A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) study, “Antibiotics in Chicken Meat” has found that 40 per cent of the chickens on which it carried out tests have the presence of antibiotic residues, suggesting that poultry farms in India that produced chickens are either “misusing” or “overusing”  antibiotic into chickens . The study says, “The use of antibiotics in food animals poses a major risk for humans due to antibiotic resistance”, adding, “Antibiotic use is related to emergence of resistant bacteria in the animal which later transmits to human through food, environment and direct contact with the affected meat.”

In a sharp rebuttal to the Gujarat government’s dogged refusal to admit the prevalence of manual scavenging in the state, the Safai Kamdar Hak Rakshak Samiti, Surendranagar, has come up with documentary evidence to demand the the despicable practice, which Mahatma Gandhi called “shame of the nation.” Releasing photographs showing existence of manual scavenging under Dudhrej municipality, the organization, associated with Ahmedabad-based Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust, has demanded from the district collector, Surendranagar, to take “urgent steps to stop the practice and employ them in respectable jobs.”

Several people’s organizations which took a lead in campaign for bringing in the new land acquisition law for India -- Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 – have come together to put up a case against new “efforts” by the World Bank to dilute its existing safeguards on Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement. In a letter, they have said that the Bank’s new  draft  Environment and Social Safeguards Framework on Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement threatens to “significantly increase the risk” for the poor people and exacerbate inequality.

Javadekar In a major decision, which has raised the eye-brow of senior environmentalists, the Government of India has decided to lift the moratorium on industrial investment in Vapi in South Gujarat, which was found to be “most polluted” in September 2013 by the previous UPA government. Along with Vapi, an office memorandum of the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF)  has decided to lift the moratorium on seven other industrial clusters -- Ghaziabad (UP), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Jharsuguda (Odisha), Ludhiana (Punjab), Panipat (Haryana), Patancheru-Bollaram (Andhra Pradesh) and Singraulli (Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh).

At a time when the Government of India is considering to tone down two of the main components of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 – social impact assessment and consent – a top World Bank  document , leaked to Counterview, has insisted that there cannot be any land acquisition without “free, prior and informed consent.” Pointing towards the need to “strengthen meaningful consultation with vulnerable groups, project-affected communities, and indigenous peoples”, it has added, “Emphasis should be on the need for strong and consistent risk assessment and risk management.”

In what may seem to be a direct support to the NDA government’s expressed “need” for a common civil code in India, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has expressed serious concern over “the coexistence of multiple legal systems with regard to marriage and family relations” in country. It has added, these multiple legal systems “apply to the different religious groups and which results in the deep and persistent discrimination against women”.

A new study, “Debt Sustainability at the State Level in India”, by Balbir Kaur, Atri Mukherjee, Neeraj Kumar and Anand Prakash Ekka of the Department of Economic and Policy Research of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has found that, as of March-end 2013, a huge 17 per cent of the revenue expenditure of the Gujarat government goes into paying up interests on loan taken by it over the years, which is higher than most states. Suggesting that this is higher all 17 major states taken up for analysis, except West Bengal (20.9 per cent), the data suggest that Gujarat has progressively paid a higher proportion of interest on loan compared to most states ever since 1981.

Widows from Dasada during discussion A recent spot study, carried out by Gujarat’s premier NGO Navsarjan Trust, has found that majority of widows who were unable to get any job following their husbands’ death, may not be receiving any pension, despite Gujarat government directions on this. Based a focus group discussion (FGD) with tens of widows belonging to 16 villages of Patdi taluka, Surendranagar district, the study says that many of them have not received pension though they applied for it in accordance with a government resolution of 2012. It also found that a few women didn’t apply for pension because, though eligible, they were unaware of any scheme.

Close on heels of the Government of India’s controversial  decision  to raise the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in defence sector to 49 per cent, the powerful Reliance Industries Ltd’s New Delhi-based think-tank has asked the Modi establishment to make “a critical doctrinal shift in the country’s approach to national security”: transform the Indian defence sector by “encouraging the large-scale entry of the private sector into the defence research and development and industrial sectors.” And for this, it indicates, there is an urgent need to increase the country’s defence budget, which is allegedly very low.

Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar has refused any compromise with Ahmedabad-based businessman-cum-activist VK Saxena of the National Council for Civil Liberties in the Sabarmati Ashram case, in  which she and other activists were attacked during participation in a protest meeting against the Gujarat riots in 2002. The refusal came in the wake of a suggestion from the judicial magistrate at Saket Court, New Delhi, who  was hearing defamation case filed by her against Saxena, and vice versa.

  Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, new chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), is all set to trigger in a new period of what he calls “real history”, proudly claiming that he has no qualms in declaring his appointment is “political.” Involved in a project to “fix” the date of Mahabharata war, Rao has said, “The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are true accounts of the periods in which they were written”, contesting historians DD Kosambi and Romila Thapar who have seen them only as great epics having different versions added to them for over 1,000 years. To him, they consider the epics “myths from a western perspective”.

A recent study, sponsored out by a Gujarat-based institute, has revealed that religion has been playing an important role in the provisioning of basic services in the slum areas of Kolkata. "The chances of sufficient water supply reduce by at least 16 percent for Muslim households and by at least 26 percent for wards represented by the Muslim councilor”, the study, titled “Political Economy of Water Supply and Drainage Service Delivery in Slums of Kolkata: Implications for Municipal Management", authored by Indranil De of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Gujarat,  and Tirthankar Nag of the International Management Institute, Kolkata, points out.

The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) has said the Union budget for 2014-15 has brought “no significant policy for inclusive and equitable growth as promised by the Modi Government.” Saying that it has “belied the expectations of Dalits and Adivasis”, an NCDHR statement said, “The Union Budget 2014-15 should have allocated Plan funds under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and the Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) in proportion to the population shares of SCs (16.8 percent) and STs (8.7 percent). However, the allocation is Rs 50,548.16 crore (8.79 percent) for SCs and Rs 32,386.84 crore (5. 63 percent) for STs.”

The latest Census of India figures have revealed that, despite tall claims of the Gujarat government of development having touched marginalized groups of the state, large sections of the state’s tribal population is facing unprecedented unemployment and marginalization of workforce. An analysis of Census’ data on workers suggests that in the total population of the age group 15 to 34, 2.17 crore, 7.13 lakh persons, or around 3.29 per cent, are found to be seeking jobs. Then there is 9.65 per cent of the population – or 20.93 lakh – in this age group which is forced to work as marginal workers for a period of three to six months in a year. However, a comparison drawn with the two most neglected social groups reveals that while the Dalits of the age group face almost a similar proportion of joblessness and marginalization, the tribals’ predicament remains extremely pitiable. The Census data go to show that 9.34 per cent of the tribals (2.70 lakh out of 29.67 lakh) – almost triple the pr...

A Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh shakha in US A new  report  prepared in the US is likely to further fan the on-going controversy around the Intelligence Bureau (IB) accusation that foreign-funded NGOs’ campaign in India has undermined India’s growth rate. The report, “released via  South Asia Citizens Web ”, has alleged that between 2001 and 2012, five Sangh Parivar affiliates in the US – India Development and Relief Fund, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of America, Param Shakti Peeth, Sewa International, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America – “allocated over $55 million dollars to their programme services”, and these funds were “largely sent” to Sangh Parivar groups in India.

Prof Bibek Debroy, an economist who is known to have taken a leading role in “authoring” the concept what came to be known as “Gujarat model”, said in his book “Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development”, released in 2012, that the real growth in Gujarat could be found in rural areas, where poverty reduction has come about as a “trickle-down effect.” Quoting National Sample Survey (NSS) figures, he said, “In rural Gujarat, there has been a very sharp drop in poverty, significantly more than all-India trends. In 2004-05, the below poverty line (BPL) number for rural Gujarat was 9.2 million. That’s still a large number, but is significantly smaller than the 12.9 million in 2004-05.” Based on this, he said, the poverty in Gujarat had gone down during that period by 12.4 per cent, which was one of the highest in India. It seems, however, that in just about two years of his drastic observation, which Prof Debroy kept repeating at several forums, things appear to be looking a little gl...

Fresh information disseminated by Gujarat’s independent budget-analysis centre, Pathey, has revealed that the Gujarat government has failed to spend a whopping Rs 5,712.56 crore in the annual plan for the financial year 2013-14, which comes to around 9.68 per cent of the total annual plan allocation, Rs 59,000 crore. Annual plan is the sum total of developmental expenditure a state seeks to incur over the year in order to render different socio- economic services to larger sections of population. Data suggest the state spends well when it comes to industry and infrastructure, but is a poor spender on social sector.

  While the Gujarat government has been claiming that its public debt – which is slated to reach Rs 1.69 lakh crore by the end of the current financial year (2014-15) from Rs 1.50 lakh crore in the fiscal 2013-14 – is “well within limits of its paying capacity”, an independent budget analysis institute has brought to focus a disturbing fact: While the principal amount for paying debt has been going down over the years, the total amount payable as interest against the debt taken by the Gujarat government is showing a progressive upward trend. At the same time, the budget analysis suggests, interest as percentage of revenue expenditure of Gujarat is one of the highest in the country, and the state government is increasingly finding it difficult to spend amount allocated for the social sector.

A campaign for whistleblowers bill A senior civil society activist has brought to light an alarming development. Circulating a resolution of the Government of India, issued by the Department of Personnel and Training amending the Public Interest Disclosure Resolution (PIDPI Resolution), the activist said, the Government of India has sought to create an “internal mechanism” to receive complaints from government employees wanting to blow the whistle on corruption instead of the one that existed earlier. Previously, the whistleblowers could send their complaints directly to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

New data released by the Census of India have suggested a strange fact. While the percentage of those who have been identified as “seeking” jobs or are “available for work” out of the total population in the age-group 15-59 in Gujarat is one of the lowest in India – suggesting a much lower unemployment rate than most Indian states – this does not tell the full story. No doubt, both in the working age-group of 15-59 and in the “job-seeking” younger age-group of 20-25, Gujarat appears to have fared considerably better than the rest of India. Thus, as against nearly seven per cent job-seekers in the country as a whole out of the total population of about 73 crore in the age-group 15-59, Gujarat’s jobseekers are just 2.61 per cent – or less than half of the country – in its population of 3.8 crore in this age-group. In the age-group 20-24, too, the situation is more or less than same. In this age group, there are nearly four per cent job seekers in Gujarat compared to 8.6 per cent of the c...

A recent case study in one of India's richest districts, Anand, has found the existence of large-scale casualisation of the workforce, with factories situated in a state-owned Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) premises opening flouting labour laws, even as paying scant regard to the laws that make it obligatory to pay minimum wages. Titled “Labour Under Stress in Gujarat”, the study by Atulan Guha of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) says that the GIDC estate in Vallabh Vidyanagar, situated just outside the Anand township of Central Gujarat, only “confirmed” the macroeconomic picture of dormant earnings of the urban workers in Gujarat.

 A just-prepared research paper “Labour Under Stress in Gujarat?” by Atulan Guha of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) has noted that huge investments in Gujarat's industrial sector, leading to a high growth rate of the state economy, has failed to translate into “higher wage earnings in Gujarat relative to the rest of India.” Basing on the National Sample Survey Organisation's 2011-12 data, the senior scholar says, the all-India wage rates of urban casual workers were 1.18 times higher, and of regular salaried urban workers 1.41 times higher, than Gujarat.