In the wee hours, the powerful Gujarat government administration cracked down on activists and villagers around the Narmada dam who are protesting against the state government’s refusal to give any assurance to 70-odd villages that their land would not be acquired for the sake of the tourism project in the downstream of the dam. The crackdown took place ahead of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s stone-laying ceremony of the Statue of Unity, envisaged by him as the tallest statue in the world, about three times higher than New York’s Statue of Liberty. The stone laying ceremony is marked with the birthday of Sardar Patel, in whose memory the statue has been proposed.

Amidst fresh controversy over the Gujarat government’s decision to go ahead with the construction of Garudeshwar weir across the Narmada river, allegedly without environmental clearance, a top official in Gandhinagar Sachivalaya has confided to me that the “real purpose of the weir is to supply Narmada water to the industrial complexes in the nearby regions, especially in Bharuch district.” The official, who did not want to be named, said, “The state-owned Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) has been asked to work out final details of the industrial areas that would need the water.”

In a recent analysis, well-known academic, Prof Himanshu, who is assistant professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and visiting fellow at Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, has  said , "Going by logic, the poor in richer states should be better off than their counterparts living in poorer states. This is especially so when the country is seeing a welcome trend: Income growth in rural areas and poverty reduction has witnessed unprecedented acceleration". However, he says, this does not happened "necessarily", as seen on the basis of the data from Gujarat vis-a-vis other states.

 The Gujarat government has given clear indications that, despite the tribal farmers’ protests, it will go ahead with the proposed tourism project around the so-called Statue of Unity it is planning just about three kilometers downstream of the Narmada dam. In a statement issued ahead of the stone-laying ceremony for the statue, to be in the memory of Sardar Patel on October 31, the birth anniversary of the Iron Man, and envisaged as “three times higher than the Statue of Liberty” in New York, the state government declared the area around the statue will be developed into a “world-class tourism spot”, but refused to say how much land it would acquire under "public purpose" provision of the new land acquisition Act.

Textile industry in Gujarat, once considered the Manchester of India, are all set to see a thing of the past in the state. A new study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India (ASSOCHAM), of the top industry bodies, has said that Gujarat, over the decade between 2000-01 and 2010-11 experienced closure of 39 per cent of textile units per year, which is the highest for any state. “Gujarat registered maximum growth of about 39 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in non-operational textile units, i.e. from over 290 factories to over 2,800 factories during 2000-01 and 2010-11", the study said.

  Despite NGO allegations of environmental and livelihood violations, the powerful ombudsman body of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group, has refused to recommend any deterring steps against the IFC, which is part-funding the Tata Power’s ambitious 4.14 billion dollar Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) along the Mundra coast in Gujarat. Though the ombudsman, in its latest report, takes particular objection to the IFC’s failure to take “cumulative impact” of the UMPP, the Adani Power’s 4,620 MW plant (being implemented not far away), and the Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone (MPSEZ), it says it is “reluctant to review IFC management decisions on project selection.”

Top Gujarat-based cultural NGO Drishti, which takes up social issues to fight for the underprivileged through digital visual media, has declared that it will file a public interest litigation (PIL) in Delhi High Court against official indifference towards Virender Singh, the deaf wrestler who won gold medal at the Deaflympics in Sofia, Bulgaria, in August 2013 in the men’s 74 kg freestyle event. He won the coveted medal defeating Oguz Donder of Turkey. The announcement came at the film release ceremony of 58-minute documentary, produced by Drishti, on the top wrestler, who has received no official help so far.

Even as Gujarat’s powerful babudom is gearing up for the high-profile stone laying ceremony on October 31, birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, for the so-called Statue of Unity, proposed as the tallest statue of the world, insiders close to chief minister Narendra Modi doubted if his idea of getting iron from farmers from all over the country in order to build its structure would ever succeed. A senior official, refusing to be named, suggested, even Modi believes that even the most ideal scenario it would not be possible to collect more than 700 tonnes of iron.

The Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank group, has, in its fresh report, released on October 23, 2013, said that there is enough reason to believe in evidence provided by the Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS), or the Association for the Struggle for Fishworkers’ Rights, regarding environmental and livelihood concerns of the people of Mundra, Kutch district, where the $4.14 billion dollar project the Tatas’ Ultra Mega Power Plant is being implemented. The concern is significant as the IFC is financing $450 million in the form of “a straight senior loan”. While welcoming the CAO report, MASS has said, “The findings reconfirm the concerns we raised since project construction started. CAO’s expert findings help bolster our fight to regain the damaged livelihoods of thousands of fishing families in Kutch coast.. It failed to account fisher people as project-affected people, to adequately ...

Four well-known activists, Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah, Amrish Brahmbhatt, and Kannagi Brahmbhatt, in a strongly-worded statement have described the proposed Statue of Unity in the memory of Sardar Patel as "Statue of Disunity", whose main aim is to "remove people from their land, forest and livelihood". Envisaged by the Gujarat government as the tallest statue of the world in the memory of Sardar Patel three kilometres downstream of the Narmada dam on Sadhu Bet, the activists have said also termed it as the Statue for Tourism Industries, Statue for Narendra Modi’s Name and Fame and Statue for Criminal Waste of Public Money.

In a country that hardly produces world champions and Olympic medalists, Ahmedabad-based NGO group Drishti, which uses media and the arts to empower communities valuing their self-expression and human rights, has come up with a new documentary, “Googna Pahalvan”, highlighting the story of a man who, for the better part of his life, has been just that - a World Champion and a Deaflympics (Olympics for the Deaf) Gold Medalist. Drishti team has described the film (click  HERE  to see trailer) as “a story of grit, fierce dedication and hope”, adding it is “an attempt to make possible the dream of India’s most successful deaf athlete, his dream of making it to the Rio Olympics 2016.”

Is the myth, woven around India Inc and their global partners, that Gujarat is the best “neo-liberal destination” to do business, offering better governance than most other states, is starting to wane? It would seem so, if one goes by the latest high-profile study sponsored by London-based DTZ, a multinational firm claiming to provide “integrated corporate real estate solutions and facilities management”, and Global Initiative for Restructuring Environment and Management (GIRED), India’s industry-led and industry-managed association, professing “a proactive role in improving infrastructural issues that many businesses are grappling with on a day to day basis.” In its latest report, “Top 21 Business Destinations Ranking”, Ahmedabad has been given an 8th ranking, way behind Indore, Bhubaneswar and Coimbatore, and Vadodara even worst – 14th. The research team – which included Shyam Sundar, Ramya R and Inayath Ulla Khan from GIREM, Rohit Kumar of DTZ, Ramesh Menon from Certes Realty Ltd, a...

In a major revelation, senior environmentalists Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah have said that Gujarat has the highest number of major accident hazard (MAH) factories anywhere in India. According to their estimate, the state has a total of 497 MAH class factories, which amounts to 30 per cent of MAH factories of the country. “Major accident” means an incident involving loss of life inside or outside the site or ten or more injuries inside and/or one or more injuries outside or release of toxic chemical or explosion or fire of spillage of hazardous chemical resulting in ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’ emergencies or damage to equipments leading to stoppage of process or adverse effects to the environment.

Top human rights campaigner Binayak Sen, against whom the Chhattisgarh government filed a sedition case for fighting against "state terror" unleashed on the tribal people, has warned that the nation may be slipping into fascism, and something urgently needs to be done to evacuate the situation. Speaking at a meeting in Ahmedabad, Sen said, he was not alone to face the sedition case, and though he is now out on bail, “the draconian law is being misused and thousands of people have already become victims of the legislation.”

The saltpan workers, one of the most backward sections of Gujarat society, will soon start moving towards the Little Rann of Kutch in order to produce salt to eke a living in a harsh atmosphere. About 75 per cent of them belong what is called Nomadic and De-Notified Tribes (NDNT) in government registers, followed by scheduled castes or SCs (10 per cent) and scheduled tribes or STs (10 per cent). Belonging to 107 villages which dot villages on the districts bordering the Little Rann – Kutch, Banaskantha, Mehsana, Patan, Surendranagar and Rajkot — every year they move to the Rann to produce salt in October. According to the Agariya Hit Rakshak Manch (AHRM), an NGO which works among the saltpan workers, their movement, towards the Little Rann this year will start by the next week. While the saltpan workers, along with their families, will be back to their seasonal work by October-end, civil society activists working among them wonder if they will be provided with some of the basic facil...

In an open letter to Laurent Michel, director-general for climate and energy, Ministry for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, French government, 29 non-government organizations from western countries and India have come together wondering if EDF Trading, top MNC player into the international energy markets, has at all delinked its contractual agreements with the Adani Power project at Mundra, Gujarat, about which it had declared it on August 13. In a newspaper statement, the EDF Trading had said that it would not be associated with Adanis’ “supercritical coal power project in India”, and would “never purchase carbon credits from it”.

A new study being prepared by the Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad, “Economic Rights in India: Growing Distance from the Lower Judiciary”, has reached the drastic conclusion that the government’s modus operandi for “ensuring” socio-economic rights is to “pass a law and set up advisory bodies and an administrative chain of command to implement it”, but things fail to move because, often, “the same district official serves as the implementing and quasi-judicial body under a range of legislations.” The study, still in its draft stage, adds, “In the end, the claimant is faced with an over-burdened executive and a maze of bureaucratic red tape to traverse before she or he can contemplate approaching our equally backlogged higher judiciary.” Pointing to how “the same district official serves as the implementing and quasi-judicial body under a range of such legislations”, the study examines a few laws which have proved crucial for the people to obtain their rights. Analysing filed under t...

One of the major issues nagging civil society in Gujarat is that marginalized communities of the state are failing to get mobilized against land acquisition for industrial use, as in other states. A senior scholar, Prof Amita Shah, director, Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad, has noted, “Whereas diversion (through acquisition or otherwise) of land from agriculture to other uses has generally been marked by protests, there have been situations where local communities have welcomed such developments.” In Gujarat, she adds, “resistance to diversion of land for industry-infrastructural development has, by and large, been fairly low or dormant – at least till recently.” To investigate the phenomenon, in her research paper , “Mainstreaming or Marginalisation? Evidence from Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Gujarat”, Prof Shah carried out a primary survey of households of seven villages from where land was obtained for the development of three SEZs – two each in Mundr...

In a resolution with far-reaching implications for Indian policy makers, the European Parliament, which met in Strasbourg, Austria, has declared that caste-based discrimination in several Asian countries, including India, should be treated on par with other grounds of discrimination such as “ethnicity, race, religion, gender and sexuality”. Passed after a debate opened by Green member of European Parliament (MEP) Eva Joly, prior to adopting the resolution, several MEPs argued that “goods from caste-affected countries should be boycotted”, the International Dalit Solidarity Network said in a statement from its office in Copenhagen.

In a “critical discursive analysis”, two Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) scholars, Ankur Sarin and Swati Gupta, have found that strong biases exist among school principals of private schools against the weaker section (WS) of society. Based on a sample survey of private school principals of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and Uttarakhand, the study, titled “Quotas under RTE: Leading towards an egalitarian education system?”, says, “Equality of opportunity appears to be outside the rationalities that well-meaning private school principals inhabit.” Pointing towards how 25 per cent quota for weaker sections in private schools – mandated by the Right to Education Act (RTE), 2009 – has “led to a resistance, which is justified in several ways”, the study says, this is happening at a time when “access to schooling for those coming of school age is close to becoming univ...

Investment projects under implementation A top expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign-policy think tank with centres in Washington DC, Moscow, Beirut, Beijing and Brussels, has strongly disputed those who tout Gujarat’s growth over the last decade as exemplary, saying whether it is foreign direct investment, overall investment in the economy, or governance, the state has been an average performer. Milan Vaishnav, associate, South Asia Programme, and previously with the Columbia University with primary research focus on the political economy of India, neither was there what the Gujarat chief minister called “pro-people good governance” nor “minimal government, maximum governance,” as he claimed before India’s largest business houses.

Anti-manual scavenging rally in Lakhtar Building toilets is a basic state duty, which governments, state or central, have failed to perform. Census of India data suggest that open defecation by 50 per cent of India’s population and nearly 40 per cent of “progressive” Gujarat suggests what has gone amiss.

In a social network post, which is being widely circulated, Gujarat-based social senior Wilfred Dcosta has warned that fracking, slang for hydraulic fracturing, is finally set to come to India, and India’s top companies have already begun the job. Fracking means creating fractures in rocks and rock formations by injecting fluid into cracks to force them further open. The larger fissures allow more oil and gas to flow out of the formation and into the wellbore, from where it can be extracted. But environmentalists say, fracking could lead to contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, noise pollution, migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, mishandling of waste, and the health effects of these, like cancer.

Top Odisha-based campaign group Lok Shakti Abhiyan (LSA) has strongly protested against the announcement to kickstart the construction work of South Korean steel major Posco following a meeting South Korean ambassador India Joon-gye Lee had with Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik. LSA said, “When the hearing on dispensation of environmental clearance for Posco project is going on in National Green Tribunal and there is a stay order for cutting trees, this is nothing but to dishonour the rule of law as well as against international human rights law.”

Amidst raging controversy around whether Gujarat’s child malnutrition levels have actually gone down, with the Gujarat government vehemently denying a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that every third child in the state suffers from malnutrition, a recent research paper by one of the senior-most economists, Prof Arvind Panagariya of the Columbia University, has sharply contested the criterion of comparing India’s child malnutrition levels with those of Sub-Saharan African countries, which have much lower per capita incomes and poorer health indicators.

Bardoligam, Chikhligam, Gandevigam and Adulgam are four villages situated on the fringe of the Golden Corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, one of India’s most industrially developed zone. Yet, it is here that majority of poor, especially the most vulnerable sections among them, fail to get the social benefits they are entitled to, says senior Amsterdam-based scholar Jan Breman. In his recent study, “The Practice of Poor Relief in Rural South Gujarat”, Breman, emeritus professor of sociology, Amsterdam Institute for Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, has suggested that, following Gharib Kalyan melas in the recent past, there has been a big talk about “a slow but steady decrease in poverty due to an accelerated pace of overall economic growth, is said to have marginally or even significantly reduced the vulnerability of people who have no other means of livelihood than their labour power.” However, the senior scholar, basing his study on four South Gujarat villages, has...