The Cabinet  decision  approving the Ordinance amending the land acquisition Act 2013, even before the law has been actually implemented on the ground, has been described as “completely unacceptable”, reminding one of “the anti-democratic and authoritarian streak of the NDA government”. In a statement, the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), the apex body of several mass organisations operating across India, wondered what was the “emergency” for the NDA to take the Ordinance route.

Participants at the conference on single women in Ahmedabad Counterview Desk Representing single women, mainly widows and divorced poor women, Ekal Nari Shakti Manch (ENSM), a Gujarat-based non-government organization (NGO), has said that despite its decade-old campaign, just about 27 per cent eligible widows are able to get pension they are eligible to get. Results of a survey of single women in Gujarat by the ENMS – which is supported by high-profile NGO Action Act that has its head office in Johannesburg and branches all over the world – say that of the 1,714 widows it interviewed just 465 get pension.

Three non-political farmers’ organizations, Saurashtra Khedut Ladat Samiti, Khedut Samaj Gujarat, and Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, have come together to ask the Gujarat government to add “bonus package” to the minimum support price (MSP) being offered to farmers by the Government of India for different farmers’ products, especially cotton, in order to protect them from being ruined. They have declared, if this is not done, they would be forced to "disrupt" the Vibrant Gujarat Business Summit, to take place on January 11-12 in Gandhinagar to attract foreign investment.

The National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO’s) report, “Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in India”, released in December 2014, has indicated that there is much incidence of marginalization of the scheduled caste (SC) households in rural Gujarat in comparison to other social groups – scheduled tribes (STs), other backward classes (OBCs), and those falling under the “Others” category. The data put out by the NSSO show that there are in all 4,55,300 SC households in Gujarat, out of which 1,52,700, or 33.54 per cent, are involved agricultural activities. This is compared to 66.9 per cent of out of a total 58,71,900 Gujarat all rural households involved in agricultural activities. A social category-wise breakup, interestingly, reveals that there are 68.07 per cent of 28,73,800 OBC households and 71.15 per cent of 14,48,000 ST households who are involved in agriculture. As for whose falling in the “Others” category, mainly upper castes, there are 72.3 per cent agric...

Balakrishnan The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), taking cognisance of the social boycott of Dalits of Dagavadia village in Mehsana district of North Gujarat, has sought a complete action taken report (ATR) by the state authorities of the Gujarat government on what has been done to assuage feelings of caste discrimination in the village. The report, the NHRC has insisted, should reach its office “within four weeks” on receipt its notice. The NHRC, which sent its notice to the district magistrate, Mehsana, on December 20, said action taken by the state authorities should be “appropriate.”

The new National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report, released in December 2014, has suggested that Gujarat has one of the highest proportions rural households reporting outstanding cash loan at a very high interest rate compared to most Indian states. Titled “Key Indicators of Debt and Investment in India”, the report, based on NSSO’s 70th survey round, has suggested that, in all, there are 260 rural households in Gujarat out of every 1000 which reported outstanding cash loans. A large majority of these households, around 64.6 per cent — 30.8 per cent at the interest rate between 25 to 30 per cent, and per 33.8 per cent at the interest rate 30 per cent and above — have taken loan at more than 25 per cent rate of interest. There is just one state out of the 21 major ones, selected for the sake of analysis, which has a higher proportion of rural households reporting cash loans at the high rate of 25 per cent or more than Gujarat – Jammu & Kashmir (69.3 per cent). No doubt, the ...

In a shocking revelation, a new report by high-profile NGO Save the Children, Wings 2014: The World of India’s Girls” has said that Gujarat’s 63.1 per cent girls may be subjected to sexual abuse, which is apparently, the highest in India. Pointing out that in the country as a whole there are 47.06 per cent such girls, the report, which has been prepared by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, says that most of these girls suffer silently, and “don’t report to anyone”. The report, significantly, carries a congratulatory message from Najma Heptulla, minorities minister under the Narendra Modi government, among others.

  In an important revelation, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), India's most authoritative data collection centre amidst decadal censuses, has said that Gujarat farmers' net income from cultivation is lower than 11 other major states out of a total of 21. The figures, released this month, say, the average net income per household from cultivation was Rs 2,933 per month during the agricultural year July 2012 to June 2013, which was not just drastically lower than some of the agriculturally advanced states like Punjab and Haryana, but also so-called backward states Assam, Chhattigarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

  In a major setback to Gujarat's powerful Adani group known to be close to Prime Minister designate Narendra Modi, Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank AG, has declared it will not finance the “controversial” coal port expansion in Australia near the Great Barrier Reef. The bank said, it was responding to calls from environmental groups and tourism operators. The move comes nearly a fortnight after Australia’s provincial Queensland government approved a proposal to build Australia’s biggest coal mine – Adani’s Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin.

There have been loud claims, which continue to be made till date, that agricultural growth in Gujarat has been a “success story”, which other states must follow. It is also suggested that Gujarat’s agricultural growth rose from 3.3 per cent per annum in the 1990s to nearly 9 per cent over the last one decade. The argument goes on: Gujarat has written the success story despite facing challenges like depletion of water tables, deterioration of soil and water conditions due to salinity ingress along the sea coast, irregularity of rainfall, and recurrent drought. However, few have sought to see what impact has it made on the actual income of the agriculturists of Gujarat, and how much they have gained vis-à-vis other states. Now, new figures released in December 2014 by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) in its report, “Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in India”, suggest that, notwithstanding claims of “big” agricultural growth (something which is being di...

Top Narendra Modi man Swapan Dasgupta, long known a powerful right-wing ideologue, has asked the BJP and the Modi government to “discover” effective ways of dealing with what he terms as “Hindu fringe” within the saffron family, but believes it may not be an easy task as they act independently of Modi and RSS. Taking strong exception to the way Hindu Mahasabha, a mere “letterhead that can be used or misused by anyone”, has been behaving, Dasgupta in a significant  commentary  has said that it was an “outrageous demand by one of its more obscure functionaries to install a bust of Nathuram Godse”.

  A recent survey of 118 families, who were “shifted” to Yamuna Mill Pratap Nagar area of Gujarat's cultural capital, Vadodara, after their houses were razed to the ground as part of the city's biggest slum clearance operation, has revealed how the devastation has adversely affected school going children. More than 2,000 slum houses, mainly belonging to Muslim and Dalit communities, were bulldozed in the operation, which took place in the third week of November. While about one third of those whose houses were shifted to alternative housing sites under construction more than 10 kilometres away, others began found solace with their relatives or are just living by the roadside even today, braving winter.

The Gujarat government is all set to make it official now. A top state document in Gujarati, prepared by the state revenue department, has made it clear that the new land acquisition law – the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR, 2013) – will not be application in areas where a town planning scheme is floated. The document, still in its draft form, and floated as "rules" for LARR Act, 2013, makes it clear, “Wherever a town planning scheme is finalised, there will not be any land acquisition under any other law.”

  In a significant recommendation, the Amitabh Kundu committee, which submitted its “final report” on the status of minorities in India to the Narendra Modi government in early October, wants that the recently launched Jan Dhan scheme should go a long way in helping financial exclusion of the minorities. Even as risking of being dubbed for “appeasing minorities”, it wants the programmes launched by the previous UPA government for minorities to be further intensified, going so far to ask the Modi government to extend reservation to the most backward sections of Muslims, identifying them as “Dalit Muslims.”

  A top international consulting firm, Deloitte, involved in “a multi-skilled, multi-disciplined firm, offering clients a wide range of industry-focused business solutions”, has warned of sharp rise in fraud cases over the coming years. Suggesting that, with the rise of new business models backed by new technology, fraud has spawned new variants, a Deloitte report, “India Fraud Survey”, has said, around 56 per cent of 400-odd survey respondents, all of them chief executive officers from across India, believe that “fraud will continue to increase” in the two years, and another 31 per cent said they were “uncertain” about what may happen.

Prominent feminist-turned-Modi 'bhakt', who showed clear signs of getting disillusioned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi by  declaring  he is under some sort of “black magic”, Madhu Kishwar has now taken strong exception to the recent RSS-Sangh Parivar move to re-convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. Commenting on the so-called “ghar vapsi” move being planned by the Sangh on Christmas, December 25, Kishwar, has sharply attacked Hindu groups for being “very clumsy and crude in conversion drives”.

Replying to a right to information (RTI) plea, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has revealed it received 470 complaints up to in 2014 till June-end under the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection for Informants (PIDPI) order of the 2004 Government of India (GoI). The GoI’s PIDPI order was meant to encourage whistleblowers in government departments and public sector undertakings (PSUs) to file complaints about corruption and mismanagement of public funds and facilitate investigation. The resolution was passed after two young professionals employed in PSUs were murdered because they tried to expose corruption.

The slumdwellers named it Bapa Sitaram Kamdar Nagar While Gujarat government put in place what it called a “policy for in-situ rehabilitation of slums situated on public land” through a government resolution (GR) on July 18, 2013, latest indications from Ahmedabad reveal that it remains on paper for large sections of slum-dwellers for one-and-a-half years after it was promulgated by the state urban development department. In a glaring instance, as many as 69 Valmiki Dalit households, living in makeshift accommodations for nearly 15 years in the midst of posh Jodhpur area of western Ahmedabad, have been threatened that either they clear the area, or they would be forcibly removed, the cost of which would be charged from them.

Breach in Narmada canal By Our Representative Livelihood of as many as 450 salt-cultivating farmers of the Little Rann of Kutch has been gravely hampered following a “roughshod decision” of Gujarat government officials to release water from Narmada canal --more than its carrying capacity, leading to major breaches -- into Banas river in North Gujarat. Well-informed sources have told Counterview, the the salt cultivating fields got “totally destroyed”, their diesel pumps used for sucking out saline water from underground got “burned-out”, and the temporary shelters they had put up to look after the farms “simply fell apart”, as Narmada waters entered the Little Rann.

  While Gujarat may have topped Indian states in regularizing power supply to urban and rural areas, data released by a new report, “Coal Kills: Health Impacts of Air Pollution from India’s Coal Power Expansion” suggest this may have led to unprecedented health hazard in the state. The report has found that as of 2014 Gujarat’s coal-fired power plants, with a capacity of 15,900 MW, are emitting in air highest quantity of the deadliest PM2.5, the most dangerous particulate matter (PM), compared to all other state. PM2.5 is known to get absorbed deep in the lungs,  causing  “aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, lung cancer, cardiac problems, and premature death.”

 Well-known film director Hansal Mehta has expressed serious concerns over the overt activities and statements of the RSS and allied organizations, after the recent BJP victory in the general elections of 2014. He has stated that "communal and divisive agenda of the century old rightist organization RSS is now open and public." In an interview, which is part of a series of audio-visual interviews to be released soon, Mehta has sought to compare the way the Government of India is acting with the Emergency days (1975-77), imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The Nirbhaya case helped bring incidents of violence against women sharply into focus, but large number of women activists are starting to wonder why, if the victim is from a vulnerable community, she rarely draws attention. The death of a lady tribal police constable from Rajpipla in Gujarat Vasanti Vasava on November 24 under mysterious circumstances is being cited as an example which should have drawn as attention on lines with UP's  Badaun gang rape  of May 2014. There is little knowledge in general public about this gruesome incident, even in Gujarat. In Rajpipla, a small town in South Gujarat in tribal dominated district, Narmada, things changed only after the Gujarat Women Rights Council, a recently floated group by a well-known Dalit rights activist of Navsarjan Trust, Ahmedabad, Manjula Pradeep, took up the death of Vasanti as a case of sexual assault and murder when the police was frantically trying to project it as a “simple case of suicide”.

The mysterious death of the lady tribal police constable from Rajpipla — Vasanti Vasava — between November 24 and 26, 2014, has evidently exposed the indifference on the part of the police establishment, which becomes particularly glaring if the victim is a woman and is from a vulnerable community. Significantly, this came to light when the Gujarat Women Rights Council and the Navsarjan Trust were still busy in Vadodara district with their campaign against violence against women, which had begun on November 25, declared by the United Nations as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. 

A woman cop in Rajpipla The Nirbhaya case may have helped bring cases of violence against women sharply into focus, yet large number of a women activists have begun to wonder, as to why, if the victim is from a vulnerable community, she rarely draws attention. The mysterious death of a lady tribal police constable from Rajpipla in Gujarat — Vasanti Vasava — between November 24 and 26, 2014 highlights how a state machinery treats atrocities committed on such women. Tables were turned only after the Gujarat Women Rights Council, a recently floated group by a well-known dalit rights activist, Manjula Pradeep, took up the death of Vasanti as a case of sexual assault and murder at a time when the police was trying to turn it into a “simple case of suicide”. Manjula was busy in Vadodara district with a month-long campaign on violence against women, which had begun on November 25, declared by the UN as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The campaign was to contin...

State of Ahmedabad slums A recent survey of Ahmedabad’s two slum settlement colonies, Shankarbhuvan and Nagorivad, both of them situated in the old city area, go a long way to expose the loud claims of “clean" or "swachh" Gujarat by the state’s powerful authorities. Carried out by two non-government organizations (NGOs), Manav Garima and Human Development and Research Centre, the survey suggests that in the two slum settlements surveyed, out of a total of 1,447 households, 63 per cent of households (916) do not have toilets.

Over and above seeking to solicit  "utmost complete faith"  in the corporate sector in providing environmental clearance, the Report of the High Level Committee on Forest and Environment Related Laws, formed by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), has asked the Government of India to scale down the role of the gram sabhas in diverting forest land. Released last week, the report, whose  copy  is with Counterview, says that the “provisions of forest rights Act (FRA), which make it mandatory to seek the approval of gram sabha, should be amended.”

With the Indian economy officially slowing down to 5.3 percent (though experts calculated it earlier at 5.1 percent) during July-September 2014, from 5.7 per cent in the previous quarter, and credit growth hitting a 13-month low in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise to oversee a revival when he swept to power in May is beginning to be questioned. One of the most influential American dailies, "The Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has  said , with India’s economic growth decelerating, doubts have surfaced "about how quickly the country’s new government can deliver on pledges to end a nearly three-year slump and transform the world’s second-most-populous nation into a manufacturing powerhouse."

  A fresh report on the status of higher education in India has suggested that, despite a sharp increase in the number of universities and colleges in the recent past, the Gujarat government continues to perform poorly as compared to many other states in ensuring quality education to college-going children. Titled “Annual Status of Higher Education of States and Union Territories in India, 2014”, and sponsored jointly by the Union ministry of human resources and the top industry body, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the report finds that Gujarat government’s per capita spending on higher education (Rs 2,958) is less than nine major Indian states out of 20.

In an important move, the high-powered committee, headed by former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian, appointed by the Government of India in order to “review” current environmental laws, has sought to recommend that only those protected areas and forests which have more than 70 per cent canopy would not be disturbed for setting up a project. Taking strong exception to this, environmental activists in a note under circulation say, this is “a problem”, as it means the committee has “excluded wildlife corridors, non-forest habitat types of conservation significance, wetlands, coastal areas and buffer zones.”

By Our Representative Contradicting Gujarat government claims – as reflected in a Government of India book, “Elementary Education in India”, of June 2014 – that dropout rate of lower primary schools went down from 2.99 per cent in 2010-11 to 0.74 per cent in 2012-13, latest report of India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) suggests that the dropout rate was, actually, 19.48 per cent in 2013. CAG confines itself to analysing enrollment in government schools over the years, even as surveying as many as 300 schools to identify infrastructure reasons behind poor enrollment.

A just-finalized survey sponsored by high-profile NGO Child Rights and You (CRY), in alliance with Buniyadi Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (BAAG), carried out in 243 schools of 17 districts, has found that assertions made by the state government about cent per cent success in implementing right to education (RTE) are false. CRY has said in a report based on the survey, “An analysis reveals that implementation of RTE in Gujarat is still elusive, and in many parameters government’s claim of 100 per cent achievement is debatable… Findings are indicative that reality may be grimmer.”

In what may prove to a stern warning to those in the Congress party who have come to believe following the recent debacle in the Lok Sabha polls that stressing too much fighting against communal violence may erode their majority Hindu voter base, a recent Yale University  research  of Indian electoral data, titled “Do parties matter for ethnic violence? Evidence from India”, has reached the drastic conclusion that rise in religious violence in India is a sure sign of the country’s shift away from democracy. Authored by Gareth Nellis, Michael Weaver and Steven Rosenzweig, the scholars base their analysis of assembly election outcomes spread over several decades in 16 major Indian states.

  Fresh data of the Sample Registration System (SRS), which works under the Census of India, have suggested that Gujarat’s rural areas have failed to improve, and in fact gone down by one point, in its ranking, in the fight against high infant mortality rate (IMR) vis-a-vis other states in the last one decade. According to the latest SRS Bulletin, which was prepared in September 2014 and is based on the data collected in 2013, Gujarat ranked No 12th in a group of 20 major states in rural IMR. What is particularly shocking is that, at 43 IMR per 1000, such so-called backward states like Bihar (42 per 1000) and Jharkhand (38 per 1000) do better than Gujarat.

% of actuals to budget estimates Facts made available from Gujarat’s finance department show deceleration in spending during the first six months of the current financial year, between April and September 2014. A financial statement, accessed by Counterview, suggests that, while there had been acceleration in revenue collection, this has failed to improve the ability to spend on different projects floated by the Gujarat government for people’s “welfare”. Characterized as “unaudited” accounts, the figures show that, though the tax revenue of the Gujarat government rose from 45.7 per cent of the budget estimates during April-September 2013 to 47 per cent in April-September 2014, this did not impact the ability to raise spending.

  Latest data of the Sample Registration System (SRS), operating under the Census of India, suggest that Gujarat suffers from a huge rural-urban divide in infant mortality rate (IMR) rate compared to most other Indian states. Statistics offered by the SRS Bulletin, finalized in September 2014, show that Gujarat’s rural IMR is 43 per 1000, as against the urban IMR of 22 per 1000, suggesting a whopping gap of 21, higher than 20 major Indian states, with the exception of Assam.

Latest data of the Sample Registration System (SRS), operating under the Census of India, suggest that Gujarat suffers from a huge rural-urban divide in infant mortality rate (IMR) rate compared to most other Indian states. Statistics offered by the SRS Bulletin, finalized in September 2014, show that Gujarat’s rural IMR is 43 per 1000, as against the urban IMR of 22 per 1000, suggesting a whopping gap of 21, higher than 20 major Indian states, with the exception of Assam. Interestingly, the gap remains high despite the fact that well-known experts have been pointing towards poor state of rural infrastructure in Gujarat for the last several years. Apparently, their voice is not being heard. The CEPT University’s Prof Darshini Mahadevia, pointed towards this in 2007, when she wrote that the main problem with Gujarat’s IMR was a very high rural IMR compared to urban IMR. “Other states have shown far better improvement in rural healthcare than Gujarat. This neglect of rural health and t...

Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, is a “national hero” who “fought for independence from the British”, but his reputation was “tarnished” by previous governments. He should “figure prominently” among the list of national heroes to be taught in all government schools. So urges a letter, dated November 15, 2014, addressed to Union human resources development minister Smruti Irani. Posted on  savetemples.org , website of the “Mission to Save Hinduism and Hindu Temples”, it has been described as a ‘project of Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF) USA’. The mission, interestingly, operates out of the ‘Save Temple Office’ opened in Hyderabad city in June 2012.

Lesser flamingos: Near threatened  The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), an affiliate of the UK-based BirdLife International – a global conservation organization – has identified the Flamingo City in Kutch district of Gujarat as one of the ten important bird areas (IBAs) in India, which are in danger because of “unsustainable developmental policies” and “rising insensitivity towards nature.” Topping the list of ten, the BNHS believes that the situation is particularly precarious for the Flamingo City, because it is “a potential  Ramsar site .”

A senior UN official has taken strong exception to India “arbitrarily blocking” high-profile NGO operating from Copenhagen, International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), from obtaining UN consultative status. Calling Indian move “clearly unacceptable, wrong and unfair”, UN Special Rapporteur on the exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Maina Kiai has said, reprisals were an area of the gravest concern and some states were repeatedly targeting organizations, “thus obstructing legitimate civil society participation.”

Fisherfolk near the Narmada estuary Is the anti-dam sentiment downstream area of the Narmada river finally beginning to raise its head in Gujarat? This is the impression gained by senior activists of Delhi-based NGO, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), and Ahmedabad-based NGO Paryavaran Mitra, who visited areas next to the Narmada estuary. An analysis  by Amruta Pradhan of SANDRP, based on the visit, suggests that fisherfolk particularly are clearly feeling the pinch of the obstructions in the Narmada river, especially by the dam, which is situated about 126 km on the upstream.

Rattled by a relatively poor Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP)  growth rate  in recent years, two senior Gujarat government officials, ably assisted by an Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) expert, ironically, have put – to quote them --“big question marks on the credibility of the state income estimation and hence on the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) in the state”. They say this in their recent paper, “Measurement Issues in State Income from Registered Manufacturing Sector – Case of Gujarat”, published by IIM-A.