A replica: Urbanising Kevadia? In a clear example of how area development authorities, notified by the Gujarat government, behave vis-à-vis local villagers, a letter written by the chief executive officer, Kevadia Area Development Authority (KADA) has threatened the sarpanches of 52 villages adjoining the Narmada dam that they had better agree to hand over their villages for tourism purpose or else they would face dire consequences. The four-line letter was sent to the village sarpanches on March 6, 2013, but strangely it never became an issue till now, when the threat of their eviction from their land became even more apparent.

Has the work for the Garudeshwar weir, proposed about 12 km downstream of the Narmada dam, begun without necessary environmental and social impact assessment clearance of the Narmada Control Authority (NCA)? It would seem so, if one looks closely at the letter written by a senior member of the NCA to its chairman. The letter states, the weir would adversely impact downstream fishing activities as also the environment, about which “no assessment” appears to have been made so far.

Despite the law against manual scavenging, which was made more stringent by Indian Parliament recently, new facts have come to light which go to suggest that Gujarat’s smaller towns are some the worst victims of the despicable age-old practice of manually removing excreta, imposed upon the valimiki community for generations. A recent case of Dholka town, situated around 50 kilometres from Ahmedabad, suggests that despite repeated reminders by NGOs fighting against manual scavenging, the state officialdom has failed come out its slumber, the practice continues till date. The matter first came to light after a petition was filed by Manjula Pradeep, director, Navsarjan Trust, a Gujarat-based human rights, before the National Human Rights Commission (HHRC) in January 2013. She drew attention of the NHRC about “lack of basic facilities in Dholka town”, alleging, “The situation of public dry latrines and vaada toilets is very pathetic. There is no water facility in the toilets. The doors of ...

Dr Rajan While much is being made out from the latest “Report of the Committee for Evolving a Composite Development Index of States”, prepared under the chairmanship of Dr Raghuram R Rajan, new Reserve Bank of India governor, making some states happy while others unhappy, it has something which has gone totally unnoticed. Even as clubbing Gujarat as a “less developed state”, if the recommendations of the report are accepted, Gujarat is likely to get a higher Central allocation than is the case today. Submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, the report recommends that Gujarat should be allocated 3.69 per cent of the Central share as against what was allocated by the Finance Commission – 3.12 per cent, which includes grants and share in Central taxes.

Top environmental group, Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, Vadodara, in a statement, has alleged that the Vadodara Enviro Channel Ltd, which is supposed to treat industrial effluents and dispose it of in the sea via a channel, has been releasing untreated chemical effluents, polluting large number of villages, including those which are situated 56 kilomtres away, right up to Jambusar taluka in Bharuch district. The environmental group has said, “This came to light soon after heavy rains lashed in Vadodara and South Gujarat this week. Things have reached such a point that, mixed with rainwater, effluents reached up to Nondhana and Sarod villages of Jambusar taluka passing through Jaspur, Luna, Ekalbara, Chokari, Tithor, Karakhadi, Dudhvala, Kahnava and Viludara villages.”

In an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sarpanches of several villages in Bhavnagar district have taken strong exception to the way the Government of India pushing for the proposed 6000 MW Mithi Virdi Nuclear Power Plant. Asking him to refrain from signing any agreement with the US government or other corporations and agencies on the proposed N-plant during his visit to the US, the letter says, "The Government of India has reportedly initiated moves to further dilute the Nuclear Liability Act to seal the nuclear deal with the US government. Intervention of the Cabinet Committee on security is being sought to override nuclear liability for Westinghouse."

Top Gujarat-based social scientist, Prof Ghanshyam Shah, has accused the Gujarat government of "overtly and covertly undermined the existing labour laws which provide some protection to workers" in order to invite investments in Gujarat. "The state government has amended labour legislations to provide freedom to industry to employ labour on contract basis", he said, adding, the result is, "Ahmedabad has the lowest labour costs among the major cities in India, with labour costs less than 50 per cent of those in Delhi and 40 per cent below those in Pune."

Prof Dholakia Amidst sharp controversy raging among top scholars on whether high agricultural growth rate of Gujarat agriculture is being cited by a section of economists by choosing one of the worst drought years as the base year (2000-01) (click HERE to read), a senior economist of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, has said come up with a new explanation of the allegedly high growth rate. He has said that a higher price for agricultural product has been the main reason why Gujarat’s agriculture grew at a higher than 10 per cent per annum between 2001 and 2011. IIM-A’s Prof Ravindra Dholakia, who is one of those who has been criticized for choosing a bad drought year as the base, has in a recent paper, “Inter-sectoral Terms of Trade and Aggregate Supply Response in Gujarat and Indian Agriculture”, has said, “Inter-sectoral terms of trade” played a major factor ”in determining the growth performance of agriculture in Gujarat and all India”, whether i...

In a major setback to Gujarat’s efforts to overcome pollution in its environmentally critical regions, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India, has decided to re-impose ban on industrial activity on the industrial cluster of Vapi in South Gujarat, even as continuing with the ban imposed by it in 2010 on the industrial clusters of Ankaleshwar, also in South Gujarat, and Vatva, which is off Ahmedabad. The MoEF order, while re-imposing the ban on industrial activity on Vapi, has said that its Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI), as assessed this year, has failed to show any tendency towards implementing an action plan to end pollution.

Latest data obtained from sources in the Gujarat government have revealed that state agricultural production sharply dipped during the fiscal 2012-13 compared to 2011-12, such it would suggest that the state farm sector remains highly volatile, despite claims to the contrary by the state officialdom and a group of the economists. The figures show that the foodgrains production in Gujarat dipped by a whopping 22.87 per cent, cotton production by 16.34 per cent and oil seeds production by 42.54 per cent. The dip has come against the backdrop of claims by economists Prof Tushaar Shah and Prof Ravindra Dholakia, who have tried to prove in their respective studies that improved farm techniques and decentralized irrigation practices like checkdams and watershed projects have largely mitigated the impact of drought in Gujarat.

A new research paper, released in August 2013, “Groundwater Depletion, Adaptation and Migration: Evidence from Gujarat, India”, prepared by three scholars Ram Fishmany, Meha Jain and Avinash Kishore, published by International Growth Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has suggested how in northern Gujarat, which is one of the most groundwater-scarce regions of India, the gradual depletion of this vital resource has resulted in “shrinking of agriculture and increased migration rates by young males“, especially “those from the dominant land-owning caste”. The study is based on collection of primary data from two of North Gujarat’s talukas, Vijapur and Mansa. Significantly, it does not find no evidence that scarcity of water has led to higher investment in human capital, or in improvement in water use efficiency, despite the existence of technical potential. The scholars comment, “Given the widespread and ongoing depletion of groundwater across India and oth...

Dam-induced submergence in Chikhalda village, MP Welcoming the recent statement by Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh that there would be no more Sardar Sarovar like projects in India, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar has said that “the reasoning and the rationale that such gigantic projects lead to massive displacement of not just families, but whole communities, following forcible acquisition of generations-old land and properties is understandable and acceptable. Although delayed, it is definitely one that shows a realization of the reality of such large project and their impacts. Not only inter-state conflicts, but also other conflicts between the state and its citizens are reasons for review of such conflict-ridden projects”.

A recent study, “Contextualizing Women’s Rights and Entitlements to Land: Insights from Gujarat”, by Meera Velayudhan, senior policy analyst, Centre for Environment and Social Research, published in “Social Change”, a Sage Publication, has said that lack of asset ownership has curtailed women‘s bargaining power in Gujarat, even as depriving them from the benefits of development programmes. This deprivation, it points out, is particularly evident when government schemes for development of land are scrutinized. “These schemes relate to irrigation, land development (watershed) or agricultural credit where possession of land is mandatory”, it says, citing the instance of a survey in Ahmedabad of a lift irrigation scheme requiring an average investment of Rs 12,000 to Rs 18,000, which revealed that 100 per cent beneficiaries in six schemes were men. The study underlines, “Since women lacked ownership of land in their namesake they are unable to gain benefits a major part of their expenditur...

A recent study, “Remittance Needs and Opportunities in India”, sponsored by GIZ, or the German Society for International Cooperation, and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and carried out by Dr YSP Thorat and Dr Howard Jones, has found that formal financial institutions, including nationalized banks, may have taken take firms roots in Gujarat, but when it comes to serving the poor migrants seeking to transfer their remittances, these have failed to deliver. Estimating that “average annual remittance amount is about Rs 20,000”, the study says, even today, “informal remittance channels are pervasive and attractive due to the multiple functions they can serve.” In fact, on-the-spot survey of Rajasthani migrants in Gujarat suggests around 90% of the respondents “carry cash themselves or send it through others.” Pointing towards reasons, the study says, “Most migrants do not have bank account at the destination point where they are working. The migrants valu...

  In a controversial statement, Amnesty International, one of world's foremost human rights organisations, has said that "far-reaching procedural and institutional reform, and not the death penalty, is needed to tackle the endemic problem of violence against women in India". Amnesty was referring to to the death sentence awarded to the four men, convicted of the December 2012 gang-rape by a court in New Delhi. The statement may trigger debate over validity of death sentence and whether it was awarded under the pressure of public sentiment.

Lack of information and data which analyze and document women’s participation in people’s movements remains a grey area at a time when their visibility during mass actions is found to be continuously increasing. Clearly, women’s participation has been on the upswing, and the latest example of this is the fight against the Bhechraji-Mandal special investment region (SIR), in which women made a big difference in the fight against efforts by the Gujarat government to go in for large-scale land acquisition in 44-odd villages, involving 55,000 hecteares. Thanks to women’s intervention, the movement forced the Gujarat government to denotify the SIR’s in 36 villages, confining it to just eight villages of the region. Women have similarly played an important role in the fight against the environmental destruction being cause to their respective regions by the Nirma cement plant near Mahua, the proposed nuclear power plant near Mithi Virdi, both in Bhavnagar district, and the Mundra special eco...

In an astounding revelation, two scholars, Anirban Mitra of the University of Oslo, and Debraj Ray of the New York University, have in their research paper, “Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India”, have found that “a one per cent increase in Hindu per-capita expenditure is predicted to decrease casualties (during communal violence) by anywhere between 3–7 per cent, while the same increase in Muslim per-capita expenditure increases casualties by 3–5 per cent.” While putting these findings in a perspective, the scholars reach the following conclusion: “The fact that Muslim expenditures display a significant and positive connection with later conflict, while Hindu expenditures have a negative link, suggests that Hindu groups have been largely been responsible for Hindu-Muslim violence in India.” The scholars clarify, “We do not mean to suggest that aggression is an intrinsic quality of Hindu groups while inevitable victimization is the lot of the M...

The latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) study , “Corporate Investment: Growth in 2012-13 and Prospects for 2013-14”, prepared in the Corporate Studies Division of the Department of Statistics and Information Management, has found that Gujarat has been pushed to the fifth position in investment destination. Analysing on the basis of capital expenditure intentions of the companies in private and joint business sector, the study has found that four states have overtaken Gujarat – Odisha, which is No 1 investment destination, with 27 per cent of all investments, followed by Maharashtra (19.1 per cent), Punjab (10.5 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (5.6 per cent) and Gujarat (5.4 per cent).

AP1000 reactor Gujarat-based environmental NGO Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti has claimed that the technology being used for the proposed nuclear power plant at Mithi Virdi, Westinghouse AP1000 “is an untested reactor technology”, and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already “raised several technical doubts about the reactors, which were given a nod to by non-technical committee members of the NRC.” In a statement, issued jointly with the Bhavnagar Jilla Gram Bachao Samiti and the Gujarat Anu-urja Mukti Andolan, the NGO said this is particularly dangerous as the “exact location of the Nuclear Power Plant (Westinghouse AP1000) is just a few km away from Alang Shipbreaking Yard”.

Despite huge claims by the Gujarat government about the positive impact of the 10-point programme on the migration process in the tribal areas of the state, recent expert observations as also research works on a district which is exclusively tribal, the Dangs, suggest that though the region may have received better infrastructure facilities, such as roads, the tribals’ livelihood issues remain unresolved like before. In one of the most recent observations, Janmejaya Mishra, an anthropologist by profession working with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), Ahmedabad, has shown how Dangs’ tribal population faced an “endangered livelihood”, with large number of them continuing to migrate like before. Giving the instance of a tribal named Kailash of Timerthava village in Subir area of the Dangs district, Mishra writes in his blog , this tribal has been migrating with his wife to Belanpur near Mandvi for last few years, and continues to do this even today. “He and his wife work ther...

Meera Mathew, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India, has said that the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, passed in Parliament, has several major flaws. In her latest  opinion  on the subject, the senior lawyer particularly pointed towards Chapter IV of the bill, which shows that it entirely deals with the identification of manual scavengers in urban areas and their rehabilitation.

The Gujarat government’s just-released high-level report, “Gujarat State Chemical Disaster Management Plan (CDMP)”, has said that while formation of new rules and regulations as also enactment of new laws is important to fight chemical disasters, a more serious and immediate concern is regarding existence of what it calls a “serious gap” in enforcing existing rules and regulations to fight them. The problem has arisen particularly because, says the report, “currently, no single agency or department is made responsible for coordinated response for chemical emergency. In practice, the collector is expected to fulfill the role of coordinating response.” Pointing out that “the international best practices are to have a single agency responsible for coordinating response of multiple response agencies during disasters, ensuring that individual response agencies are prepared to required level, and develop integrated response capability for the state”, it wants the Gujarat State Disaster Manag...