vangani, Dileep V. Mavalankar, and Sarah Thomsen, and published in a Swedish research journal, Global Health Action, has reached the drastic conclusion that “inequities in maternal health care utilization persist in Gujarat”, despite the Gujarat being “one of the most economically developed states of India.” It underlines, “Structural determinants like caste group, wealth, and education were all significantly associated with access to the minimum three antenatal care (ANC) visits, institutional deliveries, and use of any modern method of contraceptive. There is a significant relationship between being poor and access to less utilization of ANC services independent of caste category or residence.” The scholars comment, “Two decades after the launch of the Safe Motherhood campaign, India still accounts...

The state-sponsored child enrollment drive, shala praveshotsav, stressed on enrolling children from the backward sections in Gujarat. Interview with a few social workers suggests how it would have no lasting impact on educating kids belonging to the backward rural areas surrounding the Little Rann of Kutch. Even as the din around the three-day state-sponsored shala praveshotsav, which has claimed cent per cent enrolment at the primary level in Gujarat, is starting to fade, questions are being raised on how to retain those who have been enrolled. A case in point is enrollment of children during the festival in the rural areas that surround the Little Rann of Kutch. The praveshotsav took place in all the 108 villages that border the Little Rann. Helped by community based organizations and voluntary agencies, nearly all village children were, indeed, “enrolled”. But, apparently, this appears to the end of the roadmap for these small kids. Already, the view is getting strong that most of t...

With the schooling season having begun, activists of the Agariya Hit Rakshak Manch (AHRM), who are active among saltpan workers of the Little Rann of Kutch, have expressed strong apprehension that children or around 14,000 saltpan workers, who propose to shift to the Little Rann to produce salt in September, may turn into out-of-school kids. While the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a Central scheme, runs makeshift schools for these children, the kids are not offered any normal facilities which primary school kids should get.

Another three-day Gujarat government-sponsored Shala Praveshotsav, a “festival” involving the entire state officialdom, starting with the Gujarat chief minister, meant to enroll children at the primary level, has come to an end. An official release at the end of the festival claimed, “The state-wide enrollment drive gained great momentum under the leadership of chief minister Narendra Modi, who himself graced the mahotsav in Mendarada block of Chiroda, Samadhiyala and Rajesar primary school at Junagadh district.” The official release claimed, on the third day, a total of 1,56,884 children in the age group 5+ years were enrolled, comprising 76,802 girls and 80,082 boys. It added, “Thus, in the three days of the enrollment drive, a total of 4,80,556 children consisting of 2,35,263 girls and 2,45,293 boys have been enrolled. Saying that ministers, “IAS, IPS and IFS officers of the state attended programmes at various backward blocks of Gujarat” for the festival, the release sought to cele...

The Jamin Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (JAAG) -- which on June 18 led a well-attended farmers’ rally starting in North Gujarat’s Bhechraji region, and ending at the state capital Gandhinagar after passing through Sanand town and Ahmedabad city -- has warned the Gujarat government against any attempt to forcibly acquire 50,885 hectares of land in order to set up special investment region (SIR) in the region. In a memorandum submitted to state revenue minister Anandiben Patel, JAAG has said, “Bhechraji-Mandal SIR notification dated May 14 is in our hand. The map of the notification suggests that more than one lakh people of 44 villages of four talukas will be adversely affected because of SIR. We are not going to take it lying down.”

Even as the Gujarat government is planning to come up with a new slum policy 2013, with “rehabilitation” of the slum-dwellers with the help of private developers as the key thrust, available literature suggests that any effort to uproot slum dwellers would mean further heightening their already vulnerable status. Recently, in a paper, “Low Carbon Green Growth Roadmap for Asia and the Pacific”, providing a roadmap for citywide slum upgradation, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) said that “the poor and the vulnerable in cities and towns can aspire to have security, shelter, basic infrastructure and services with citywide slum upgrading”, adding, “Up to 35 per cent of Asia-Pacific urban residents in slums with proper urban planning can have adequate shelter and basic services through proper urban planning.” UNESCAP believes, this would be possible, only in case of “on-site slum upgrading” which would “mean improving the physical, social, econ...

A recent workshop, held under the auspices of the Dalit Hak Rakshak Manch (DHRM), an Ahmedabad-based NGO working on child rights issues, has found that the Gujarat government is showing "gross indifference" towards the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), a Government of India scheme floated in 2009 for the vulnerable sections of children, who, finding themselves in certain special conditions, are victims of abuse, neglect, exploitation, abandonment and separation from family.

Top technocrat Dr Anil Kane, who gave the ambitious project for damming the Gulf of Khambhat the now popular name of Kalpasar more than two decades ago by conceptualising it, has heavily come down on the Gujarat government for making the entire project “unviable and unworkable.” Talking with me, Dr Kane said, a major factor that will make the project redundant is that, under the new project design, the Narmada river has been removed from the Kalpasar reservoir. “From where will you get water if Narmada river is not made part of Kalpasar?”, he wondered.

Rajendra Joshi The draft new slum policy 2013, called “Gujarat Sum Rehabilitation and Redevelopment Policy”, overlooks the issue of slum upgradation altogether, despite the fact that it was found to be working successfully in Ahmedabad in 1990s. The government has not cared to float the draft policy for public debate, which has further constrained any meaningful dialogue on it. The Gujarat government is mulling over the new Slum Policy 2013, and its draft, which has been prepared, has mooted changes from the earlier policy of 2010 in order to make it attractive for the urban poor, who were promised 50 lakh houses in the BJP manifesto during the December 2012 elections. And, in order to provide teeth to do it, it has decided to “manage” slums by making the Gujarat chief minister as head a new authority, Gujarat Affordable Housing and Slum Rehabilitation Authority (GAHSRA), which will have all the powers to “decide and/ or guide matters related to land use, town planning, master planning...

In a major loss of face for the Gujarat government, the State Information Commission has ordered the state social justice and empowerment department to hand over a copy of a report on untouchability in Gujarat's villages within a month. About a month and a half ago, giving a strange explanation, the state government declared that providing information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act on prevalence of untouchability in the state will lead to “a sharp rise in incidence of enmity in the rural areas of Gujarat.”

The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development on the basis of reports alleging fierce caste-based discrimination and violence in the hostels of Dalit students at several places in India. The Commission observed that the news reports, if true, reflects “widespread prevalence of discrimination towards Dalits in the educational institutions driving them to take extreme steps”, adding, “The state has the responsibility and duty to ensure that an atmosphere is created in educational institutions wherein everyone, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, can pursue studies. The Constitution of India has also elaborate provisions to stop discrimination against the Dalits.”

Prajul Bhandari A new Planning Commission-sponsored study, “Refining State Level Comparisons in India”, by Pranjul Bhandari, economist at the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and a chief brain behind the Economic Survey 2012-13, says that her “refined” analysis has found that Gujarat stands 16th in health index, 12th in education index and 11th in infrastructure index among 21 major Indian states. Bhandari has arrived at these figures on the basis of a new methodology she adopts by “refining” raw data in order to find out how well do states perform in the context of the resources at their disposal.

Is discrimination of Dalits in the delivery of basic services an international human rights issue which needs a much deeper exposure than has been the case so far? The question is significant, because, despite lobbying at various levels on the part of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) during recent years, the Government of India has strongly refused to acknowledge caste discrimination as an international human rights issue, which should be dealt with in the UN. Whether it is water, sanitation or health, the discrimination continues, and government sops have failed to do anything to subdue its impact. A recent report  highlighted how discrimination in the provision of water in the Indian state of Gujarat has meant untold hardships to Dalit women, who cannot access water from the common source in Ahmedabad’s rural areas. This is quite in line with what a UN expert who visited India in 2012. In her annual report, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe d...