A recent research work by a well-known pro-Narendra Modi economist, who many say is one of the key contenders for an authoritative posting in the Government of India in case the Gujarat CM becomes India’s next prime minister, has found that while urban Gujarat has seen a sharp rise in worker-population ratio (WPR) compared to any other part of India, the rural counterpart has suffered.  Prof Ravindra Dholakia has drawn the conclusion in a recent research paper, “Urban – Rural Income Differential in Major States: Contribution of Structural Factors”, co-authored with two Gujarat government officials.

Why could the officials investigating into the death of three Dalit youths on September 22, 2012 in police firing at Thangadh in Surendranagar district in Gujarat fail to go ahead with their job though three and half years have passed following the gruesome incident? If a recent report submitted to Gujarat’s home department by inspector general of police, CID (crime) Anil Pratham is any indication, one of the major reasons behind it has been “lack of staff”, which got busy in Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s variegated security concerns!

Latest information gathered by Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust on the basis of a right to information (RTI) plea suggests that a total of 101 persons, mainly belonging to the Valmiki community, died in Gujarat as a result “accidental deaths” while working as safai karmacharis between 2005 and 2014. Out of this, in as many as 46 cases no compensation has been paid so far, while in rest of the 55 cases Rs 58 lakh was paid up. Significantly, the RTI reply suggests, only three of the 55 safai karmacharis who have  are been paid compensation were found to “qualify” themselves as having died while working as gutter workers in manhole.

Replies to a right to information (RTI) application filed by senior environmentalist Himanshu Thakkar have revealed that the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa, found serious issues with the Sardar Sarovar Dam’s safety way back in May 2011, yet till now, “there is still no news that the damage has been repaired, even as the monsoon of 2014 is about six weeks away”. Suggesting this shows how serious the Gujarat government towards the dam’s safety, Thakkar said, “It took Gujarat government 30 months just to organize a dam safety meeting”.

Dalit women in a Gujarat village In a stark example of what may happen in a traditional Gujarat village in case a higher caste girl falls in love with a Dalit and marries him, a recent complaint to the Banaskantha superintendent of police (SP) suggests how deep casteism is rooted in the state’s rural areas. The complaint, a copy of which is with Counterview, is about Kishorkumar Hemji Pandya, a resident of Harijan Vas in Khimanwas village of Vav taluka of Banaskantha district. Pandya married Vimlaben Prajapati on December 13, 2013 in Vadodara.

 Well-placed sources close to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi are happy – that, even as Modi is fighting a “winning battle” in the Lok Sabha polls to become India’s next prime minister, already, several public relations (PR) firms have begun to line up, even are closing ranks, and are vying with each other to be close to circles around the PM aspirant. According to these sources, they are making an “unprecedented effort” by recruiting persons who they believe have had access to Modi’s inner circles in Gujarat.

Even as the campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections is going on in full swing, Workers Health and Safety Net (WHSN), Vadodara, has sought answers from the two main warring parties as to why some of the basic issues related to workers’ safety in this industrial city remain unresolved, despite several representations. Led by four senior activists, Bharat Pathak, Rohit Prajapati, Jagdish Patel and Kantibhai Mistry, and accompanied by workers, a group of representatives from the WHSN visited the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Hospital in Vadodara to find out whether their earlier representation to improve situation with regard to workers’ safety and health had made any impact.

  Why are many sections of the poor people in Gujarat deprived of a below poverty line (BPL) ration card, which would enable them to buy foodgrains at subsidized rate? If government officials are to be believed, this is because there aren’t enough government staffers available to “assess” whether those who have applied for obtaining BPL card should get these or not. This is what came to light when an NGO-led delegation reached the district food controller’s office in Ahmedabad for submitting a memorandum.

The forest rights Act (FRA), enacted in 2006, may be a major campaign tool of "pro-tribal" NGOs and political parties, as it seeks to provide land title to adivasis. But three well-known scholars – Felix Padel, Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni – in a recent book have triggered Hornet’s nest by declaring that it spells "death" for the idea that forests are a community resource whose ownership should remain with tribals. The  bo ok , “Economy Ecology: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection”, published by Orient BlackSwan, claims to be a critique of “adverse effects of resource utilization – water, metals, power, land – on adivasi communities.”

Bombay Hotel area, Ahmedabad Even as Gujarat prepares to vote on April 30, well-informed sources have told Counterview that the state administration, currently operating under the Election Commission of India (ECI), has “completely messed up” the entire process of registration of voters. Giving one example after another, these sources, quoting senior officials in charge of poll management, have said, in the Ahmedabad district alone there are a whopping 45,000 “duplicate voters”, and there is still no “foolproof system which would ensure that they are deleted”.

Dr Katrina Lantos Swett at the hearing With opinion polls showing that Narendra Modi-led NDA is all set to register a clear majority in Lok Sabha polls, the United States’ powerful Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC), a Congressional arm meant to “develop congressional strategies to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights norms”, has begun to take a serious note of the alleged danger to religious freedom in India. While the US has considered human rights as part of its US-China strategic dialogue, a hearing held at the TLHRC tried to assess whether it should now become part of the the US-India strategic dialogue framework, too.

The Agariya Heet Rakshak Manch (AHRM), which works among poor saltpan workers in the Little Rann of Kutch (LRK), has represented to the World Bank against recent eviction notices served on them by the Gujarat government officialdom. Sent to the Biodiversity Conservation and Rural Livelihood Improvement Project (BCRLIP) head of the World Bank, Anupam Joshi, who sits in the bank’s New Delhi office, the AHRM letter says, the “drastic step of eviction warning without community consultation will lead to serious impact on the well being and livelihood of large population from 150 villages on the periphery of the LRK”.

The Buniyadi Adhikar Andolan Pahel, an NGO run by a Dalit rights activist, Rajesh Solanki, has claimed that in the “BJP’s model state of Gujarat”, at a time when slogans on good governance are proliferating, number of incidents of kidnapping of Gujarati women has increased double fold and numbers of rapes on Dalit women has increased 63 per cent in the last two decades. Solanki also runs Dalit Hak Rakshak Manch (DHRM), which fights for the cause of Dalits in Gujarat.

  The Election Commission of India has asked the Gujarat government to immediately start implementing the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Ordinance, 2014. The ordinance was promulgated on March 4, 2014, and the Gujarat government was refusing to take any action for implementing it, say Dalit activists. This forced Kirit Rathod, senior activist, Navsarjan Trust, to write a letter to the Gujarat governor to ensure that the ordinance was put into action without any delay.

Top British writer and author of the controversial novel “Satanic Verses” Salman Rushdie has joined a group 27 prominent individuals, many of them academics and artists based in England, to declare that if Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India, “It would bode ill for India's future as a country that cherishes the ideals of inclusion and protection for all its peoples and communities.” Published by the British daily “The  Guardian”, the letter says, Modi’s ethos is “incompatible” with India’s “secular constitution”.

Parrikar In a surprise move, Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar has sharply  criticized  Gujarat-based Jesuit human rights activist Father Cedric Prakash, wondering why the latter should go to Goa and address people there, telling them about lack of religious freedom in Gujarat. Invited by the Catholic Association of Goa (CAG) and others about three weeks ago, Prakash has hit back saying that he is a “free citizen” therefore has “the right to travel anywhere in the country and speak or address any group.”

A Dalit Election Manifesto 2014, worked out by a group of human rights organizations working among Dalit and tribal people across India, who gathered under the umbrella of “National Coalition for Strengthening of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, has said that the “rise of dominant caste people to power at the cost of the Dalits and the consequent deprivation of rights and privileges suffered by the latter”, even after 65 years of Independence, remains a “major issue of debate today in India.”

In a scathing critique, top Vadodara-based environmentalist Rohit Prajapati has said that the BJP’s manifesto has mentioned the word “environment” formally and casually at seven places (pages 2, 11, 29, 33, 34, 35, and 36), and the emphasis is on “decision-making on environment clearances” in a “time-bound” manner. The environmentalist believes, “The word ‘time-bound’ is clearly reflects that Modi’s main concerns is speedy clearance for the industries and not the environment.”

With analysts predicting that Narendra Modi will become the next Prime Minister of India in the Lok Sabha polls, economists close to him have begun to declare that he is sure to bring an end to the welfare programmes initiated by the UPA government. Bibek Debroy, a prominent Indian economist, has been quoted as saying that “the Hindu nationalist leader shared his market-driven policy platform and opposed handouts.” He adds, "It is essentially a belief that people don't need doles, and don't need subsidies". Instead, Modi would focus on “building infrastructure to ease poverty”.

Is the Gujarat government set on a developing high-profile tourism spot, which would include the 182-metre high statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, on the land acquired for the Sardar Sarovar dam – signifying a change of purpose? It would seem so, if you goes by a right to information (RTI) query is any guide. The statue is proposed as the highest bust on earth, with the cost of Rs 3,000 crore. The RTI query was filed with a Gujarat government revenue office by senior activist Kirit Rathod, who demanded official documents concerning land acquisition for the Sardar statue project, including orders, if any, regarding this.

 Is the National Sample Survey (NSS) Organization, the statistical arm of the Government of India, seeking to play a “statistical fraud” by saying that overall Muslim poverty levels in rural Gujarat have gone down from 31 per cent in 2004-05 to 7.7 per cent in 2011-12? It would seem so if one looks at the NSS’ 2011-12 extremely small sample size for Gujarat’s OBC Muslims – just five households! Based on this sample size, the NSS’ unreleased report on monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) for socio-religious groups suggests that the OBC Muslims’ poverty rate went down from 40.5 to 1.9 per cent during the seven years. In the second week of March 2014, a few newspapers carried a report that Gujarat had emerged as one of the top states in India where poverty among Muslims in both rural and urban areas has declined drastically in the last seven years. This was reportedly brought to light by a high-level committee formed under the Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, Amitabh Kundu. Th...

After a lapse of three years, the Gujarat government has once again revived its plan to begin eviction of the salt-pan workers, or agariyas of the Little Rann of Kutch. Earlier, the notice was served on them in April 2011. The latest notice served on the agariyas reads, "You have been asked to submit documentary proof regarding salt making activity in the Little Rann of Kutch.” Quoting the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972, amended in 2002, the notice, given to thousands of agariyas, says that any activity in the sanctuary area of the Little Rann of Kutch “is termed prohibited and is liable to punishment from three to seven years of imprisonment, plus Rs 25,000 penalty.”

The People's Union for Civil Rights (PUCL), top civil rights organisation, has taken strong exception to some of Gujarat office bearers' participation in a forum formed to support Congress candidate Madhusudan Mistry, fighting against the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi from the Vadodara parliamentary constituency. A statement issued by V Suresh, PUCL general secretary, and distributed by well-known Vadodara-based environmentalist Rohit Prajapati, who is also a Gujarat PUCL office bearer, has said, "It is the stated policy of PUCL (both national and state units) not to align itself or support in any manner whatsoever any political party."

Booker prize winning writer and social activist Arundhati Roy has expressed the fear that in case Narendra Modi becomes India’s prime minister, he will be “ruthless” against “growing resistance movements” against different types of corporate-based oppressions. In an  interview  with Vancouver-based online platform, Roy has asserted, the corporate India is backing Narendra Modi as the country's next prime minister “because the ruling Congress party hasn't been sufficiently ruthless against the growing resistance movement.”

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi must become Prime Minister of India in order to get a diplomatic visa for the US. This is the crux of the new Congressional Research Service memorandum “Visa Policy: the case of Narendra Modi”, written by Ruth Ellen Wasem, specialist in immigration policy, made public on March 18. In her categorical statement, Wasem says, “If Narendra Modi were to become Prime Minister of India, he would automatically be eligible for A-1 (diplomatic) visa as head of state, regardless of the purpose of his visit.”

  Is Narendra Modi-led BJP heading for a two-thirds majority in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls? It would seem so, if a recent survey carried out by a US-based “nonpartisan fact tank” in Washington, DC, Pew Research Center, is to be believed. Beating all opinion polls, which give BJP around 200 seats – a little over one-third of the Lok Sabha strength – Pew claims BJP has the support of 60 per cent of urban and 64 per cent of rural India, saying, “New poll finds Indians are disgruntled about the state of their nation, deeply worried about a range of problems facing their society and supportive of new leadership in New Delhi.”