In severest-ever indictment of the the implementation of the right to food dictum in “progressive Gujarat”, a new survey, carried out by the Anna Suraksha Abhikar Abhiyaan (ASAA), a consortium of 18 NGOs focused on right to food, has found that over 81% of severely undernourished and 73.5% of moderately undernourished children of Gujarat do not have their names on their families’ ration cards. “This failure results in both the family and the child being unable to avail of their full entitlements of grain”, a report, based on the survey, whose results were released in Ahmedabad, said. In all, as many as 2,230 children were surveyed across the state.

A recent study, “Street Vendors in Ahmedabad: Status, Contribution and Challenges”, scholars of the Centre for Urban Equity of the CEPT University, Ahmedabad — Darshini Mahadevia, Alison Brown, Michal Lyons, Suchita Vyas, Kaushal Jajoo, and Aseem Mishra – points towards deep vulnerabilities suffered by the street vendors of Ahmedabad. Carried out by interviewing 20-30 venders in several areas of Ahmedabad where street vending is common – Bhadra, Delhi Darwaja, Kankaria Lake, Jamalpur, Parasnagar, Khodiyarnagar, Nehrunagar, CEPT University, IIM-Ahmedabad and Vastrapur Lake — he study focuses on “harassment, coercion, bribery and eviction” suffered by them in these localities.  Seeking to examine whether economic freedom if enjoyed by the poor sections of the trading community against the backdrop of economists like Bibek Debroy, who have called Gujarat “a model state in India from the perspective of economic development and economic freedom”, the study points towards how the “other ...

The author of “The Satanic Verses”, banned in India just nine days after it was published on September 26, 1988, for alleged blasphemy under pressure from extremist Islamic groups, has taken strong exception to Penguin India’s decision to withdraw "The Hindus: An Alternative History" from market, this time under pressure from Hindu bigots.  Coming down heavily against the Penguin decision, Emory University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie said that he fears for the “future of Indian literary freedom in the wake of the controversy over the recall and destruction of a book on Hinduism by an American scholar.”

Has Gujarat’s high growth trajectory helped overcome its lag in the social sector? Inter-state comparisons, culled out from different studies, suggest that this not happened.  Gujarat is being widely projected as the “model state” which others must follow. The state’s economy, it is argued, has been growing at the rate of around 10 per cent per annum. Expanding wings of industrialization is considered the key to this growth. The state rulers’ “model” stems from the view of neoliberal economists such as Bibek Debroy and Jagdish Bhagwati, who believe that economic growth would automatically take care of improvement in the social sector. However, facts suggest that, despite high growth, the social sector in Gujarat has suffered. Its coastline, forming 20 per cent of India, has become more vulnerable to environmental destruction. Fishermen in areas where industrialization has taken shape have lost livelihood. The SEZ and port at Mundra, Kutch district, developed by the Adani group, spr...

SR Rao, the 1978 batch Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat who retired from the service in January 2014, is being considered as the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) Lok Sabha poll candidate from Surat, where he shot into prominence after boldly cleaning the city of plague in mid-1990s. Known for his impeccable reputation, Rao once again gained confidence of the people of the South Gujarat city after he fought to clean up the city, engulfed in its worst-ever flood in 2006.

Gujarat may have refused to deal with Medha Patkar, well-known social activist and head of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), calling her “anti-Narmada” for her long-time opposition to the Narmada dam. So much so that she was treated as “persona non grata” the last over two decades. However, in a major breakthrough to her, the neighbouring BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has been forced to deal with her over contentious issues related two other big dams built on Narmda river – Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar.

India’s powerful quasi-judicial environmental watchdog, National Green Tribunal (NTG), in its order on February 14, has asked the Rajkot Municipal Corporation’s (RMC’s) sold waste management site contractors, Hanjer Biotech Energy, to pay up Rs 25 lakh to the affected farmers without any delay, adding, if the contractors refuse to comply within 15 days, the district collector, Rajkot, should intervene and attach their properties and recover the dues. The order has come as a big boon to the farmers, who had complained that their fields had got damaged as a result of the contractors’ failure to comply by environmental norms.

  Latest information, calculated on the basis of the worker-population ratio (WPR) provided by the top statistical collection body of the Government of India, National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), has revealed that Gujarat has nearly 4.2 lakh child workers – 3.18 lakh in the rural areas and a little above 1 lakh in the urban areas. The calculation is based on the NSSO’s revelation in its latest report, “Employment and Unemployment Situation in India, 2011-12”, released in January 2014. It points towards the fact that Gujarat has 2.2 per cent child workers in the urban areas and 4.3 per cent child workers in the rural areas in the age-group 5-14, which happens to be one of the highest in India.

People shouting slogans against the project The people of around ten villages surrounding Dhamadka, Anjar taluka, district Kutch, are angry. They are protesting against the proposed steel project, which their leaders believe will mean threat to their livelihood. Reverberations of the protests were first heard during the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) public hearing organized at the village on February 4, 2014. “The gathered villagers were of the opinion that they are already facing a resource scarcity in terms of water and land, and the upcoming expansion of the plant with huge production capacity will destroy their meagre resources”, said Ajitsinh Jadeja, sarpanch, Dhamadka group panchayat.

Why is the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSCs) unable to function normally in Gujarat to inquire into different human rights issues involving Dalits? If NCSC officials are to be believed, it is because it does not have “adequate staff”, or “basic infrastructure”, or even a car, or, worse, a “proper office to function from”. All this and more has come to light in a Right to Information (RTI) reply to NGO Navsarjan Trust’s senior activist Kirit Rathod. The reply revealed, as a result of all this, more than 3,500 complaints has been pending before the NCSC for the last several years.

Farmers of Dholera SIR area About 1,000 persons from 22 villages, mainly leaders and farmers, gathered on February 9 to publicly register their opposition to the Dholera special investment region (SIR), reiterating their demand for Narmada water for irrigation. Around 100 people under the leadership of Jameen Adhikar Andolar Gujarat (JAAG), which included leaders Pradyumansinh Chudasma, Rajbha Chudasma, Indukumar Jani, Sagar Rabari, Lalji Desai, and many others, were arrested and and taken to the police station, but later let off. JAAG claimed this was an attempt to curb dissent in Gujarat, which has been continuing for the last several years now.

Number of registered industries in Gujarat A top Gujarat government insider has disclosed to Counterview that biennial Vibrant Gujarat business summits, sponsored by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, has mainly attracted industries which are in the “most polluted” category. Quoting sources in the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), the state government’s official anti-pollution watchdog, the insider has revealed there has been a massive around 2.5 times rise in “highly polluting” category between 2007 and 2012.

If you are a Hindu, you are not a tribal, or vice versa. This is the gist of a recent order, issued by the Gujarat government, which “denotified” the Rathvas as a tribe “ostensibly because their school records show them to be Hindus”. The little-known fact has failed to attract any attention beyond the tribal belt of newly-formed Chhota Udepur district of South Gujarat, says a recent report in a top research journal (click  HERE ) by Arjun Rathva, a tribal activist, in association with two Central University of Gujarat scholars – Dhananjan Ray and N Rajaram.

The Gujarat government believes that people with a per capita monthly income of less than Rs 324 in the rural areas and Rs 501 in the urban areas should be treated as “below poverty line” or BPL. The BPL “definition” has been given in the state government website of the food and civil supplies department. Fixing the information in Gujarati, the website (click  HERE  to see) adds, under this definition, as many as 24.3 lakh families of Gujarat are below the official poverty line, as against 13.1 lakh BPL families identifies by the Government of India. It adds, all these BPL families have the “right” get subsidized food to the tune of 35 kg of foodgrains.

The Reserve Bank of India’s annual report on the state of state finances has been released. Providing inter-state comparison on a large number of indicators, the report suggests that Gujarat continues to spend less on the social sector, despite state government claims. The report, “State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2013-14”, has once again demonstrated that the Gujarat government has not been spending enough on social sector, despite its poor human development indicators. Brought out in January 2014, the report – an annual exercise – says that in India as a whole “the expenditure pattern revealed an improvement in quality, as reflected in sharp increases in development expenditure, particularly social sector expenditure.” Projected expenditure on education 2013-14 (% budgetary allocation) However, the data the RBI report has put out go to show that Gujarat has failed to improve upon its social sector expenditure in the recent past. In fact, if the report is any indicator, overall ...

  Latest survey by top international consultants Ernst & Young, “EY’s attractiveness survey: India 2014 – Enabling the prospects”, based on interview with 502 representatives of international and local opinion leaders and decision-makers, has said that 51.2 per cent of the global investors say that Mumbai is the “most attractive” city of India, followed by Bengaluru (37.8 per cent), New Delhi (37.4 per cent), Chennai (14.6 per cent), Pune (13.1 per cent) and Chandigarh (10.7 per cent). Significantly, the EY survey does not find Ahmedabad in the company of these “most attractive cities”.

Jayanthi Natarajan BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi was in Goa in January second week. He took a jibe at former Union environment and forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan – saying there was a “Jayanthi tax” when she was in charge of the ministry. Modi alleged many files in the ministry were pending only because of a new tax in Delhi called “Jayanthi tax”, and unless it was “paid” no file would move. "We've heard of income tax, sales tax, commercial tax in the past, but this is the first time we are hearing of a Jayanthi tax!" he declared. When he made the remark, I humbly thought, what’s new about it. Politicians of all hues are alike. They all charge a “tax” for all that they do. My experience in Gandhinagar as correspondent wasn’t any different. Indeed, I wasn’t wrong. My friend Mahesh Pandya, who, as environmental engineer (he calls himself environmental expert; “I am not an environmentalist”, he says), moves around Gujarat campaigning on environmental iss...

Does Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal have soft-corner for BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi? Though AAP’s unit in Gujarat vehemently denies this, the question is being widely debated among political circles and senior Gujarat activists, who have known Kejriwal ever since he was more of a right to information (RTI) activist about five years ago. The confusion is particularly worst confounded because they are privy to a little-known fact about Kejriwal – he had a two-and-a-half-hour long meeting, which, they recall, took place with Modi in 2010.