Move is underway in top corridors of power of the Gujarat government to “revive” the high-profile Mandal-Bechraji special investment regions (MBSIR), which houses the proposed Maruti-Suzuki plant, which was pruned to nearly one-fifth of its original size -- from nearly 50,000 hectares (ha) to 10,172 ha. The MBSIR in North Gujarat was proposed as a major auto hub. It had to be pruned following a long-drawn-out farmers’ protest last year led by Jameen Adhikar Anadolan Gujarat (JAAG). JAAG has emerged as a powerful farmers’ group campaigning against dozen-odd SIRs coming up in Gujarat.

In what should appear as a weird development, the Gujarat government wants the state industries department to handle applications with pleas for appointing the lowest category of Dalits, Valmikis, involved in manual scavenging, as priests in temples. This has come to light in a letter from the chief minister’s office (CMO) to senior Dalit rights activist Rajesh Solanki, who wanted Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel to make the important change. Solanki had pleaded that Valmiki Dalits should be appointed priests in major Gujarat temples.

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched his ambitious Jan Dhan project by “enrolling”, according to an official claim, about 1.5 crore Indians as new bank account holders. But what is most interesting is that during his stewardship as chief minister, Gujarat remained a poor performer vis-à-vis several major states in financial inclusion – which is what Modi is seeking to "promote" by targeting around 10 crore people across India as new account holders by the next Republic Day. A report by the top consultants, Crisil, prepared in alliance with American agency Standard & Poor, released in January 2014, said Gujarat’s financial inclusion (Inclusix) index was below national average.

A recent study on ascertaining the impact of watershed development project (WDP) and Krishi Mahotsav, the two important programmes by the Gujarat government to improve agricultural practices, suggest that they have benefited the rich farmers more than the marginal and poor farmers. The WDP is a flagship policy initiative for development of groundwater resources, especially in drought- and desert-prone districts in the state – has suggested that benefits of WDPs were confined mainly to landed households, despite a clear emphasis to include the landless as project beneficiaries. “Among the landed households, those with medium and large landholdings had a larger proportion of beneficiaries as compared to marginal and small farmers within a village”, the study, based on a sample of 6,458 beneficiaries, said. Part of the chapter “High Growth Agriculture in Gujarat: An Enquiry into Inclusiveness and Sustainability”, by Amita Shah and Itishree Pattnaik, in the just-released book, “Growth or D...

Two Gujarat based scholars, Amita Shah and Itishree Pattnaik, in a recent study, “High Growth Agriculture in Gujarat: An Enquiry into Inclusiveness and Sustainability”, have found that the Gujarat government’s high-profile annual event Krishi Mahotsav, meant to intensify agricultural growth, was high on propaganda, but low in providing help to the marginal sections farmers. Forming part of the new book, “Growth or Development: Which Way is Gujarat Going”, edited by Prof Indira Hirway and others, the study, based on survey of 876 households in 15 Gujarat districts, found that 16.6 per cent of the large farmers benefited from subsidies, as against 8.3 per cent medium farmers, 7.2 per cent small and medium farmers, and just 1.3 per cent of the landless.

  Welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent statement that building toilets before building temples as suggesting commitment to develop modern sanitation system, the Human Rights Watch in its new report has insisted the he should simultaneously try to demonstrate “willingness to support communities seeking to leave manual scavenging, including by intervening when communities seeking to do so face discrimination and violence”.

Early this week, one of the senior-most state bureaucrats in Gandhinagar Sachivalaya was suddenly summoned by Gujarat chief secretary AK Joti for an urgent meeting on scarcity conditions prevailing in the state. Sitting in his chamber, I innocently wondered whether there was any urgency. 

Dharna against manual scavenging on August 22 In what is being seen as a gory case of official high-handedness by voluntary organizations working on Dalit rights issues, as many as eight cleaning contract workers, who were being forced to manually clean up human excreta at public places, have been sacked from their jobs for staging a protest on Independence-day eve. Working as manual scavengers under the Dudhrej municipality of Surendranagar district, Gujarat, these workers’ fault was that they took part in a fairly representative rally, followed by a dharna, against the despicable practice, which Mahatma Gandhi once called “shame of the nation.”

Contradictory winds appear to be blowing in New Delhi, which does not seem to known which policy directions to take after India’s dogged refusal to sign World Trade Organisation’s (WTO’s) trade agreement. One clear indication of this is Government of India’s decision to appoint Arvind Subramanian, Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, as its next chief economic adviser. Recommended by finance minister Arun Jaitley, Subramanian declared that India was going the “wrong way” in rejecting the WTO deal.

At a time when the Narendra Modi government is all set to consider dropping it, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has asked the Government of India (GoI) to “promptly enact the draft Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill” as an important step to prevent violence against women. It notes “continued marginalization and poverty of women and girls survivors of the Gujarat riots living in the relief colonies and their precarious living conditions with limited access to education, health care, employment and security.”

It is not just primary schools where the Gujarat government appears to be seeking to introduce dress code for teachers. Posters put up by the Gujarat police in Porbandar, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace, have said that women should be “appropriately dressed” while coming out of their residence. The posters carry a photograph of Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel at the top, in sari, advocating “women’s empowerment”, and down below is shown college girls from a foreign university in “inappropriate dress” – T-shifts and jeans. As part of the women’s empowerment week of the Gujarat government, the state officials have long been toying with the idea of having “appropriate” dress code for women. While opponents of the Gujarat government call such a move as an effort to implement the “RSS fatva”, and social media carries comments ranging from “Hindu Taliban” to the suggestion as to why is there is discrimination between men and women, the move comes several weeks after the state education de...

A just-released report, the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation has found that Gujarat has faltered in meeting annual implementation plan (AIP) target for the constructing toilets in schools in rural areas. The report, which is actually a detailed agenda note for review meeting with state principal secretaries/ secretaries in charge of rural sanitation, scheduled for August 25, has said that in the financial year 2013-14 Gujarat achieved just 24.3 per cent of the AIP target as against cent per cent by Kerala and Rajasthan, 60.5 per cent by Karnataka, and 51.6 per cent by West Bengal. The all-India average for meeting the AIP target was 48.4 per cent.

"Manogat" quotes Modi to praise Batra The BJP’s Gujarati mouthpiece, “Manogat”, has quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi as justifying Dinanath Batra’s controversial nine books, which have been officially introduced as “extra readings” in the state’s schools by the Gujarat State School Textbook Board, as exemplary. The monthly, in its latest August issue (click  HERE  to download), quotes Modi congratulating Batra for his books first published as Prarnadeep series in Hindi, calling them “exemplary", and adding, he “admires” the effort, and “hopes” that Batra’s “commendable literature” inspires children and teachers.

  Six families belonging to the Rohit community, a Dalit sub-caste, making their living by removing dead animals and tanning leather retrieved from them, have been forced to approach Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel following official indifference to provide them with alternative piece of land, despite official nod, in order to continue with their hereditary occupation. Living in Wadhwan, a town 94 km west of Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s business capital, these families do their current tanning job on 300 sq metres plot under tremendous stress.

Contradicting the Gujarat government’s loud claims, a recent survey, sponsored by high-profile NGO working on child rights, Child Rights and You (CRY), in 249 schools has shown that while 97 per cent primary schools do have toilets, as many as 204 (or nearly 82 per cent) of them are used by both boys and girls, suggesting utter lack of girls’ toilets at the primary level. In fact, if the survey results are to be believed, only four out of 249 schools surveyed have separate functioning toilets for girls, and in most cases girls and boys must use the same toilets.

A top international non-profit think-tank, based in Sydney, New York and Oxford, has ranked India a poor No 143rd in global peace index among 162 countries it surveyed on the basis of the data sourced from the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the World Bank, various UN Agencies, peace institutes and the EIU. The only consolation for India is, Pakistan ranks 156th, Israel 149th, and Russia 152nd. The best performer is the tiny Nordic country Iceland, ranking No1. Japan ranks No 8th, the US 101st, and the UK 47th.

Sudarshan Iyengar A senior Gandhian educationist has come down heavily on the Gujarat government’s movement over last nearly a decade towards privatizing higher education, saying it does not reflect in any way the state’s movement towards inclusiveness. Prof Sudarshan Iyengar, vice-chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapeeth, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, in a recent research paper has said, “There has been a rapid expansion in the number of seats in professional courses or courses having better employment prospects. Most of these are ‘payment seats’. The poor cannot access this facility easily.” Further, “the returns are not commensurate with the expenses.”

Manual scavengers of a small town in Gujarat, Dudhrej of Surendranagar district, are on warpath. Following the refusal of the state government authorities to heed to their demand to regularize them, the scavengers – who mostly work as contractors workers under the local municipality – took out their maiden rally in Surendranagar to protest against the “discriminatory attitude” of the authorities. They allege, instead of rehabilitating them in respectable jobs, they are forced to manually clean up human excreta, or else quit the job.

  After a gap of nearly six months, a series of protests seemed to once again shake the sleepy Mithi Virdi village, not very far from Gujarat’s south Saurashtra coast, where the Government of India has proposed a 6000 MW nuclear power plant. Led by Vadodara-based environmental organization Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS), the protesters feared that recent efforts to water down the new Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 might only aggravate the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd’s move to acquire land near Mithi Virdi.

In one of the most significant critiques in the recent past, Gujarat’s well-known industry consultant Sunil R Parekh has said that though Gujarat’s industries may have grown faster than most states, this has failed create matching jobs, generate enough taxes for coffers, and provide safe environment. Worse, he finds Gujarat’s performance in the area of innovations discouraging. Despite 17 per cent of industrial output of India, in patent filing, Gujarat accounted for less than 1 per cent of national filings; “Maharashtra, Delhi, and Tamil Nadu, together contribute 60 per cent of national filings.”

Dalit representatives demonstrate in Veraval Unrest has gripped Dalit villagers surrounding a fast-expanding town off southern Saurashtra coast in Gujarat, not far away from famous Somnath temple. Thousands of villagers, mainy of them Dalit representatives of Saurashtra, gathered outside the district headquarters of the newly-created Gir-Somnath district at Veraval early this week to protest against the state forest department’s move to forcibly occupy hundreds of acres of land being cultivated by Dalits for more than four decades. A representation to the district collectorate, Somnath-Gir, said, “The forest officials entered the fields illegally and removed standing crop. Worse, these officials, who are responsible to take care of environment, removed 30 years old mango trees the Dalits reared.”

An investigation carried out by top international environmental NGO Greenpeace has found “residues of hazardous chemical pesticides” in a majority of samples of the main brands of packaged tea produced and consumed in India, including MNC Uniliver subsidiary, India’s powerful business group Tatas, and Gujarat's favourite tea brand Wagh Bakri. “Over half of the samples contained pesticides that are ‘unapproved’ for use in tea cultivation or which were present in excess of recommended limits”, a Greenpeace report, based on research carried out by its team in India, insisted.

“Growth or Development: Which Way is Gujarat Going”, edited by Indira Hirway, Amita Shah and Ghanshyam Shah, Oxford University Press, 604 pages, Price: Rs 1,395.00 --- Edited by three senior Gujarat-based experts, the book is an exceptional commentary on the view taken by three well-known scholars – Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and Bibek Debroy – who in the recent past were instrumental in creating a web around Gujarat “model”. The introduction “Growth and Development in Gujarat”, by the three editors makes its theme amply clear: “We believe that those who call the growth experience of Gujarat a great ‘success story’ have overlooked certain critical dimensions of growth. They appear to be either unaware of or wish to ignore certain ground realities in the state.” Debroy, for instance, in his book “Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development” (2012), “discusses accelerated reduction in rural poverty, but does not mention the almost stagnant level of urban poverty during 200...

A research paper, “Political Economy of Subsidies and Incentives to Industries in Gujarat: Some Issues”, by scholars Indira Hirway, Neha Shah and Rajeev Sharma, has calculated that the total subsidies given to industries and infrastructure projects during 1990–2011 was a whopping Rs 56,538 crore, of which the maximum share is of sales tax subsidies (Rs 54,303 crore), followed by Rs 1,677 crore of capital subsidies and Rs 370 crore of interest subsidy.” Of this, the paper points out, “Rs 1,150 crore or a mere 2.03 per cent subsidies have gone to the small scale industries/ micro, small and medium enterprises (SSI/MSME)."

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.

In a major relief to 101 families residing at Aliyabet village, situated in the vicinity of the industrially-hyperactive Dahej region of South Gujarat, the state High Court has stayed the state forest department’s 14-year-old order to evict them from their land, calling them “illegal encroachers.” Claiming to be using the land for cattle breeding, their only occupation, for the last 60 years, the villagers received a major relief following Justice CL Soni order granting “interim protection” to the affected persons, asking the authorities “not to evict petitioners from the land till the final disposal of the civil suit pending in the civil court, Bharuch.”

Amid widespread objections from civil society activists across the world, including India, a World Bank board has cleared its policy draft to “modernize” policies seeking to “safeguard people and the environment in the investment projects Bank finances.” Taking strong objection to the clearance, the Bank Information Centre (BIC), an independent apex body of NGOs advocating with the World Bank, said, the board has cleared “a weak new set of rules to replace its existing environmental and social safeguard policies.” The policies, it adds, “Reverse a generation of gains by weakening protections from harm for the poor and the environment in Bank-funded projects.”

  In a glaring instance of negligence of Gujarat’s rural areas, a local social worker from Surendranagar district of Gujarat has sought top state officials’ intervention regarding the entire approach road to village Dholi of Limdi taluka having been water-logged due to monsoon rains, with no way to drain it out for days together. In a letter he wrote to Limdi taluka mamlatdar, the revenue official responsible for the state of affairs, Natubhai Lakhabhai Parmar, also points towards how the school building of the village is unfit to study and the midday meal offered to children is of hopeless quality.

Debroy with Modi in June Has   one of the top-ranking economists, known to have gone extremely close to Narendra Modi after being forced to quit the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in 2005 for ranking Gujarat No 1 in economic freedom index, begun showing signs of disillusionment with the Modi style of governance? Bibek Debroy, professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, first expressed his reservations soon after the Union budget was presented in early July saying, it has missed the “big picture of tax and expenditure reforms”. Now, he has  declared , the new NDA government is nothing but the same UPA regime “with better implementation.”

Arundhati Roy at Ayyankali memorial lecture, Kerala University Well-known writer and Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy has created flutter once again, this time by calling Gandhiji a “false Mahatma”. Delivered as Ayyankali Memorial lecture Kerala University, Trivandrum, on July 17, 2014, the lecture evoked such sharp reaction that Speaker of the Kerala Assembly G. Karthikeyan said Roy’s views on Gandhiji must “hurt anyone who was born in India”. Now, Navayana, which claims to be the only publishing programme “focusing on case from an anti-caste perspective programme”, has hit back: “We think many of Gandhi’s views should hurt a lot of people—irrespective of where they are born.”

  A senior activist, formerly with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), has defended top Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy’s controversial utterance on Gandhiji that “his doctrine of nonviolence was based on an acceptance of the most brutal social hierarchy the world has ever known, the caste system.” Surprised at the  police seeking  video footage and transcript of Roy’s Mahatma Ayyankali memorial lecture at the Kerala University on July 17, Nandini K Oza in a recent  blog  quotes from available sources to “prove” that Gandhiji indeed believed in “removal of untouchability within the caste system.”