Gujarat Dalits in Surendranagar district's rural areas deprived of Narmada water: Letter to chief minister

By A Representative
In a letter to Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, a well-known Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust’s activist, Prakashbhai Jayantibhai Parmar, has given the instance of two villages of Surendranagar district to point towards how, despite availability of Narmada waters, the Dalits are being deprived of drinking water.
Pointing out how in the two villages – Gedigam and Jambugam – the Dalits are being discriminated against in the distribution of Narmada waters, Parmar said, “While the water gathers in the village drinking water tanks, the responsibility rests with the local village panchayat to distribute it.”
He adds, “While other sections of the population do get water, the pipelines leading to the Dalit area are several years old and they do not have enough capacity to deliver water to the Dalit families, who live a segregated locality.”
“The Dalit families have to dig seven to eight feet deep holes in order to obtain water from the pipeline”, the letter says, calling the two village panchayats’ attitude as “discriminatory” and “amounting to untouchability.”
The letter says, “With the summer approaching, the Dalit families are obliged to buy water from private tankers. Sometimes, the families have to use dirty water from the nearby pond. As a result, there have been complaints of Dalit family members falling ill.”
The letter says that the Dalit families have made frequent complaints to the local officials, including the taluka mamlatdar of Limdi, under which the two villages are situated, and the government engineer looking after water supply, apart from local village officials and the village sarpanch.
“These complaints have made little difference”, the letter says, adding, “No one has cared to begin work for fresh pipelines towards the Dalit areas of the two villages.”
Demanding immediate provision of Narmada waters to the Dalit localities, the letter insists, “There should be a separate overhead tank for them under the provisions of the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP). Besides, the MLA and MP of the region should be asked to set aside their funds for the Dalits.”
The letters have been addressed to the chief minister amidst Navsarjan Trust, in a statement, insisting that the Gujarat government has not been spending funds allocated under the SCSP in the state budget.
Kirit Parmar, senior activist of Navsarjan Trust said, an analysis of the budget for the financial years 2013-14 and 2014-15 suggests that there was a provision of around Rs 600 crore for creating Narmada-based water supply mechanism for the Dalit areas during the two years.
“Despite this provision”, he says, “The Dalit families in Gujarat villages are deprived of Narmada waters, with the state government adopting an indifferent attitude towards them. Thus, in 2013-14, 62.78 per cent of the allocation (Rs 327.78 crore), and in 2014-15, 71.73 per cent of the allocation (Rs 361.47 crore) was spent for the Dalits.”

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma* As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor* A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Transgender Bill testimony of Govt of India's ‘contempt’ for marginalized community

Counterview Desk India’s civil society network, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)* has said that the controversial transgender Bill, passed in the Rajya Sabha on November 26, which happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Indian Constitution, is a reflection on the way the Government of India looks at the marginalized community with utter contempt.

Search This Blog