I think it was 1994 when I first met Japanese scholar Takashi Shinoda, an Indologist, during my routine visit to the Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research, Ahmedabad, at that time still known for some quality research. Once headed such academics of highest order such as DT Lakdawala and YK Alagh, the institute has since collapsed – at least this is what I learn from Gujarat’s academic circles, with whom I had developed good rapport before I was shifted to Gandhinagar to report on government affairs for the Times of India in 1997. Unassuming, Shinoda took me to the institute canteen for tea, and told me of his latest area of interest – social mobility and occupational diversification of different castes over several decades. What he told me was indeed of great interest to me – that Gujarat’s “enterprising” Patels, who I thought till then were mainly a farming community, had still not overtaken the Banias in business. However, he underlined, “The way things are happening...

In an important move, the central information commissioner (CIC), the right to information (RTI) watchdog, has ordered that concession agreement for a public-private partnership (PPP) project should be disclosed after “severing those portions relating to commercial confidentiality”.

As I was sipping morning tea the other day, an idea came to my mind: Why not ask the age of the young man who is said to be “leading” the current Patidar or Patel reservation stir, Hardik Patel – an agitation that has put Gujarat back on the national map after more than a year. In fact, ever since Narendra Modi left Gandhinagar to occupy the gaddi in Delhi, the view has gone pretty strong, at least in my media fraternity, that Gujarat has “lost its importance”. A few TV channels have even “withdrawn” their senior journalists from Gujarat, telling them that there is “no news in the state”. I sent a message on WhatsApp, a facility I generally avoid using, to a young “pro-reservationist” leader in Ahmedabad, whom I happen to know somewhat. He promptly returned with his answer “23, I suppose”, and after a while phoned me up to tell me the “importance” of the agitation, which has spread from North Gujarat to Ahmedabad and Surat, engulfing “upper” castes as well – Banias, Brahmins, Kshatriya...

Amitabh Kundu Foremost economist Prof Amitabh Kundu has come down heavily on the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) saying that the information on income that has been collected in the SECC has been done “in a very cavalier manner.” A demographer and an authority on urbanization, migration patterns and labour market, Prof Kundu has especially taken exception to collecting income data of the highest earning member of the family.

Patidar leader Hardik Patel, 22 A well-informed official source close to the establishment has conveyed to the Government of India, particularly the Prime Minister’s Office and the intelligence-gathering network working for it, that Narendra Modi’s former detractors in Gujarat BJP are behind the current Patidar (or Patel) caste stir for reservation that has engulfed the state.

Amidst major hue and cry around “time lost” during the recently-ended Parliament session, with accusations flying high that the tax-payers’ money is being “wasted”, data of Lok Sabha sittings suggest that the last session when the BJP was in opposition saw the highest per cent of time lost since 1991.

Construction of household toilets (Nos) Is Prime Minister Narendrda Modi's Swacch Bharat campaign, launched on August 15, 2015, beginning to flounder? A recent analysis of the official figures of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation says, the target for household toilets was set at 98 million more toilets by 2019, which would require constructing 46 toilets per minute. However, in 2014-15, just 11 toilets were constructed per minute.

 In a scathing critique, top US journal “Newsweek” has warned American and European consumers that if they were wearing T-shirts with the 'Made in India' tag – bought from Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Wal-Mart or other malls – they should know they might have “contributed” heavily in a “water pollution crisis that has destroyed almost 30,000 family-owned farms” in India. Competing with their counterparts in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, China and Bangladesh to sell T-shirts that cost as low as $5, Indian T-shirts are made mainly from the Netaji Apparel Park, situated in Tamil Nadu’s Tirupur, known as India’s ‘Knit City’, whose “rivers are often red or purple with runoff from nearby factories”, it said.

A new Government of India report has revealed that, despite huge claims of rise in livelihood standards over the last one decade, the use of firewood and chips as the chief source of cooking is higher in Gujarat compared to most of India. In Gujarat, 79.7 per cent of rural and 15.9 per cent of urban households use firewood and chips as against the all-India average of 67.3 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

India's former energy secretary EAS Sarma has strongly put forward the case against coal mining, considered by powerful coal-fired power company owners of India as the panacea to end “India's energy poverty”. In an article in the wake of the Australian Federal Court calling environmental nod to the Adani Group's coalmining project in the country as “invalid”, he says, social and economic costs of sending power to all the nooks and cornder of India are “huge” and far “outweigh” the perceived benefits of coal.

The year was 2012, when D Jagatheesa Pandian, a Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat, was state energy secretary. Accompanied with two journalist colleagues, I dashed into his room on finding he had no guests to entertain. A seasoned official who became Gujarat chief secretary two years later, Pandian welcomed us with a broad smile. One who had the longest stint at the state-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), almost 10 years, Pandian, to most of us, was synonymous to GSPC’s oil-and-gas exploration. One who can claim to have made Gujarat number 1 in the use of gas by providing most of the over 3,000-km-long gas pipeline network, he was also known to us as Gujarat’s “gas man” for another reason – he took GSPC to the KG Basin off Andhra coast, apart from going “multinational” to Egypt, Australia, Yemen and Indonesia for “exploratory” exploits. It is quite another thing that, not only GSPC’s multinational ventures, even the KG Basin oil-and-gas fields, have been either abandoned or ...

In a stinging article, the “New York Times” (NYT) has accused the Government of India (GoI) of “blocking” India’s 857 porn sites “without warning or explanation”, in defiance of a Supreme Court “decision.” Quoting Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of MediaNama, which monitors digital policy,  NYT says , this has sent fears that the GoI is “using pornography as ‘a ruse’ to create a government-controlled web filter for India.”

By seeking to go in for its amendment, is the Government of India ignoring the main principle underlying the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, passed by the Lok Sabha on December 27, 2011, and pushed through the Rajya Sabha on the last day of the extended session of Parliament, February 21, 2014 – to provide a “safe alternative” to silence to a person who has knowledge of or is witness to an offence or wrong doing in a public authority?

While the suspension of 25 members of Parliament (MPs) for creating “ruckus” in the Lok Sabha may have created a flutter in Delhi among political observers, those who are in Gujarat are not surprised. In fact, the event is being described as nothing but Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to follow the so-called Gujarat model.

A high-profile analysis, released by Reliance thinktank Observation Research Foundation (ORF), says that even if Indian economy achieves 8% growth rate, it is unlikely to achieve per person energy consumption levels that represent "decent quality of life" for several years now. It adds, the talk of "India’s energy take-off" may prove to be an ’optical illusion’, which has been caused by "China’s slow-down."