Gujarat farmers' leader detained, as Modi launches his high profile roadshow in Surat; no reason offered

In a move which has not surprised farmers' leaders, prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in Surat for road show, the police detained President of Khedut Samaj South Gujarat chief Jayesh Patel (Delat). The detention took place despite the fact that the Khedut Samaj did not plan any protest programmes, nor did it seek any permission for protest.
The detention came amidst the news that farmers' representatives wanted to raise with Modi the case of income-tax recovery notices slapped on South Gujarat sugar cooperatives. The income tax (IT) department has sent recovery notices to some of the largest sugar cooperative clusters of South Gujarat. The notices suggest that 14 cooperatives evaded Rs 1,399 crore in taxes between 2011-12 and 2013-14.
Notices were served amidst farmers' leaders saying that the IT department "overlooked" the fact that agricultural incomes are exempt from tax under the IT Act. The farmers in South Gujarat are mainly depend on sugarcane farming.
While the police have given no reason for the detention, this is not for the first time that the cops swooped upon activists, detaining them ahead of any VVIP visit, including Modi's.
The Khedut Samaj said in a statement, “The government, is so afraid of social activists that it earlier detained Khedut Samaj leaders Sagar Rabari and Lakhan Musafir, Patidar pro-quota leader Hardik Patel, Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, among others, ahead of Modi’s programmes.”
Khedut Samaj stated, “This shows as to how intense the fear is of the people within the government. One need not say on whose orders are the ‘obedient’ police force acting.”
Rabari, commenting on the detention, said, “The farmers of Gujarat severely condemn this undemocratic and despotic step of the Gujarat government. This direct attack on democracy in Gujarat will be answered to by the people of Gujarat in the forthcoming elections.”
He added, “The government is resorting to the short-cut of suppressing the voice of the farmers instead of listening to them. We will undertake massive programmes of people’s education against the anti-democratic and autocratic steps by the ruling establishment.”
Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Romel Sutariya of the Adivasi Kisan Sangharsh Manch (AKSM), which represents the new class of tribal farmers of South Gujarat, said that Modi would be inaugurating the Surat District Co-Operative Milk Producer's Union or SUMUL’s Tapi plant in South Gujarat despite the fact that it has been constructed illegally on agricultural land.
Quoting sources, Sutariya said, the plant, situated off national highway near Valod taluka’s Bajipur village on a plot of land belonging to Titava village, which is an agricultural land, and has not been cleared for non-agricultural purpose.
“The plant was built despite the fact that the local panchayat opposed handing over the plot of land for non-agricultural purpose”, claimed Sutariya, adding, “Tapi district officials are learnt to have even decided to propose a fine of Rs 4 lakh for illegal construction.”
Sutariya demanded, during his visit, Modi should send out the signal to the state government so that it begins acting against chit fund scamsters, who are looting poor tribals. “If Modi speaks against chit fund scam in West Bengal, what stops him to speak about it in Gujarat”, it asked.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog