Gujarat govt's refusal for farmers' rally against Dholera SIR: JAAG: farmers court arrest

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.
Earlier, the Gujarat government had denied permission to JAAG to hold a farmers’ rally on February 9 at village Sandhila in Dholera SIR to protest against the SIR. Close on the heels of the state government decision, JAAG said in a statement that this signified “Police Raj in Gujarat, portents of an emergency.” JAAG wants the Dholera SIR status, comprising 22 villages over an area spanning nearly 920 sq km in Gandhinagar district, to be cancelled, claiming farmers do not want it.
According to JAAG, farmers of the region “have been protesting against the Gujarat government’s so-called development project for the last three years to save their very fertile land and also to fulfill long pending promise of Naramada water for irrigation.” This is the reason why “they decided to put up a show of strength and combined protest against a project which spells destruction and death for them, not development.”, it added.
Pointing out that “a large number of villages, which fell under the Narmada command area, have now been de-commanded, depriving them of their dream of farming their lands with irrigated water”, JAAG said, the protest was organized to “register farmers’ protest against the draconian SIR Act and to demand the cancellation of the Dholera SIR project.”
“The fact that the farmers are opposed to the Gujarat chief minister’s pet Dholera SIR project and that they rather want the Narmada water for irrigating their fields was made known at the public hearing held in Dholera on January 3, 2014”, JAAG said, adding, “Wishing to respect the rule of law and the codes of civil behaviour, the farmers had sought police permission for the same and this has been denied.”
JAAG contended, by denying the permission, the state government had “made an unstated yet implicit admission that Gujarat today faces an undeclared emergency, that the civil and political rights of citizens here remain suspended, and that democracy is no longer alive here”, claiming, “Almost throughout the year, in most parts of Gujarat section 144 remains in force.”
Declaring that it would not cow down by such refusals to grant permission, JAAG said, “At every public gathering of this kind, the police remains present in huge numbers as if the citizens pose a threat to the nation." Pointing out that the “behaviour of the police under the orders of their political masters is unacceptable and should not to be taken lightly”, JAAG said, “Gujarat has bid adieu to democracy and democratic practices."
Pointing towards how permission for protests were denied, JAAG said, “On August 15, 2013, the police cancelled the permission granted for the flag hoisting at the last minute to the protesting villagers in the Mandal-Bechraji SIR area. Then, on October 23, 2013 the permission for the cattle rally from Hansalpur to Gandhinagar was denied to the protesting Maldharis.”
Further, “on January 18, 2014 the cattle rally by the maldharis was stopped by the police, they were beaten with lathis and had cases registered against them. Likewise, the protesting adivasis near the Narmada dam were rounded up just prior to the chief minister’s visit and released only after his appearance in the area was over.”
“Again on December 18, 2013, the police again tried to stop villagers who had gathered to share information about the SIR Act. The people assembled despite several attempts by the police to stop them. And then again on December 28, 2013 the police yet again denied permission to the youths for a motor-cycle rally on the issue of the SIR in Dholera”, JAAG said in the statement signed by its leaders Pradyumansinh Chudasma, Rajbha Chudasma and Sagar Rabari.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog