Counterview

By Rajiv Shah  Not that economists have not noticed urban poverty in Gujarat; but they have focused on urban Gujarat in passing. For instance, there is a calculation that the percentage of urban poverty in Gujarat during the second half of the decade ending 2010 has gone down by 2.2 per cent, from 20.1 per cent to 17.9 per cent. Which means, the annual poverty reduction in the state has been just about 0.44 per cent. Notably, this is lower than a dozen out of 20 major states, including Madhya Pradesh, which saw a whopping 12.2 per cent reduction in urban poverty, followed by Orissa (11.7), Rajasthan (9.8), Maharashtra (7.3), Tamil Nadu (6.9), Karnataka (6.3), Kerala (6.3), Andhra Pradesh (5.7), Chhattisgarh (4.6), Bihar (4.3), Uttar Pradesh (2.4) and West Bengal (2.4). The all-India average percentage in poverty reduction is 4.6. Obviously, huge investments and a high growth rate have not helped Gujarat’s downtrodden sections, in any way. In fact, one economist has calculated, in a...

By Rajiv Shah  Gujarat’s rural poverty, if a section of the senior economists are to be believed, has gone down considerably. Prof Bibek Debroy, an economist who is particularly close to the present Gujarat establishment, has pointed towards how, thanks to a very high growth rate in rural areas, poverty reduction has come about as a “trickle-down effect.” Quoting National Sample Survey (NSS) figures, he says, “The real story is in rural Gujarat, where there has been a very sharp drop in poverty, significantly more than all-India trends. In rural Gujarat, the benefits of growth have trickled down. In 2004-05, the BPL number for rural Gujarat was 9.2 million. That’s still a large number, but is significantly smaller than the 12.9 million in 2004-05.” Even then, he is forced to admit, in his latest book, “Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development”, that “people may also be poor because they are stuck in subsistence-level agriculture and have no other employment opportunities.” D...

By Rajiv Shah  The Gujarat government’s powerful state public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Public Corporation (GSPC), has faced a major environmental hurdle, putting its Rs 2,030 crore project to go in for commercial production of the gas it claims to have found in the KG Basin, off Andhra coast, in jeopardy. Asking the GSPC to “defer” the project till certain conditions are fulfilled, sources in Gujarat’s energy and petrochemicals department said, the expert appraisal committee (EAC) of the Union ministry of environment and forests has refused to give blanket coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance for laying down underground gas pipeline, optical fibre cable (OFC), an effluent disposal pipeline – all of which is proposed to pass through CRZ area of Yanam-Puducherry, along the Andhra Pradesh coast – as also the proposal to set up an onshore gas terminal off Mallavaram and a process-cum-living quarter platform at offshore in KG Basin, Andhra Pradesh.

Gyan shala school By A Representative The Gujarat High Court, taking a serious view of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) School Board for failing to implement the right to education (RTE) Act provisions for 8,449 slum-dwelling children, has said that the board is “not following” the order and advice of the State Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) authorities to implement RTE norms. It ordered “immediate implementation” of RTE norms for these Gyan Shala children, who faced the predicament of becoming school dropouts only because the local body authorities refused to provide them a general register (GR) number, which would enable them to get admission in any school of their liking, government or private.

By Rathin Das “Just Rs 90 lakhs ?! That’s not a big price to get such a high post in the Railway Board”, many in bureaucracy would scream. They know Indian republic has a long history of having price tags for several posts that involve interactions with contractors -- first awarding them projects and later clearing their inflated bills, to say the least. The payment made for procuring the post is recovered through kickbacks received from contractors and suppliers, the beneficiaries of the projects at the cost of the exchequer. No questions are asked about the source and destination of the slush money as the bureaucracy-contractor nexus has for long perfected the system of ‘regulating’ the flow of public money back to the coffers of the officers. In this case of Rs 90 lakhs paid to the nephew of the Railway Minister for securing the coveted post, the officer must have relied on the contractors who would be returned the favour by way of speedy payments of over-rated bills.

By A Representative Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Purshottam Rupala has threatened that he will take top human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, founder of NGO Anhad, to the court of law for “defaming” him. In a statement posted to www.counterview.net , he has said, “Hashmi has leveled a very serious charge of forging the documents against me, which I deny. My letter to the Prime Minister was based on facts. I call upon Hashmi to retract her statement and issue an apology, immediately, failing which I will not hesitate to take a legal actions against her.”

By Rajiv Shah  Fresh indications have emerged which go to suggest that the latest economic reforms, under the “neo-liberal” guise, have not in any way worked in favour of the disadvantaged sections of the rural population in Gujarat. The latest National Sample Survey (NSS) data, put out by the Government of India, show that only 1.2 per cent Gujarat’s scheduled tribe (ST) households and 2.7 per cent of the state’s scheduled caste (SC) households owned more than four hectares (ha) of land. This is in sharp contrast to a huge 17 per cent of higher castes owning more than four ha of land. The figures find their place in “Employment and Unemployment Situation among Social Groups in India”, published in September 2012.

Counterview Desk A recent research paper, “Involuntary displacement: An analysis of the role and contribution of non-government organizations to the Narmada project affected communities in Western India” by Hinal Pandya of the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, Australia has found that 56 per cent of respondents were “satisfied” with the NGOs’ assistance in rehabilitating the victims of the project, while only 39 per cent appreciated the government’s assistance.

By A Representative In a letter to Jayanthi Natarajan, Union minister of state for environment nd aforests, New Delhi, several Gujarat-based environmental groups have demanded early implementation of the recommendations of the committee for inspection, which looked into environmental destruction on the part of the Adani Port and Special Economic Zone, Mundra, Gujarat. The letter wants urgent steps to be taken to involve local people in restoring environment, destroyed while implementing the project in the area.

Shabnam Hashmi By A Representative Making a serious allegation, top human rights NGO, Anhad, founded in the wake of the communal riots in Gujarat, has said that senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Purshottam Rupala "forged documents" to defame the organisation. In a statement, it has said, Anhad has been under "concerted attack" for the last few months, and the attack is lead by Rupala, who has written letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against Anhad, even as leaking "half-baked information against Anhad to various small time websites assumingly supported by them."