Counterview

By A Representative Social media is agog with a BJP poster in which the party's symbol, lotus, is in white and name of the party has been written in green. Says Himanshu Trivedi, who first put the poster on the Facebook, "Proof of the pudding is in its eating -- see the poster with white lotus, BJP written in green ... these people can sell 'whatever' to garner votes under false pretext." Points out Vistasp Hodiwala,"The party symbol goes from saffron to white. The name stands out on a glorious green background. This ingenuous customisation of the party is ostensibly to win the elections in J&K." And observes Sanjeev Bhatt, suspended from services by Gujarat government by refusing to favour Narendra Modi's line on 2002 Gujarat riots: "Truly, have these guys decided at all on the upper limit for political shamelessness? Is there any code they abide by? For I see no evidence of this in their breathless shenanigans every single day."

By A Representative The Nirbhaya case helped bring incidents of violence against women sharply into focus, but large number of women activists are starting to wonder why, if the victim is from a vulnerable community, she rarely draws attention. The death of a lady tribal police constable from Rajpipla in Gujarat Vasanti Vasava on November 24 under mysterious circumstances is being cited as an example which should have drawn as attention on lines with UP's Badaun gang rape of May 2014. There is little knowledge in general public about this gruesome incident, even in Gujarat. In in Rajpipla, a small town in South Gujarat in tribal dominated district, Narmada, things changed only after the Gujarat Women Rights Council, a recently floated group by a well-known Dalit rights activist of Navsarjan Trust, Ahmedabad, Manjula Pradeep, took up the death of Vasanti as a case of sexual assault and murder when the police was frantically trying to project it as a “simple case of suicide”.

By A Representative Several people's organisations of Gujarat have asked the Gujarat government to begin public discussion while drafting rules of the new Land Acquisition Act 2013, instead of confining the effort to draft it by a small section. Pointing out that after “many efforts and long deliberations” the previous UPA government passed the Right to Fair Compensation & Transparency in Land Acquisition & Rehabilitation & Resettlement Act, 2013 to rectify the past wrongs to farmers, in a statement they have expressed the fear that Act may not be implemented in Gujarat at all.

State of Ahmedabad slums By Rajiv Shah A recent survey of Ahmedabad’s two slum settlement colonies, Shankarbhuvan and Nagorivad, both of them situated in the old city area, go a long way to expose the loud claims of “clean" or "swachh" Gujarat by the state’s powerful authorities. Carried out by two non-government organizations (NGOs), Manav Garima and Human Development and Research Centre, the survey suggests that in the two slum settlements surveyed, out of a total of 1,447 households, 63 per cent of households (916) do not have toilets.

By Satyakam Mehta Crowdfunding, an internet-based practice of collecting money for small projects or ventures by raising small amounts from large number of individuals, is picking up as a craze in Gujarat’s penny-wise IT savvy youngsters. While many consider it as a way to earn a fast buck, one just needs to upload a project idea on a crowdfunding website, explain its concept, specify the funding you require, and just wait for individuals to transfer money to your bank account.

By Jitendra Rathod*  Manav Garima, in collaboration with Human Development and Research Centre, conducted a survey on current status of the sanitation system of individual households in two slum settlements of Ahmedabad – Shankarbhuvan and Nagorivad. After scrutinizing the current status of the sanitation system in both the areas, following aspects were taken into account for further action: Status of individual toilets, status of drainage facility, availability of electricity, and usage of individual toilets.  As seen in Table 1, there are in all 1,447 individual households in the two slum settlements, with a population of 7,493. A further breakup suggests that Nagorivad has a population of 1,677 and 317 households, while Shankarbhuvan has a population of 5,816 and 1,130 households. Individual Toilets Table 2 depicts number of households that have individual toilets, and number of households that do not have them. In the two slum settlements surveyed, 916 households do not ha...

By Venkatesh Nayak* The South African Supreme Court of Appeal has recently ruled that Arcelor Mittal, that country’s steel production giant, make environmental information in its custody accessible to the people. On November 26, 2014, the Court dismissed the appeal filed by Arcelor Mittal, South Africa (AMSA) challenging the judgement of the High Court which directed it to disclose information about its compliance with environmental regulations to an NGO. Arcelor Mittal is headed by Lakshmi Mittal of Indian origin, who was dubbed one of the richest men in the United Kingdom a few years ago. What was this case all about? In December 2011, Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA) filed an information request with Arcelor Mittal under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA) demanding access to their Environmental Master Plan including details of how the Vanderbijlpark site would be rehabilitated. Later in February 2012, VEJA filed a second request under PAIA demanding a ...

Amit Shah By Satyakam Mehta Well-informed sources in the Gujarat government have told me that “all-out efforts are on” to ensure that cops involved in the fake encounter cases are released on bail one after another. The reason, said the sources, is that they could be “quite effective” in helping “influence” and “work through” the prosecution to ensure that the cases begin losing its importance and fall through. A senior official requesting anonymity, said, “No stone is being left unturned to see to it that the the cases become weak.” He added, if so far three officers have been free – with two of them having been given plum posts – days are not far off when “others may follow suit.”

By Gagan Sethi*  The power of television reaching rural Gujarat was envisioned way back in late 1970s and early 1980s. At the Behavioural Science Centre (BSC) in Ahmedabad, I was involved in bringing about awareness on issues of discrimination and untouchabilty with the help of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Pij village of Kheda district. This project came to be identified as ISRO-Pij experiment. BSC and ISRO seemed strange bedfellows to me, but there I was, working with ISRO. A dynamic producer K Vishwanath, a leftist at heart, wanted us to get real life stories, which would be enacted and shown across the Kheda district. For organisations aiming at social change using Paulo Friere’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” as a frame, this seemed to be a dream come true. Several stories were collected from the field, and professional writers like Chinu Modi and a few theatre actors were roped in. But the result was half-baked version of urban actors mouthing rural dialogues. Not...

By A Representative Following one of the biggest demolition drives in Gujarat's cultural capital, Vadodara (click HERE to read), some of the displaced slumdwellers of Kalyannagar were moved to a rehabilitation colony in Maneja, about 10 kilometres away, in the outskirts of the city. Ashok Gupta, a concerned Vadodara citizen, was in Maneja on November 28, nearly a week after the demolition drive, and this is what he wrote in a Facebook post: "Displaced from Kalyannagar to Maneja, where they are without electricity, water, food... Their only fault is that they are poor and there is no media, no leader to support them. Citizens of Vadodara give them food, medicines, came to teach their kids. They live in subhuman conditions with uncertain future."