The National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO’s) report, “Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in India”, released in December 2014, has indicated that there is much incidence of marginalization of the scheduled caste (SC) households in rural Gujarat in comparison to other social groups – scheduled tribes (STs), other backward classes (OBCs), and those falling under the “Others” category. The data put out by the NSSO show that there are in all 4,55,300 SC households in Gujarat, out of which 1,52,700, or 33.54 per cent, are involved agricultural activities. This is compared to 66.9 per cent of out of a total 58,71,900 Gujarat all rural households involved in agricultural activities. A social category-wise breakup, interestingly, reveals that there are 68.07 per cent of 28,73,800 OBC households and 71.15 per cent of 14,48,000 ST households who are involved in agriculture. As for whose falling in the “Others” category, mainly upper castes, there are 72.3 per cent...

   A closer perusal of the new National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report, released this month, makes an interesting revelation. Titled “Key Indicators of Debt and Investment in India”, the report, based on NSSO’s 70th round, has found that there are 260 rural households in Gujarat out of every 1000 which reported outstanding cash loans. A breakup of the data suggest that there are 80 out every 1000 rural households which reported taking loan at an interest rate between 25 and 30 per cent, and another 88 out of 1000 which reported taking loan at an even higher rate of interest, i.e. 30 per cent and higher.

  In a shocking revelation, a new report by high-profile NGO Save the Children, Wings 2014: The World of India’s Girls” has said that Gujarat’s 63.1 per cent girls may be subjected to sexual abuse, which is apparently, the highest in India. Pointing out that in the country as a whole there are 47.06 per cent such girls, the report, which has been prepared by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, says that most of these girls suffer silently, and “don’t report to anyone”. The report, significantly, carries a congratulatory message from Najma Heptulla, minorities minister under the Narendra Modi government, among others.

   There have been loud claims, which continue to be made till date, that agricultural growth in Gujarat has been a “success story”, which other states must emulate. It is also suggested that Gujarat’s agricultural growth rose from 3.3 per cent per annum in the 1990s to nearly 9 per cent over the last one decade – notwithstanding claims by some experts who say the problem is with the choice of a wrong base year. The argument runs of following lines: Gujarat has written the success story despite facing challenges like depletion of water tables, deterioration of soil and water conditions due to salinity ingress along the sea coast, irregularity of rainfall, and recurrent drought. However, few have sought to see what impact has it made on the actual income of the agriculturists of Gujarat, and how much they have gained vis-à-vis other states. Now, new figures released this month by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) in its report, “Key Indicators of Situation of Agric...

  In a significant recommendation, the Amitabh Kundu committee, which submitted its “final report” on the status of minorities in India to the Narendra Modi government in early October, wants that the recently launched Jan Dhan scheme should go a long way in helping financial exclusion of the minorities. Even as risking of being dubbed for “appeasing minorities”, it wants the programmes launched by the previous UPA government for minorities to be further intensified, going so far to ask the Modi government to extend reservation to the most backward sections of Muslims, identifying them as “Dalit Muslims.”

  While Gujarat may have topped Indian states in regularizing power supply to urban and rural areas, data released by a new report, “Coal Kills: Health Impacts of Air Pollution from India’s Coal Power Expansion” suggest this may have led to unprecedented health hazard in the state. The report has found that as of 2014 Gujarat’s coal-fired power plants, with a capacity of 15,900 MW, are emitting in air highest quantity of the deadliest PM2.5, the most dangerous particulate matter (PM), compared to all other state. PM2.5 is known to get absorbed deep in the lungs,  causing  “aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, lung cancer, cardiac problems, and premature death.”

A woman cop in Rajpipla The Nirbhaya case may have helped bring cases of violence against women sharply into focus, yet large number of a women activists have begun to wonder, as to why, if the victim is from a vulnerable community, she rarely draws attention. The mysterious death of a lady tribal police constable from Rajpipla in Gujarat — Vasanti Vasava — between November 24 and 26, 2014 highlights how a state machinery treats atrocities committed on such women. Tables were turned only after the Gujarat Women Rights Council, a recently floated group by a well-known dalit rights activist, Manjula Pradeep, took up the death of Vasanti as a case of sexual assault and murder at a time when the police was trying to turn it into a “simple case of suicide”. Manjula was busy in Vadodara district with a month-long campaign on violence against women, which had begun on November 25, declared by the UN as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The campaign was to contin...

State of Ahmedabad slums A recent survey of Ahmedabad’s two slum settlement colonies, Shankarbhuvan and Nagorivad, both of them situated in the old city area, go a long way to expose the loud claims of “clean" or "swachh" Gujarat by the state’s powerful authorities. Carried out by two non-government organizations (NGOs), Manav Garima and Human Development and Research Centre, the survey suggests that in the two slum settlements surveyed, out of a total of 1,447 households, 63 per cent of households (916) do not have toilets.

  A fresh report on the status of higher education in India has suggested that, despite a sharp increase in the number of universities and colleges in the recent past, the Gujarat government continues to perform poorly as compared to many other states in ensuring quality education to college-going children. 

  Latest data of the Sample Registration System (SRS), operating under the Census of India, suggest that Gujarat suffers from a huge rural-urban divide in infant mortality rate (IMR) rate compared to most other Indian states. Statistics offered by the SRS Bulletin, finalized in September 2014, show that Gujarat’s rural IMR is 43 per 1000, as against the urban IMR of 22 per 1000, suggesting a whopping gap of 21, higher than 20 major Indian states, with the exception of Assam.

  Rattled by a relatively poor Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP)  growth rate  in recent years, two senior Gujarat government officials, ably assisted by an Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) expert, ironically, have put – to quote them --“big question marks on the credibility of the state income estimation and hence on the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) in the state”. They say this in their recent paper, “Measurement Issues in State Income from Registered Manufacturing Sector – Case of Gujarat”, published by IIM-A.

  The Gujarat government has long claimed that one of the major reasons for the state’s economic progress has been its “excellent” power sector performance. The state’s policy makers have argued, on the basis of Government of India data, that Gujarat’s power consumption, in per capita terms, is one of the highest in India. Gujarat’s new chief secretary D Jagatheesa Pandian, for instance, said in an  interview  in 2013, quoting Central Electricity Commission figures, when he headed the state energy department, that the per capita consumption of electricity in Gujarat in 2012 was around 1,516 units as against the national average of 879 units. He insisted, “This figure indicates the progress and growth happening in the state. In Gujarat, state utilities are providing an uninterrupted supply of electricity, quality and reliable power to all consumers.” While this may be showcased to prove that Gujarat is at the top in the power sector, it does not tell the full story. No dou...

  A new National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO’s) report, “Participation of Women in Specified Activities along with Domestic Duties”, finalized in September 2014, has revealed that a higher percentage of Gujarat women are driven by the conservative socio-religious framework of their families and society compared to most Indian states. Based on the survey it carried out between July 2011 and June 2012, the NSSO report has found that, in the 15+ age, 91.9 per cent of Gujarat’s rural and 94.4 per cent of urban women spend most of the time in domestic duties, which is around the same as the national average of 91.7 and 92.2 per cent, respectively. However, this does not tell the full story. Of these women identified as being involved domestic duty full time in Gujarat, 54.8 per cent in rural areas and 62.5 per cent in urban areas said they were doing it because there is no other member to carry out the domestic duties. And – and this is worrisome – 18.7 per cent of rural women and ...

Anandiben Patel at Sabarmati Riverfront There is a veritable buzz in Gujarat: On September 17, when Chinese president Xi Jinping was in Gujarat, Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, who received Xi at Ahmedabad International Airport, was “missing” in action at any of the important ceremonies held for his five hours of stay. While she was “around”, she wasn’t “visible”, or to be more precise, the state propaganda wing ensured that she was not projected at any place – the Hyatt Hotel where Xi was welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Sabarmati Ashram where Xi “remembered” Mahatma Gandhi, and the Sabarmati riverfront, where Xi took a stroll with Modi ahead of Gujarati dinner.

 There is flutter among top human rights activists of Gujarat. A new book by the Gujarat chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), India’s premier rights body, has not only undermined the role of Gujarat’s senior human rights activists, it has failed to recall some of the basic human rights issues nagging the state. Brought out in Gujarati, and titled “Four Decades of Human Rights in Gujarat and Civil Liberties Movement (1974-2014)", it carries, for instance, just two passing references to top human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, currently the target of powerful state establishment for fighting 2002 Gujarat riots cases.

There is an increasing view among civil society groups that the established media is “not responsive” to the needs and aspirations of civil society -- especially on such tangled social issues like the annihilation of caste. I would like to be audacious: I think the complaint is totally misplaced. Working with the Times of India for nearly two decades, and looking after Gandhinagar beat for 15 years, last as political editor, I knew the constraints under which one had to work.  There were some very specific “holy cows”, and this wasn’t just true of the Times of India, but of all media houses with presence in Gujarat: One can report whatever was true, but “business interests” of the paper should be taken care of. I always believed – it was wrong to complain: It was business interests alone that drove news. If business interests of the newspaper were hit, the news wouldn’t go through, you could be in trouble. I remember, once I got terribly disturbed when my paper published an editori...

  Latest report on measuring poverty authored by a committee headed by former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor C Rangarajan, has found that as many as 11 major Indian states out of 20 have fewer percent of poor than Gujarat. Submitted to the Modi government as a plea to come up with a new poverty criterion that takes into account “public expenditure that is being incurred in areas like education, health and food security”, and linking it with consumer price index, the report says that Gujarat has 27.4 per cent below poverty line people (BPL), or 1.69 crore – 1.1 crore in rural areas (31.4 per cent) and 5.89 crore (22.2 pe cent) in urban areas.

  Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, InterMedia, Washington, conducted an India-wide survey of 45,024 adults, ages 15 and older, from October 15, 2013, to January 8, 2014, to understand their financial behaviour and their access and use of digital financial services. Results of the survey show in Gujarat in poor light. They suggest that Gujarat’s 45 per cent of adults have ever had access to a bank account, which is worse than 10 major states out of 19 states. The survey results further reveal that 26 per cent of the adults in Gujarat have active digital accounts as of today, which again is worse than several major states, including Maharashtra (35 per cent), Tamil Nadu (34 per cent), Kerala (33 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (32 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (29 per cent), Karnataka (31 per cent), and Uttarakhand (29 per cent). What is even more appalling for Gujarat in is that the state’s just 13 per cent below poverty line (BPL) adults have access to digital accounts...

  Move is underway in top corridors of power of the Gujarat government to “revive” the high-profile Mandal-Bechraji special investment regions (MBSIR), which houses the proposed Maruti-Suzuki plant, which was pruned to nearly one-fifth of its original size -- from nearly 50,000 hectares (ha) to 10,172 ha. The MBSIR in North Gujarat was proposed a major auto hub. It had to be pruned following a long-drawn-out farmers’ protest last year led by Jameen Adhikar Anadolan Gujarat (JAAG). JAAG has emerged as a powerful farmers’ group campaigning against dozen-odd SIRs coming up in Gujarat.

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched his ambitious Jan Dhan project by “enrolling”, according to an official claim, about 1.5 crore Indians as new bank account holders. But what is most interesting is that during his stewardship as chief minister, Gujarat remained a poor performer vis-à-vis several major states in financial inclusion – which is what Modi is seeking to "promote" by targeting around 10 crore people across India as new account holders by the next Republic Day. A report by the top consultants, Crisil, prepared in alliance with American agency Standard & Poor, released in January 2014, said Gujarat’s financial inclusion (Inclusix) index was below national average.

  A recent study on ascertaining the impact of watershed development project (WDP) and Krishi Mahotsav, the two important programmes by the Gujarat government to improve agricultural practices, suggest that they have benefited the rich farmers more than the marginal and poor farmers. The WDP is a flagship policy initiative for development of groundwater resources, especially in drought- and desert-prone districts in the state – has suggested that benefits of WDPs were confined mainly to landed households, despite a clear emphasis to include the landless as project beneficiaries. “Among the landed households, those with medium and large landholdings had a larger proportion of beneficiaries as compared to marginal and small farmers within a village”, the study, based on a sample of 6,458 beneficiaries, said. Part of the chapter “High Growth Agriculture in Gujarat: An Enquiry into Inclusiveness and Sustainability”, by Amita Shah and Itishree Pattnaik, in the just-released book, “Growt...

  In one of the most significant critiques in the recent past, Gujarat’s well-known industry consultant Sunil R Parekh has said that though Gujarat’s industries may have grown faster than most states, this has failed create matching jobs, generate enough taxes for coffers, and provide safe environment. Worse, he finds Gujarat’s performance in the area of innovations discouraging. Despite 17 per cent of industrial output of India, in patent filing, Gujarat accounted for less than 1 per cent of national filings; “Maharashtra, Delhi, and Tamil Nadu, together contribute 60 per cent of national filings.”

Edited by three senior Gujarat-based experts, Indira Hirway, Amita Shah and Ghanshyam Shah, the book “ Growth or Development: Which Way is Gujarat Going ”, is an exceptional commentary on the view taken by three well-known scholars – Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and Bibek Debroy – who in the recent past were instrumental in creating a web around Gujarat “model”. 

  At a time when the Government of India is considering to tone down two of the main components of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 – social impact assessment and consent – a top World Bank  document , leaked to Counterview, has insisted that there cannot be any land acquisition without “free, prior and informed consent.” Pointing towards the need to “strengthen meaningful consultation with vulnerable groups, project-affected communities, and indigenous peoples”, it has added, “Emphasis should be on the need for strong and consistent risk assessment and risk management.”

  The latest Census of India figures have revealed that, despite tall claims of the Gujarat government of development having touched marginalized groups of the state, large sections of the state’s tribal population is facing unprecedented unemployment and marginalization of workforce. An analysis of Census’ data on workers suggests that in the total population of the age group 15 to 34, 2.17 crore, 7.13 lakh persons, or around 3.29 per cent, are found to be seeking jobs. Then there is 9.65 per cent of the population – or 20.93 lakh – in this age group which is forced to work as marginal workers for a period of three to six months in a year. However, a comparison drawn with the two most neglected social groups reveals that while the Dalits of the age group face almost a similar proportion of joblessness and marginalization, the tribals’ predicament remains extremely pitiable. The Census data go to show that 9.34 per cent of the tribals (2.70 lakh out of 29.67 lakh) – almost triple t...

Prof Bibek Debroy, an economist who is known to have taken a leading role in “authoring” the concept what came to be known as “Gujarat model”, said in his book “Gujarat: Governance for Growth and Development”, released in 2012, that the real growth in Gujarat could be found in rural areas, where poverty reduction has come about as a “trickle-down effect.” Quoting National Sample Survey (NSS) figures, he said, “In rural Gujarat, there has been a very sharp drop in poverty, significantly more than all-India trends. In 2004-05, the below poverty line (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.” Based on this, he said, the poverty in Gujarat had gone down during that period by 12.4 per cent, which was one of the highest in India. It seems, however, that in just about two years of his drastic observation, which Prof Debroy kept repeating at several forums, things appear to be looking a little gl...

  New data released by the Census of India have suggested a strange fact. While the percentage of those who have been identified as “seeking” jobs or are “available for work” out of the total population in the age-group 15-59 in Gujarat is one of the lowest in India – suggesting a much lower unemployment rate than most Indian states – this does not tell the full story. No doubt, both in the working age-group of 15-59 and in the “job-seeking” younger age-group of 20-25, Gujarat appears to have fared considerably better than the rest of India. Thus, as against nearly seven per cent job-seekers in the country as a whole out of the total population of about 73 crore in the age-group 15-59, Gujarat’s jobseekers are just 2.61 per cent – or less than half of the country – in its population of 3.8 crore in this age-group. In the age-group 20-24, too, the situation is more or less than same. In this age group, there are nearly four per cent job seekers in Gujarat compared to 8.6 per cent of...

  In a significant move, the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has declared that the “higher price” being offered by the Government of India to it for oil and gas exploration off Andhra Pradesh coast is “not market linked”, and it should get an even more, in keeping with market realities. The "revision", which the Government of India has still not formally announced, is from $4.2 per MMBtu (million British thermal units) to $8.4 MMBtu, which was challenged by several politicians, including Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal, who claimed it would mean a “windfall” of Rs 54,500 crore to the RIL.

Much against the huge claims of cent per cent enrollment, made year after year following Shala Praveshotsav and Kenya Kelavani programmes, usually carried out in early June, a new report, prepared under the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India, has suggested Gujarat’s poor showing in enrolling children in both primary and upper primary schools.

A just-released Planning Commission  study , “Evaluation Study of Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF)”, prepared by the top Government of India body’s Programme Evaluation Organization, has found that Gujarat has ranked poorly in the utilization of grants made available under the BRGF programme from the Government of India between 2006-07 and 2010-11. The study has found that, during the period under study, Gujarat ranked No 22nd in utilization of allocation made towards BRGF, and No 17th in utilization of the released grants among 27 states which receive the grants. Explaining BRGF, the study says, it is “an area development intervention that is aimed at promoting decentralized planning and development through a yearly untied development and capacity building grants to 250 backward districts across 27 states.” Gujarat’s districts covered for availing BRGF from the Government of India are – Dang, Dahod, Panchmahal, Banaskantha, Narmada and Sabarkantha. As many as 2,907 village panch...

Culling out gist from a plethora of sources available to you is indeed quite tricky. While I cannot speak for others (frankly, I lack competence to do it), journalists are made to do it almost on a daily basis. In doing so, at initial stages, they often falter, as they lack conceptual clarity as to what should be considered news. Of course, there are textbook definitions, but they cannot in any way help one to identify news from the huge flow of information available around. Journalists, especially of my generation, have never been trained into a formal school of communication, hence to them to answer this question academically is even more difficult. They have just “picked up” the skill. I asked a senior editor, “How do you identify what should be headline today?”, and his answer was simple, “Well, Rajiv, it comes from within, frankly, it just comes…” Often, whatever new you find from the available information is identified as news. It’s especially very easy when a big event takes pla...