A agariya house destroyed by authorities The Agariya Hit Rakshak Manch (AHRM), an NGO working among the saltpan workers of the Little of Kutch in Gujarat, has strongly protested against a demolition drive carried out by the local administration against a settlement of 78 houses of agariyas bordering the Rann. In a statement, AHRM has said, “On December 27, 2013, the block revenue officer of Patadi taluka, district Surendrangar, got bulldozer and police to a demolish settlement of 78 agariyas. When people started lying down in front of the bulldozer, police forcefully made them sit in vehicles, and then started demolition.”

Despite wide talk of Gujarat being No 1 in things financial, top rating agency Cisil has found that the state is failing to improve upon its financial inclusion index compared to most of India.  A new report by the top consulting firm, Crisil, has revealed that the financial inclusion index, called Inclusix – a concept it worked out in alliance with the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, to find out how deep is financial penetration among larger sections of population – has revealed that Gujarat has failed to improve its performance over the last four years in providing the three critical parameters of banking services, viz. branch penetration, deposit penetration, and credit penetration. Titled “Crisil Inclusix: An Index to Measure India’s Progress on Financial Inclusion”, this is the second report in a year brought out by India’s authoritative consulting firm, which is supported by the well-known US rating agency, Standard & Poor. Dated January 2014, the report – which...

  The latest figures released by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) suggest that the levels of industrial effluents discharge through the common effluent treatment plants (CETP) in chemical industrial estates across Gujarat continue to remain “high” and “worrisome”. Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti’s Rohit Prajapati and six other environmental activists in a statement, quoting CPCB figures, have alleged, more worrying is that the situation "has not changed much after the problem of industrial pollution first came to light in the nineties.”

Symbolic burning of Manu Smriti on a four feet candle light Senior Dalit rights activists in have Gujarat declared that, while they do not oppose Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s decision to build the world’s highest statue in the memory of Sardar Patel, they would want that Dr BR Ambedkar’s statue should be even higher. Making the announcement amidst a huge applause by the Dalits from several villages that had come to attend a non-political meeting at Badarkha village, south of Ahmedabad, senior human rights activist Martin Macwan, founder of Navsarjan Trust, said, “Dr Ambedkar’s contribution stands taller as he fought casteism in all its manifestations and created a constitutional framework for India providing equality to all.”

Rural Gujarat is known to have poor malnutrition levels. Malnutrition and sanitation are both interrelated. A new National Sample Survey Organization report has suggested that the state’s performance in providing sanitation to its rural population is not up to the mark.  In a major revelation, the new National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report, “Key Indicators of Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Condition in India”, released in December 2013, has found that Gujarat’s performance in providing sanitary and hygienic conditions to its rural population is not progressing well enough. In fact, if the data are indication, Gujarat’s performance on this score cannot be said to considered “vibrant” in any sense. The NSSO survey data suggest that Gujarat is an average performer, especially on issues related with sanitation. If the report is to be believed, a whopping 58.7 per cent of the rural households of Gujarat have no access to toilets – which means that majority of...

The latest National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report, “Key Indicators of Urban Slums in India”, released in December 2013 and based on survey the top statistical body carried out in the second half of 2012, has once again suggested that Gujarat’s slums are one of the worst in India insofar as providing basic infrastructural facilities are concerned. Rajiv Shah takes a closer look at the report: While Gujarat’s slums, numbering 2,923 (both notified and non-notified), form 8.72 per cent of all slums in the country (33,510), the three states with higher number of slums than Gujarat are Maharashtra (7,723), Andhra Pradesh (3,956) and West Bengal (3957). Despite a relatively higher number, what is particularly appalling is, Gujarat slums fail to score better than most states whether it is pucca houses, tapped water, electricity, pucca roads, latrines, drainage, or garbage disposal. While the survey results do not show a complete all-India picture, as results of only in a dozen sta...

Long wait for metro rail in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s business capital, is now bogged into yet another indecision – a group of ministers (GoM) appointed by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is unable to finalize the route in order to put afloat the Rs 22,000 crore project for three months now. Well-placed Gujarat Sachivalaya sources say, the ministers are so busy in such "non-issues" like collecting iron all over India for the Statue of Sardar Patel, planned in the midst of Narmada river, that they have "no time to look into the metro project."

NGO Sahyog Charitable Trust has found the hard way how Gujarat’s authorities refuse to implement the right to education (RTE) Act unless judicial intervention is sought. How negligent Gujarat authorities have been towards implementing the RTE Act was revealed by the manner in which they have treated the Gujarat High Court order of February 9, 2012, in which the Municipal School Board, on the basis of the affidavit it filed, was directed to construct a new school in Vatva area within two years’ time, where poor and neglected children could study. The order had said, till the school began, the children should get the benefit of Special Training Programme Centre, where they had been provided an alternative. So far, the board has not begun the construction work of the new school, which is proposed to be situated about 1.4 km away from the slum area. While the deadline is to expire in February 2014, for all practical purposes, non-implementation of the order should mean, the school-going sl...

Though prepared by Bangalore-based tourism NGO Equations in 2008, the five-year-old report, “Public Purpose?”, suggests how relevant its observations are even today at a time the entire Kevadia Colony, next to the Narmada dam, alongside the surrounding rural areas, are being proposed as a major tourism site in Gujarat. The report had predicted that the tourism project would dispossess tribals of 51 plus villages of their land, even as pointing towards how the project is being promoted in complete violation of the laws which make tribal self-rule mandatory in tribal-dominated areas.  What makes the Equations report, “Public Purposes?”, particularly intriguing is that the tourism project around the Narmada dam is today in the eye of storm, five year after Equations, the tourism NGO, brought it out. It is being developed as part of the Gujarat government decision to build world’s highest statue, Statue of Unity, in the memory of Sardar Patel. Already, work for the project has begun, e...

Apprehensions about viability of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s pet Rs 2,500 crore project, to built as the world’s tallest statue in the memory of Sardar Patel, are now coming from unexpected quarters, albeit “off the record.” One of the topmost government officials, known to be close to Modi, told Counterview on condition of anonymity that several “issues” about practicality of the project – which is part of the overall Modi drive to turn the area surrounding the Narmada dam into a major tourist attraction – have “yet to be resolved”.

  The Gujarat government’s failure to develop the Narmada canal network to take irrigation waters to the footsteps of the farmers’ fields in North Gujarat and beyond has begun to harm hundreds of saltpan workers in the Little Rann of Kutch. According to the latest information available from the Rann, the Narmada waters, considered the lifeline of Gujarat, are allowed to flow relentlessly into the Rann’s wide expanses via Banas river without taking into account whom is it may harming. In fact, government officials’ explanation is, in case they do not release the unused waters into the Rann, it might “harm the canal” – hence they have “no other option but to release them.”

A new study, carried out by a group of scholars led by Prof Usha Ram of the Centre for Global Health Research, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, “Neonatal, 159 month, and under-5 mortality in 597 Indian districts, 2001 to 2012: estimates from national demographic and mortality surveys”, has found that Gujarat’s performance in achieving the millennium development goal (MDG) for bringing down mortality rate of under-five children has been the poorest among the group of 11 rich Indian states. A complete study of all Indian states and their districts, the big richer states focused are – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karantaka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh. The scholars – who include Prabhat Jha, Faujdar Ram, Kaushalendra Kumar, Shally Awasthi, Anita Shet, Joy Pader, Stella Nansukusa and Rajesh Kumar – have found that in Gujarat, in 2012, the under-five mortality rate (U5MR), w...

The proposed Dholera special investment region is likely to lead to large-scale changes in livelihood patterns, as and when the plan to convert the area into an industrial-urban hub succeeds. The “Draft Environmental Impact Assessment of Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR) In Gujarat” – prepared for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd by the Senes Consultants India Pvt Ltd for environmental public hearing on January 3, 2014 – has suggested that there will be large-scale impact on the livelihood patter in the “sparsely populated” 930 sq km area, consisting of 22 villages, which will form the DSIR, and which is proposed to be converted into a modern industrial urban township over a period of three decades. The report says, “As per the land use/ land cover (LU/LC) studies carried out for Dholera SIR, highest LU/LC class is agriculture land, constituting 47.46 per cent of the study area, comprising of fallow land (39.97 per cent) or cropland (7.49 per cent...

It was a lovely evening in Ahmedabad, and I decided to go to Gandhi Ashram with a friend to have a chat with a senior Gandhi scholar who sits quietly in a modest, less than 10x10 room – Tridip Suhrud. Suhrud is currently involved in digitizing anything and everything related to Mahatma Gandhi. “We have already digitized nearly five lakh pages and put them online, including Gandhiji’s complete works. Once we have finished digitizing around 25 lakh pages, which would include works by all those who have worked and interacted with Gandhi, you wouldn’t need to go anywhere to do research on Gandhi. All you would need to do is to go online”, he tells me modestly as I begin talking to him. A reputed social activist, Achyut Yagnik, known as an expert on Gujarat and Ahmedabad (Penguin has published his books on the cultural history of both), introduced me to Suhrud in mid-1990s. At that time, Suhrud was a faculty at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Thereafter, I would meet Suhrud a...

Rich farmers "opposing" SIR The Gujarat government may have gone on the back foot by excluding 36 of the 44 villages from its proposed special investment region (SIR) in the Mandal -Becharaji area of North Gujarat, but now there is enough reason for it to "cheer". Sharp rise in the land prices in the eight villages that will now be included in the newly-formed SIR – Bhagapura and Shihor of Detroj taluka, Hansalpur-Becharaji, Sitapur, Udhroj, Udhrojpura and Ukardi of Mandal taluka, Chandanki village of Becharaji taluka – is leading to a situation where a section of the rich landowners of rest of the 36 villages are said to be regretting why they protested against SIR.

The Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), the state’s premier Right to Information (RTI) campaign body, has expressed dismay over the fact that during the last eight years, as many as 27 RTI whistle blowers were hacked to death all over India, out of which four were from Gujarat. Those who were killed in Gujarat after fighting for their rights under RTI were -- Vishram Dodiya, Amit Jethva, Jabardan Gadhvi, Nadeem Saiyyad. Suggesting that this is a “poor record” for a state which calls itself progressive, a presentation on the eighth anniversary of the RTI Act said, in the country as a whole over 155 whistle blowers were “brutally attacked” in India but survived, of which 24 such attacks took place in Gujarat.

The new environment impact assessment report proposed for the development of Dholera special investment region, being planned as a “dream city” by the Gujarat government, admits that the area where the new industrial township is being planned is flat, low lying and is prone to flood, and things may aggravate in case of urbanization.  The new draft report, “Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR) in Gujarat”, prepared by SENES Consultants India Pvt Ltd, for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, New Delhi, for environmental public hearing slated on January 3, 2013, has identified “flooding from inundation by the sea and from seasonal monsoon rains” as one of two most important problems to be reckoned with while developing the area. The other problem is that of seismicity. The DSIR is to be developed south of Ahmedabad city on a 900 square kilometer area as a modern industrial township with a population of 20 lakh in th...

Why do different Gujarat government departments refuse to part information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005? If the information available with Counterview is any indication, the latest ploy of the state officialdom is “lack of staff” and other “administrative difficulties”, including lack of stationary and photocopy machines! This has become clear in replies to recent applications filed under RTI, where the officialdom has doggedly refused to give any legal explanation for refusing information, and instead pointed towards what great difficulties they have been facing while parting any information.

Finding that the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi may well help the party return to power, the US has given clear indications it may change its policies towards Modi, whom it denied visa in 2005 for failing to uphold religious freedom in the wake of Gujarat riots. Talking to Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate on the CNN-IBN channel, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said the Gujarat riots were no longer a contentious issue and that the US would work with Modi if he became the Prime Minister.

In a major decision, the Gujarat government has dropped its plan to develop Bhavnagar port as an alternative to the Dholera port in the Gulf of Khambhat. It had had given up Dholera port following its decision to go ahead with the Kalpasar project as a huge sweet water lake by damming the. The state government had offered the top state industrial group, Adanis, to develop Bhavnagar port as alternative to Dholera port, which the Adanis were to develop in association with the JK Group, to provide Dholera special investment region (SIR) a major boost. Dholera SIR, to be developed south of Ahmedabad district, off Gulf of Khambhat, is proposed as a modern industrial-urban centre. To be developed in three phases, each of 10 years, so far no investors have shown interest in Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's ambitious SIR.

RTI on Wheels in a tribal area of Banaskantha Do the tribal people of Banaskantha district in Gujarat have to face official indifference towards getting simple formalities done for getting their subsidized ration from fair price shops? It would seem so, if impressions gathered during the latest campaign by the premier Gujarat body propagating the right to information (RTI), Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), are any indication. Currently on a tour of Gujarat’s eastern tribal belt for making RTI popular, the MAGP found exactly this when the RTI on Wheels reached the mamlatdar office at Bhabhar taluka in Banaskantha district, where tribals live.