By A Representative In a strongly worded letter to the secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, top Gujarat-based environmental body Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) has demanded that “immediately” should be taken to “stop the construction of Garudeshwar weir”, being constructed across the Narmada river, about 12 km downstream of the Narmada dam. Citing a letter written by a senior official attached with the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), responsible for giving clearances to the Narmada project, the PSS states, the work on the weir has begun “without any social or environmental impact assessment, public consultation and environmental clearance from the environmental sub-group (ESG) of NCA.”

By A Representative In an important move, the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an apex body of several environmental and human rights groups, has decided to hold consultation with activists and experts on November 19-20, 2013 at Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, in order to come a “reasonable critique” of the Right to Fair Compensation, Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013, or the Land Acquisition Act, passed by Parliament recently. In a statement sent to activists and experts to take part in the consultation, NAPM has said, the new Act “will not put an end to forcible land acquisitions and conflicts around that.”

By A Representative In an editorial titled “Narendra Modi’s Rise in India”, the New York Times (October 26, 2013), which may create major ripples around Modi’s supporters, has said that the Gujarat CM and India’s Prime Ministerial aspirant cannot hope to lead a country effectively which has multiple religions, more than a dozen major languages and numerous ethnic groups and tribes. The editorial apprehends, Modi “inspires fear and antipathy among many of its people.” The editorial has been published in the US edition of the NYT's Saturday Review.

By A Representative Gujarat-based activists have said that there was a “fraudulent use of public money” between September 2011 and February 2012, when Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s 34 sadbhavna programmes, claimed to create a harmonious inter-community relations in Gujarat, took place. Alleging that the programmes, in which Modi would observe day-long fast for symbolic “purification”, reflected Modi’s ”arbitrary nature of functioning and total disregard for written provisions”, the activists said, “Evidence on record shows huge funds were diverted from government departments for personal gain and projection of Modi keeping the next year’s state elections in mind.”

By A Representative The Jameen Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (JAAG) has decided to “postpone” its scheduled “cattle rally” from Hansalpur village in North Gujarat to the state Capital in Gandhinagar based an “assurance” from the district collector, Ahmedabad, to “look into” various demands of the maldharis, who were protesting against the Maruti-Suzuki Company’s acquisition of huge tracts of land in the area. A JAAG statement signed by its leaders Lalji Desai and Sagar Rabari said, “The collector has assured the villagers that he would represent maldharis’ and other communities’ demands to the appropriate authorities.”

Anti-dam rally in Madhya Pradesh By A Representative The Government of India has said that there will not be any movement towards increasing the height of the Narmada dam from the present 122 metres to 138.64 metres, which is the full reservoir level, till the last oustee is rehabilitated. The declaration came at a meeting of representatives from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) led by Medha Patkar in Delhi following two-day dharna by hundreds of oustees affected by the dam from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat at Jantar Mantar.

By A Representative In an open letter to Laurent Michel, director-general for climate and energy, Ministry for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, French government, 29 non-government organizations from western countries and India have come together wondering if EDF Trading, top MNC player into the international energy markets, has at all delinked its contractual agreements with the Adani Power project at Mundra, Gujarat, about which it had declared it on August 13. In a newspaper statement, the EDF Trading had said that it would not be associated with Adanis’ “supercritical coal power project in India”, and would “never purchase carbon credits from it”.

By A Representative Anti-mining activists have noted that two of the recent National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) judgments suggest the top body may not take problems of the mining affected people lying down any more in India. One of them relates to a recent judgment by the NHRC where it issued notice to the Kerala government taking suo motu cognizance of allegations of illegal sand mining in coastal areas following reports that Jazeera V., a woman from Kerala, accompanied by her three small children, had moved to Delhi to protest at Jantar Mantar. 

October 2 protest rally By A Representative Representatives of Narmada project affected persons belonging to tens of villages surrounding the Kevadia colony, the spot where the Narmada dam is situated, returned from Gandhinagar without getting any concrete assurance about their main demand – not to turn the entire region into a tourism spot by acquiring their land. A statement issued on behalf of the affected persons soon after the meeting, which took place in the state Capital in the afternoon, said, “The Gujarat government for the first time agreed that there was a problem and there should be negotiations. However, it refused to give any assurance.”

By A Representative Following the European Parliament resolution favouring engagement with countries where untouchability is rampant, particularly in South Asia, the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), which is the apex body of all Dalit rights organizations, has urged the Government of India to take “effective measures” to prevent and address violations stemming from caste discrimination. It adds, “More in depth debate in state institutions and civil society is needed on how to tackle the issue of lack of implementation in political, civil society and also among media spheres.”

By A Representative The Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), the state’s premier Right to Information (RTI) campaign body, has expressed dismay over the fact that during the last eight years, as many as 27 RTI whistle blowers were hacked to death all over India, out of which four were from Gujarat. Those who were killed in Gujarat after fighting for their rights under RTI were -- Vishram Dodiya,Amit Jethva, Jabardan Gadhvi, Nadeem Saiyyad. Suggesting that this is a “poor record” for a state which calls itself progressive, a presentation on the eighth anniversary of the RTI Act said, in the country as a whole over 155 whistle blowers were “brutally attacked” in India but survived, of which 24 such attacks took place in Gujarat.

By A Representative Several civil society bodies have come together to ask the Ministry of Mines, Government of India, to urgently stop the “wrongful termination” of the Justice MB Shah Commission of Inquiry, which was constituted in 2010 in response to growing number of cases of illegal contracting, flouting of royalty payments and encroachment on public lands by large- and small-scale iron ore and manganese ore mining operations in India. A statement issued by a dozen NGOs and concerned individuals said, though the commission's investigations have led to closure of hundreds of illegally operating mines, including one of the nation’s largest iron ore mines in Bellary, its work still remains incomplete.

By A Representative Amidst raging controversy around whether Gujarat’s child malnutrition levels have actually gone down, with the Gujarat government vehemently denying a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that every third child in the state suffers from malnutrition, a recent research paper by one of the senior-most economists, Prof Arvind Panagariya of the Columbia University, has sharply contested the criterion of comparing India’s child malnutrition levels with those of Sub-Saharan African countries, which have much lower per capita incomes and poorer health indicators.

By A Representative In a scathing attack on neoliberal economists, Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, Prof Arvind Panagariya, and Prof Surjit Bhalla, a high-level consultation by Gujarat-based activists and experts has said that the recent decision to include wide sections population under food security cannot be termed as a drain on budgetary resources. If Prof Hemant Shah, an economist, calculated that the “actual budgetary burden for food security will be not more than Rs 7 per capita per day”, senior activist Sejal Dand, Gujarat adviser to the Supreme Court-appointed national commissioner on food security, said, “Food security is an investment to ensure a better future of those who are go hungry.” The consultation was organized by Pathey, an Ahmedabad-based NGO specializing in budget analysis.

By A Representative In a unique move, as a mark of their protest, in October third week the maldhari cattle breeders of North Gujarat will be flooding Gandhinagar with their cattle after traversing 80 kilomtres starting at Hansalpur, the spot where the Maruti-Suzuki has proposed to set up its second and a more modern plant of the country. In a statement issued on behalf of the maldharis, Jameen Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (JAAG) leaders Laljibhai Desai and Sagar Rabari have said, the maldharis’ rally – accompanied by their cattle – will start on October 23 morning at Hansalpur and will reach Gandhinagar on October 25.

The protest meeting By A Representative Fearing forcible acquisition of land for tourism purpose, a villagers’ meeting near Kevadia colony, the site of the Narmada dam, has taken the pledge that they would not part with their “land, forest and river”, sought to be “snatched away by the state and the authority”. The pledge, taken on the 114th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on the bank of the river Narmada, added, “We the working people collectively resolve that the forest, land, and the river are a lifeline for us which are our heritage handed down to us by our ancestors. It is our duty to protect our heritage for which we have organized ourselves. The state and authority want to snatch away our land, forest and river in the name of development.”