The CRISIL Research -- which has made a quick assessment of the impact of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012 (formerly known as the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011) on real estate,  infrastructure and industry -- has said that the Bill will lead to “increase in the gestation time of projects and overall costs.” The Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on August 30, 2013. The bill, which replaces the century-old Land Acquisition Act, 1894, proposes a unified legislation for acquisition of land and adequate rehabilitation mechanisms for all affected persons.

A recent analysis of the way different state governments have been handling rural health suggests that Gujarat is one of the three major states in India which have slowed down their expenditure on various programmes being implemented under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the Government of India’s largest public health programme. Launched in 2005, a breakup of expenditure for two consecutive years, financial year (FY) 2010-11 and 2011-12, suggests wide gap between states in implementing it.

The Gujarat government’s powerful arm implementing the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL), has said that Madhya Pradesh has yet to pay up a whopping Rs 3,159.88 crore against the nieghbouring state’s share of expenditure in the SSP, followed by Maharashtra’s Rs 1,437.50 crore and Rajasthan’s Rs 471.70 crore. The statement is an “update” as on May 12, 2013 of the “Status Report on SSP”, sent by the SSNNL to the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) – the Government of India-appointed inter-state authority to give a final nod to the project’s various components – in December 2012.

In was January-end 2008. I was planning a story on spurt of investment in Kutch district of Gujarat after the killer quake of January 26, 2001. I called up RJ Shah, then chief principal industrial advisor (a strange designation, I thought, principal and chief together!), and he immediately responded, saying, he had all the details and I should reach his office in the industries commissionerate in Udyog Bhawan, Gandhinagar. A diligent government official who always had all the industry figures on his tips – something which is a rarity in the babudom today – Shah scanned through his papers and was simply awestruck: “This is absolutely marvelous. Kutch has as of today Rs 78,688 crore worth of investment under implementation, which comes to 39 per cent of Gujarat.” Then, Shah decided to have a closer look at the investment proposals, and one of them happened to be a solar project. “Wait, wait, wait”, he looked through his traditional spectacles. “This is really very strange. This solar pr...

  Over 700 non-resident Indians and citizens have signed onto an online petition addressed to the President of India, expressing their support for the decision of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) on June 3, 2013, to bring six national political parties of India under the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Since the national political parties receive substantial funding from the government for their functioning, they were deemed by the CIC as public authorities, under Sections 2(a) and 2(h)(d) of the RTI Act.

  In a scathing reply to the Gujarat government-sponsored study, “Impact of Caste Discrimination and Distinctions on Equal Opportunities: A Study of Gujarat”, carried out in five of Gujarat’s villages to “prove” that there is no wide-scale practice of untouchability in the state, a “resurvey” in the same five villages has found it prevails in all its manifestations.  Carried out by Navsarjan Trust, a state human rights organization, the “resurvey” says that in every walk of life – whether it is temple entry, social or cultural festivals, or access to basic necessities – untouchability is widely prevalent, something the government-supported study has sought to "undermine".

  In a major admission, the Gujarat government has said that government pleaders are so preoccupied with their jobs that they are “unable to address” and give “enough time” to fight cases related with Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. A government resolution (GR) issued by the state’s social justice and empowerment department with the specific intention of raising the conviction rate of atrocities cases has said that in the recent past the state government has witnessed a sharp fall in the ability to take up atrocity cases.

  A huge scam is suspected to be taking shape in Gujarat -- the scam to build toilets on paper. The first signs of the scam were visible in a small village in Jamnagar district, Nandana, situated in Kalyanapur taluka. "Things would have never come to light had a casual worker not filed a right to information (RTI) application in order to find out how many persons of the village had applied for grants to build individual toilets toilets scam their houses and how many of them were approved by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) under Government of India's total sanitation programme", said senior activist Pankti Jog  (photo)  of the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), a state-based RTI NGO.

 In a complete about-turn, the Gujarat government has asserted that it never asked the CEPT University to review or refute an NGO study by Navsarjan Trust on wide prevalence of untouchability in Gujarat's rural areas. The NGO study titled "Understanding Untouchability", carried out in 2010, was based on a survey of about 1,600 villages. The statement is in total contrast to what the introduction to the CEPT report says -- that the state government had sponsored it in order to "review" the NGO study and find out if there was such wide prevalence of untouchability as the study claims. It is not known what has prompted the state government to make a change in its stance.

  In a sharp about-turn, the United Nations Children's Fund, or Unicef, has changed its Gujarat profile following a www.counterview.net report, which had highlighted how the top UN body had criticised the state's social sector indicators, providing detailed figures on health, education and malnutrition. The new  profile on Gujarat , which it has put on the web, does underline that Gujarat has "miles to cover in ensuring that the economic growth trasnlates into improved human development", but removes all the negative figures which had shown Gujarat social sector in poor light.