A just-released report, “Reducing Inequality: Learning Lessons for the Post-1015 Agenda. India Case Study”, by Save the Children has regretted that “the rapid economic growth that Gujarat has experienced over the past decade has been of the nature of exclusionary growth where goals like social equality, sustainable livelihoods, access to education and health, justice and peace have been abandoned in the race for high-speed growth.”

A fresh survey, carried out by Ahmedabad-based rights group, Centre for Social Justice, between January and March 2013, and sponsored by Action Aid, has revealed that thousands of victims of Gujarat riots, who still remained displaced a decade after the holocaust, are unable to return to their original habitat as they fear they will not be protected. Carried out among 464 internally displaced persons (IDPs), a term coined by the United Nations to identify those who are forced to leave their habitat because of violent situations, as many as 364 of the surveyed IDPs continue living in rehabilitation camps, and another 100 IDPs live in alternative housing provided to them in different towns in eight districts of Gujarat.

Cat is finally out of the bag. If early estimates in the top corridors of the Gujarat government are any indication, during 2012-13, or the last financial year, the state’s agricultural growth rate slipped into the negative after an average of the last five year plan (2007-12) showed it had already been pushed to a single digit (4.8 per cent). “Soon it will be announced that the agriculture slipped to around minus ( -- ) 13 per cent in 2012-13. In certain places in Gujarat, especially Saurashtra, agricultural growth slipped to minus ( -- ) 22 per cent”, senior state bureaucrat said, adding, “Already, crop failure on account drought during 2012-13 has been assessed to be around 50 per cent.”

Gujarat Sachivalaya is abuzz with a strange speculation. The speculation is especially significant as it is taking rounds of the top state corridors of power at a time when Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has launched his month-long Krishi Mahotsav, an annual event to “teach” farmers what they should sow and how. While all agree in Sachivalaya that in the year 2012-13, Gujarat’s agricultural growth rate slipped in the negative, officials are unable to quantify the percentage. Discussions have taken place on the matter, including at the highest level. While one bureaucrat said, in 2012-13, thanks to what he termed as “near-drought” situation, agricultural growth rate slipped to minus ( --) 3 per cent, another disagreed. “Soon you will hear from authoritative sources: Agriculture has slipped to around minus ( -- ) 13 per cent… In certain places in Gujarat, especially Saurashtra, you will be told, agricultural growth slipped to minus ( -- ) 22 per cent.” There is reason to wonder. Wh...

The Gujarat government is all set to form Gujarat Affordable Housing and Slum Rehabilitation Authority (GAHSRA), with sweeping powers, under the chairmanship of the the state chief minister to “manage” and “develop” state slums in the state's urban areas. Draft of the Gujarat Slum Rehabilitation and Redevelopment Policy, 2013, in possession of  Counterview, at the same time, seeks to add yet another bureaucratic ladder at the local urban self-governing level under the chairmanship of municipal commissioner in municipal corporation area, chairman of the urban development in the urban development authority area, and the district collector in municipality area. The new structure would be called Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA).

Pankti Jog An anti-woman government resolution (GR) remains in currency in Gujarat for two years, yet nobody seems 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.”

An agate worker After failing to implement its own government resolution (GR) on paying Rs 1 lakh as compensation to those who die because of silicosis, a deadly lungs disease which is common among agate polishing units in Khambhat town and taluka of Gujarat, the Gujarat government is now planning a new one to "amend" its error, which allowed insurance companies to cover only those under group insurance scheme who die in an accident. While nobody in the government has any idea of what this new GR would be and whether it would be able remove the "technical hitch" which supposedly is the chief reason why the year-old GR could not be put into action, voluntary organisations working with the silicosis victims believe, the year was "lost" because of official indifference.

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.

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.

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.