By Our Reprsentative Several grassroots organizations of Gujarat under the banner of Mines, Minerals and People (MM&P) have represented to state governor Dr Kamla against continued mining of the tribal areas of Gujarat, saying this is happening “against the Constitutional provisions, which prohibit mining of any natural resources that come under the tribal areas, whether it is water, land or forests.” The representation underlined, “It is illegal to allow mining in the tribal areas without prior approval of the gram sabha.”  Those who represented included Ashok Shrimali from MM&P, and social workers from affected tribal villages of South Gujarat. There were Namikaben Chaudhury, who is also sarpanch of Mordevi village panchayat, Bhupendrabhai Chaudhary, of Kosambia village, Manendrabhai Chaudhury or Bahej village, and Lalsinhbhai Gamit of Valod village. 

By Our Representative Several villagers surrounding the Kevadia colony, the place where the Narmada dam is situated in South Gujarat, have come together to launch struggle under the banner of Kevadiya Area Development Authority (KADA) Virodhi Manch to oppose implementation of the notication, issued eight years ago, for developing water park, hotels, golf course, camping grounds, trekking trails, boating facilities, sunset viewpoints, resort clubs, etc in the region. "Originally this was planned on the lands of 16 villages. Now this has been expanded to be built on lands acquired from 70 villages", a KADA Virodhi Manch statement issued in the wake of a meeting on May 27 at Kevadia colony said.

By Our Representative In a major exposure of the working of the Gujarat government, a right to information (RTI) reply to a senior activist has revealed that as many as 3,125 Dalit undergraduate students of Ahmedabad district alone have not been paid scholarship despite the fact that they were entitled to it. "The matter came to light after earlier attempts to get information through RTI on scholarship to Dalit students failed to yield result", said Kirit Rathod of the Navsarjan Trust, a Gujarat-based human rights NGO.

Counterview Desk A recent study, titled “Are Disparities In Indian Agriculture Growing?”, by Gursharan Singh Kainth, Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies, hsas glaringly exposed the “high growth” story of Gujarat agriculture. The senior academic has found that growth rate in productivity of agriculture, at constant prices of 2004-05, has actually gone down in the state over the two decades. It was 4.7 per cent in 1990-91 to 1999-2000. But it went down to 3.4 per cent in the next decade, 2000-01 to 2009-10. Kainth has further said that the growth rate per hectare agricultural productivity at constant prices (2004-05), too, went down from 5.07 per cent in 1999-2000 to 2.09 per cent in 2009-10.

By A Representative Senior activists of Gujarat have alleged that the Narendra Modi government wants to begin work on the controversial Kalpasar project, which seeks to dam the Gulf of Khambhat, despite the fact that it has not yet complied with the Government of India's Environmental Impact Assessment Notification on September 14, 2006. The project falls under Category ‘A’, 1 (c), i.e. a river and valley project which requires prior environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on the recommendations of Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) constituted by the GoI.

Counterview Desk Jagdish Patel, senior Vadodara-based activist of the People's Training And Research Centre (PTRC) has informed Counterview how India in the second week of May became one of the countries which blocked a decision at a top international meet to oppose action against the use of asbestos and paraquat. A report on the meet, "Joint Chemical Conference Disappoints Those Seeking Action on Asbestos, Paraquat", by Daniel Pruzin, Bloomberg BNA, Daily Report for Executives, Geneva, has the details : ***

By Rathin Das Several NGOs and other activists in Gujarat and elsewhere are up in arms against the Union Home Ministry’s (HMA's) order suspending the Foreign Currency Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of over 700 NGOs involved in grass root activities. In an order on April 30, 2013, the Ministry of Home Affairs has suspended the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) registration of the INSAF, apparently for its involvement in what the Government considers ‘political’ activities like ‘Dharnas’ and rallies.

Pankti Jog By Our Representative An anti-woman government resolution (GR) remains in currency in Gujarat for two years, yet nobody seems to to care. The Gujarat government issued this surprising GR two years ago, which seeks to undermine the authority of the woman as head of the family. The GR, issued on May 6, 2011, yet remained unnoticed for so long till a right to information (RTI) application was filed on December 25, 2012 by Pankti Jog of the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), Gujarat’s RTI NGO. Jog says, “The surprising GR comes from the department of food and civil supply. It says that woman can hold ration card in her name only if a male member of the family expresses his willingness.”

By Our Representative Has the Gujarat government adopted a "go slow" tactic vis-a-vis the gruesome incident in Thangarh, Surendrangar district, which took place in September last year, in which three Dalit youths died in police firing? Senior Dalit activist Kirit Rathod of NGO Navsarjan Trust appears to think this is very much the case, "While the Gujarat Human Rights Commission (GHRC) directed, on March 23, 2013, that the director-general of police (DGP) and the CID crime, who sit in Police Bhawan in Gandhinagar, to immediately provide a complete report on the firing incident, even a month after the order the state's top cops have not act", he has said in a statement.

Ashok Chatterjee* reviews the book, “Lest We Forget History: Tracing Communal Violence in Gujarat 2002″ by P G J Nampoothiri and Gagan Sethi (Books for Change, Rs 300, 2012), which recounts Gujarat’s tragedy from the perspective of a special monitoring group set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC): *** National attention is focused once again on the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. Conflicting accounts have emerged from the Supreme Court’s Special Investigation Team (SIT). Its apparent exoneration of Narindra Modi is challenged by the Courts amicus curiae, while a cover story in TIME on the Chief Minister as India’s icon of economic growth has failed to remove the visa ban imposed by the US since 2002 on grounds of human rights violations. “Lest We Forget History” recounts Gujarat’s tragedy from the perspective of a special monitoring group set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) soon after the killings began, on which the co-authors served. Their conclusion is chill...

Rohit Prajapati Counterview Desk  In an open letter to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, senior Vadodara-based environmentalist Rohit Prajapati of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti has wondered why is the CM so shy of providing answers to permanent resident Gujaratis (PRGs), who have repeatedly asked him certain questions on issues related with people’s concerns. The letter has been written against the backdrop of the CM’s address satellite-based to non-resident-Gujaratis (NRG), who live in the US, as he did on May 12. The letter following questions Prajapati wants Modi to answer: Text:

RTI On Wheels, run by MAGP By Our Representative The Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), Gujarat’s foremost Right to Information (RTI) NGO, has revealed that there is a whopping 41.2 per cent violation of RTI norms by the first appellate authorities (FAAs), who happen to be Gujarat government officials, which leads to a large number of cases piling up with the Gujarat Information Commission. Last year, it has said in a statement, there were in all 30,491 RTI appeals or complaints, out of which 19,130 could be disposed of.

By Our Representative Ahead of his proposed address to 18 US cities via satellite, scheduled for May 12,  Association for India's Development (AID), a US and Canada-based NGO, has asked Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to have a closer look at how vulnerable sections of society are suffering in his own state. In a letter to Modi  and state revenue minister Anandiben Patel, 54 AID volunteers, who support civil society efforts in India have asked him, in a signed letter, to urgently look into the plight of the salt pan workers in the Little Rann of Kutch. "You must already be aware of the recent untimely and heavy rainfall in the Little Rann of Kutch and surrounding areas", the letter reminds the CM.

A gyan shala school in Ahmedabad By Our 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 Our 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.”

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, Ahnad founder By Our 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."

Gladson Dungdung By Ashok Shrimali* In a strongly worded letter, Gladson Dungdung, general secretary, Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM), Ranchi, has asked the President of India to either "protect the rights of the Scheduled Tribes (Indigenous People of India) or to shoot all of them at once rather than excluding, discriminating, exploiting, torturing and making them landless, resourceless and beggars by alienating them from the natural and livelihood resources in the name of growth and development." The letter has been written in wake of persecution faced by tribals who were refused representation to President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee on April 30, during his inauguration of a power project of the Jindal Steel & Power Ltd at Sundarpahari, which comes under Godda district of Jharkhand.