By Rajiv Shah  Vulnerability to climate change in Gujarat remains a worrying policy issue for the state. A new study has found that there has been a sharp rise in the highly vulnerable areas in Gujarat over the last two decades.  A recent research work, which has still not caught public eye, “Analysis of Vulnerability Indices in Various Agro-Climatic Zones of Gujarat”, published in Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics (January-March 2013), should send alarming signals to the state policy makers, seeking to address disaster management issues in Gujarat. Prepared by a Junagarh Agricultural University scholar Deepa B Hiremath in association with a senior faculty, RL Shiyani, the study has found that, over the last two decades, not only has the number of districts under “highly vulnerable” category has gone from three (Panchmahals, Surat and Ahmedabad) to six (Surendrangar, Rajkot, Bharuch, Banaskantha Mehsana and Sabarkantha). Worse, Ahmedabad is now one of the two districts...

Jin-Yong Cai By Our Representative The international financiers of the Tatas’ Ultra Mega Power Plant at Mundra, Gujarat coast, International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank arm, has declared that it will not act against the project, as it falls within the World Bank Group’s 2013 Energy Sector Directions Paper on “sustainable energy”. Signed by Jin-Yong Cai, executive vice-president and CEO of the IFC, in the wake of the IFC ombudsman’s adverse audit report on the Tata Mundra project, it claims, the World Bank paper “reflects the latest thinking on global energy needs, climate change, and low-carbon economic development”, which is “forward-looking and not meant to be applied retroactively to projects such as Tata Mundra.”

By Rajiv Shah  A recent Gujarat government affidavit says that as non-Muslim minorities’ plight was not considered by the Sachar Committee, it is “unconstitutional”. First, this is factually incorrect. And secondly, latest data suggest Muslims in India generally fall in the category of backward sections of population, and other minorities are much better off.  In a recent affidavit to the Supreme Court, the Gujarat government has said that “the Sachar Committee is neither constitutional nor statutory.” Explaining its position, it insisted, the committee “has not taken into consideration other religious communities, i.e. Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Parsis. Therefore, it cannot form the basis of the scheme.” It added, “The committee’s target was to help the Muslims only.” The affidavit was the Gujarat government’s response to the Government of India’s (GoI’s) stand on Gujarat’s refusal to implement the pre-matriculation minority scholarship scheme. Gujarat moved the apex co...

By Our Representative Well-known Vadodara-based women’s group Sahiyar has demanded urgent formation of Prevention of Sexual Harassment Committee in Vadodara district and sessions court, which, it said, has not been done despite the fact that several representations by “concerned lawyers and citizens” on the matter have been made. In a statement issued by Sahiyar, the NGO has said, not only should the committee be formed but its announcement should be placed at a place where people are able to see that such a committee exists in the court. The statement was made in the context of a case of sexual harassment of a junior advocate by a colleague.

By Rajiv Shah Top international environmental group Greenpeace in a new report has targeted premier Gujarat-based business group Adanis, saying that one of its overseas operations in Australia for mining coal may have become “uneconomical.” Titled “The Adani Group: Remote Prospects. A financial analysis of Adani’s coal gamble in Australia’s Galilee Basin”, and prepared by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Cleveland, Ohio, US, for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, the report states, “We view Adani Enterprises’ development of the Carmichael deposit as an uneconomic proposition. The low energy and high ash content are major constraints to the value of the coal.”

By Rajiv Shah  Gujarat’s coast is back in news, but for wrong reasons. A new ISRO report for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, has found adverse impact on mangroves due to industrial activity along the sea coast. A rise in the sea level may further adversely impact the coastal area, it adds.  A new report by the Space Application Centre (SAC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Ahmedabad, called “Coastal Zones of India”, has suggested Gujarat – which has the longest coastline in India, of 1,600 km – is becoming increasingly vulnerable because of industrial activity along the coast, on one hand, and rise in the sea level, on the other. Signs of vulnerability can already be visible, with Gujarat becoming one of the four states where there has been “considerable decrease in mangrove vegetations”, other states being Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. On the other hand, the report reveals, “Significant increase in the mangrove area has been no...

By Ashok Shrimali* In its latest research report, “Asbestos: Assessing Exposure of Certain MSCI World Index Sectors”, Citi, the American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, has identified eight Indian companies as consuming asbestos, a product which it says “is strongly associated with disease including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis, caused by exposure to asbestos fibers.”

By Our Representative Making an all-out effort to win the 2014 Lok Sabha polls by campaigning all over India, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s long absence from the state is starting to take a heavy toll on the expenditure on social sector. This is reflected in the spending on annual plan, the funds mainly meant for developmental works, on health, education, social justice and empowerment. Latest figures from the state’s finance department suggest there is a considerable slowdown in the expenditure incurred on the annual plan over the first last six months of this financial year. The spending was Rs 17,217.81 crore in the six months till 2012-13, while in 2013-14 it was Rs 15,738.06 crore.

By Rajiv Shah  A recent survey, carried out under the auspices of the Election Commission of India’s Gujarat office, has found that, despite a high voter turnout, the electorate are generally indifferent towards the political process. A counterview.org report: The Knowledge, Attitude, Behaviour, Belief and Practices (KABBP) survey, carried out this year by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Gujarat State, has revealed clear voter indifference in the political process, with only 37.42 per cent of the voters saying that “voting is their right and duty”. The survey was carried out in two phases – first in February 2013 and then in June-August 2013 – as part of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) initiative with the aim to find out how successful have various interventions been “for increased electoral participation in Gujarat”, even as identifying “possible factors and reasons of the (voters’) partic...

By Our Representative Three voluntary agencies, Paryavaran Mitra, Paryavaraniya Vikas Kendra and Millet Network of India, on the occasion of the International Family Farming Day (November 22) have sharply criticized the main thrust of the Gujarat government, of industrial growth, saying, for this it has “come up with many liberal policies for land acquisition”, putting forth “many circulars like acquisition of government and gauchar land for special economic zone (SEZ) projects and regarding use of wasteland for corporate farming.”

By Our Representative In reply to a right to information (RTI) query, the Central Information Commission (CIC) – which India’s highest body to hear appeals to RTI applications to the Government of India and other Central authorities – has said that a whopping 24,326 cases were pending to be cleared by before it “as on October 2013”. The reply, sent to an RTI applicant, Kalpeshkumar Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, interestingly, said that “before January 1, 2013, pendency of cases was not maintained by the CIC.” Gupta had demanded “appeals pending for years” before it.

By Rajiv Shah A high-level study, carried out by a group of scholars led by Prof Usha Ram of the Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, “Neonatal, 159 month, and under-5 mortality in 597 Indian districts, 2001 to 2012”, has found that Gujarat’s six districts figure among 42 of India’s top laggard districts showing very slow fall in under-five mortality rate (U5MR). Published in Lancet, the reputed international health journal, the study shockingly suggests that two of the six districts has majority tribal population – Dahod and Valsad – while the rest have tribal population but not in majority. Gujarat accounts for nearly 15 per cent tribal population.

Inside a diamond unit By Our Representative A trade union workshop in Surat, in which tens of workers’ leaders and social activists participated, has expressed serious concern over lack of awareness about occupational health hazard not only among large sections of unorganized workers of South Gujarat, majority of whom are migrants, but also trade union leaders, who seek to organize them. A note, prepared on the workshop by Jagdish Patel, a senior social activist from Vadodara, who works on occupational health issues, has said that the situation becomes particularly piquant because about 85 to 90 per cent of the unorganized workers are migrants working in about 400-odd textile processing units and diamond polishing units.

Medha Patkar By Madhuresh Kumar The Right to Fair Compensation, Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013, enacted recently, “will not end the land conflicts, nor will it provide relief to the millions who have been displaced, and hence there is a need to bring urgent amendments to the Act and also give inputs to process of rule making for Act”, social activist Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan said reflecting the views expressed at the two day national meeting on “Struggle for Land Rights and New Land Acquisition Act”, where representative several social movements from 10 states took part at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi.

By Rajiv Shah  The study of tribes is generally a domain of social anthropologists and sociologists. In a rare attempt, a group of social scientists, many of them economists, mainly Gujarat-based, have come together to publish a book on how economic development has affected tribals in the state.  The new book, “Tribal Development in Western India”, edited by Amita Shah and Jharna Pathak (Routledge, 2014), not only reinforces the existing view that the tribal population of Gujarat, as elsewhere in the country, lags behind its non-tribal counterpart, especially in human development index (HDI), as found reflected in their poor health and educational indices. The book simultaneously suggests that, despite the hype around projects like Van Kalyan Yojna (VKY), announced by the state government to alleviate the Gujarat tribals’ plight during the 11th Five-Year-Plan (2007-12), they remain victims of unequal distribution of basic infrastructural facilities, on one hand, and low wages...

Keith Ellison By Our Representative In an unprecedented step, two US Congressmen, Keith Ellison, Democrat from Minnesota, and Joseph Pitts, Republican from Pennsylvania, have moved a resolution in the House of Representatives calling upon the US government to engage the Government of India, as also state governments in India, on issues related with “religious freedom and related human rights” in US-India strategic dialogues. The resolution acquires significance, as it especially seeks to criticize BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi by name for inciting communal riots in Gujarat.

By Rajiv Shah  With efforts by politicians of all hues to claim the legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the wake of efforts by some in Gujarat to provide him the “highest” iconic stature by building the world’s tallest statue in his name, time appears to have come to find out his worldview. He has gone down in the history as “Iron Man”, mainly for accomplishing the task of integrating 562 princely states at the turn of India’s Independence. Yet, scholars find the task of understanding the Sardar’s outlook as difficult, as, unlike Mahatma Gandhi, scanty material is available in the form of his writings on what he really thought on contentious issues of religion, communal strife and casteism. They have gauged his worldview on the basis of his and his supporters’ actions. At least two studies – one by writer-journalist Urvish Kothari highlighting the Sardar’s views on the communal question, and the other by sociologist Prof Ghanshyam Shah on caste and social order – do suggest where...

Dr Kim By Our Representative In a letter to World Bank president Dr Jim YongW Kim, Dr Bharat Patel, general secretary of the Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS), writing on behalf of the “affected communities” of the Tata’ Mundra ultra mega power plant (UMPP) in Kutch, Gujarat, has said, even “almost three weeks” after the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) published its report there is no action on the Tata plant from the Bank’s arm, International Finance Corporation, which is part-funding the project. The letter comes close on the heels of a protest to Dr Kim by several US and European NGOs expressing concern over his failure to act despite CAO raising serious environmental and livelihood issues (click HERE ).

By Rajiv Shah Amidst considerable hallabaloo around top rating agency Crisil’s rating of Gujarat as No 3 – next only to Punjab and Kerala – both in prosperity index and in equity index (click HERE ), what appears to have been missed is an important observation in its new Insight report, brought out in November 2013. The report says that, in Gujarat, 18.7 per cent of the households do not have “any assets”, which is less than the national average of 17.8 per cent. For the sake of analysis, Crisil – which bases its data on household survey of the Census of India 2011 – has divided households into two categories, those who have “all the assets” and those who do not have “any assets.”

By Tathya Macwan*  After a long and exhausting journey of three days, we finally reached Khumera village in Ukhimath tehsil (taluka) of Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand. Our journey started from Ahmedabad on October 24, 2013 with few people from the Vishwagram Trust, which is located in Mehsana, Gujarat. The Vishwagram Trust took the initiative to assist youths of Uttarakhand in getting jobs, either locally or outside. Those willing would be brought to Gujarat and trained in vocational programmes at the Dalit Shakti Kendra, located near Sanand town in Ahmedabad district. These courses would include photography, computer (software and hardware), mobile repairing, tailoring, etc. Some qualified people would be offered direct job, too. A small survey carried out by the Vishwagram Trust during the trip revealed that more than 90 per cent of the youths in Uttarakhand were jobless. I was there as part of the team to photograph and observe the all-round destruction and loss of life the i...

By Rajiv Shah  There is a commonplace view that, as far as finance is concerned, Gujarat is at the very top. Believing this to be a factor not to be ignored, in 2007, Gujarat’s policy makers decided on an international finance city in the state — the Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (GIFT). However, a recent study by India’s foremost corporate rating agency, Crisil, suggests that penetration of finance among Gujarat’s population is below average. Called “Crisil Inclusix: An index to measure India’s progress on Financial Inclusion”, the study indicates that financial inclusion, a “key enabler of economic and social development”, is still relatively poor in Gujarat, which ranks No 18th among Indian states, with a rating of 38.6 on a scale of 100 as against the national average of 40.1. The Crisil study says, “In India, where a large section of the population still lives outside the ambit of formal financial services, the need to focus on inclusion is of paramount importance.” W...