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Showing posts from May, 2013

New data, studies explode the myth of Gujarat's agriculture model

By Rajiv Shah  About four years ago, in 2009, three well-known experts, Ashok Gulati, Tushaar Shah and Ganga Shreedhar, published a paper, “Agriculture performance in Gujarat since 2000: Can it be a divadandi (lighthouse) for other states?”. Well-researched, the paper was prepared for the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), both world-renowned institutes. What provided credence to the paper was, Gulati worked as Director in Asia for IFPRI, Tushaar Shah as senior fellow, IWMI, and Ganga Shreedhar as research analyst for the IFPRI. The paper does not seek to hide the fact that it was prepared after taking complete help from the Gujarat government. The authors have jotted down their specially gratefulness to Gujarat CM Narendra Modi’s water resources advisor BN Navlawala, and a well-known pro-Modi agriculturist at that time, ex-vice-chancellor of the Anand Agriculture University, NC Varsheneya, for their valuable “

Child labour at Gujarat’s construction sites: Official indifference rules

By Rajiv Shah  Gujarat is witnessing perhaps one of the highest booms in the real estate sector. Not without reason, it is also attracting a huge population from vulnerable sections to work at construction sites. Despite existing laws banning child labour in hazardous sectors, the case of a 12-year-old boy who fell victim to a major accident, suggests officials and employers remain indifferent. This is the story of a 12-year-old boy, Hitesh Jemalbhai Machchaar, belonging to Sitavati village in Jhalod taluka of the predominantly Dahod district of Gujarat, who suffered from a major accident on July 15, 2011 at a construction site in Surat, which is the state’s second biggest city, next only to Ahmedabad. Hitesh’s parents and relatives, who are marginal farmers, migrate to Surat every year to work as construction workers. In July 2011 Hitesh accompanied his uncle, Choklabhai, who migrated to Surat to work at as a construction worker in Surat. On the fateful date, the contractor, Sureshb

Rural proletarianization: Sharp rise in agricultural workforce in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah  The last one decade appears to have witnessed a major change in Gujarat’s rural scenario. While there has been a sharp rise in the number of agricultural workers, perhaps one of the highest in India, there has been a simultaneous near-stagnation in the number of cultivators in the state. While it would be for economists and other experts to conclude what exactly this trend suggests, clearly, the latest Census of India data for 2011, released in early May 2013, go to suggest that there has been a sharp proletarianization of Gujarat’s rural areas, unprecedented in recent decades. The Census of India data show that in 2011 there were 45 lakh able-bodied population of Gujarat who had agricultural labour as their “main” activity. While this forms approximately 22 per cent of those who qualify themselves in the definition of “main workers” of Gujarat, what is significant is that the rise of agricultural “main workers” was to the tune of 50 per cent between the two censuses – o

Gujarat slums one of the worst in India: Census data, studies

By Rajiv Shah  There have been numerous arguments in favour of improving and upgrading the infrastructure of slum settlements, many of which are interrelated. It has been shown by studies that improving living conditions can bring gains to the quality of life, health, and productivity of slum residents. As a recent study by Benjamin Stanwix, a South African scholar, for Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, Ahmedabad, states, “ It can help to break the cycle of poverty, ease the burden on women, and can also be a public good with positive spill-over effects on the wider economy and society. These arguments have been discussed in more detail below.” The study, titled “Urban Slums in Gujarat and Rajasthan: Study of Basic Infrastructure in Seven Cities” (2009) notes, life in the absence of adequate access to basic services such as water and ablutions can be precarious. It is detrimental to health, safety and the dignity of communities. It quotes a UN Habitat study which shows that lack of safe dri

NHRC-centric view of Gujarat riots: Between hope and despair

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

Gujarat slum schools' low attendance amidst fast state urbanisation

By Rajiv Shah  Gujarat’s urban poor has gone up from 4.3 million in 2004-05 and 4.5 million in 2009-10 as a corollary to the state’s high-speed urbanization (35.83 per cent urban population in the last one decade, highest in the country) is enough reason to believe that Gujarat’s slum population would also be rising at an even higher pace. If Census of India’s 2011 figures suggest that Gujarat’s 42.6 per cent population lives in urban areas, a 2009 study, “Status of Urban Slums in Gujarat and Rajasthan: A Case Study of Seven Cities”, carried out by Benjamin Stanwix of the University of Cape Town, for the Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, Ahmedabad, has estimated that the “population of the slums in Ahmedabad has been growing faster than that of the overall population, almost doubling in the two decades since 1976 to over 41 per cent of the total population.” Other experts believe, as of today, as of today, around 45 per cent of Ahmedabad lives in slums. It may be lower than Mumbai, where nea

RTE: A late starter, Gujarat performance remains poor compared to most states

By Rajiv Shah  The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, has, without doubt, become a major milestone to ensure that children aged 6 to 14 are able to get free and compulsory education. However, initially, Gujarat was one state which seemed extremely subdued in implementing it. In January 2012, it was one of the three states – West Bengal and Karnataka were the other two – who had failed to come up with rules to implement the Act. This came to light when the Government of India asked West Bengal, Gujarat and Karnataka to notify RTE rules in order to begin implementing the Act. Then human resources development minister Kapil Sibal wrote letters to these states, asking them to notify the rules in the “larger interest of the students”. By that time, as many as 30 states and Union territories had already notified their respective state rules or adopted central rules. Model rules under the RTE Act were shared with all states at a meeting of state education secretaries, held as early as in Jan

Gujarat urban upsurge leads to absolute rise in poverty despite high growth rate

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 absol

Gujarat’s rural development fails to touch socially vulnerable sections

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.” Despi