There is flutter among farmers of the Dholera special investment region (SIR). Farmers across 22 villages, with a rural populace of around 60,000 in the south of Ahmedabad, have been served notices citing the Gujarat SIR Act, 2009, depriving them of 50 per cent of their land they have been owning it for generations. Ishwarbhai Bhavabhai, who owns 22,663 sq metres of land in Ambli village in Dhandhuka taluka, has been told he has been allocated a different piece of land instead of the one he owns which will be 11,331 sq metres. Bhivabhai Bhawabhai of the same village, who owns 26,912 sq metres of land, has been told he has been similarly allocated 13,456 sq metres of land.

Why is Gujarat so “backward” in education? Blame it on government schools, and promote private schools. This is the new mission sought to be put forward by one of the most high profile education advocacy groups, Pratham, which has stolen the limelight all over India for its work with policy makers for the last about eight years. This, apparently, is the only reason why, it indicates (but does not say so directly referring to the state), that Gujarat’s educational standards are so poor. And, it seems to believe, it is not government schools which can come to the children’s rescue but only a rigorous emphasis on private schools.

Gujarat industry’s net value added (NVA), which is calculated by deducting all the depreciation charges – including consumption of fixed capital such as on raw materials, power and other inputs – has suddenly gone into the minus, surprising many an economist. The latest Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data, put out in the first week of this month, suggest that NVA, which economists consider as “indicating the actual investment potential of a sector of economy”, has gone into the negative for two consecutive years continuously. It was minus (--) 0.64 per cent in 2010-11 and, again, minus (--) 1.72 per cent in 2011-12. The ASI is the principal source of data on various aspects of registered industrial establishments. They are part of the annual exercise by the Government of India’s Central Statistics Office’s industrial statistics wing.

 Former Gujarat DGP PGJ Nampoothari, who was emissary of the National Human Rights Commission during the Gujarat riots, monitoring the aftermath of the tragedy which befell the state in 2002, says that there’s nothing to suggest that the state administration acted in an impartial way during the riots.

  The World Bank has advised the Gujarat government to begin raising resources for building urban infrastructure in major cities by selling off public land to private developers. In a recent policy research study, “Inventory of Public Land in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India”, it has said in Ahmedabad alone huge financial resources “could be generated by monetizing public land” to the tune of Rs 54,000 crore which implies per capita availability of fiscal resources amounting to Rs 97,000. This is double the amount estimated by the state government’s High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) at 2009-10 prices – Rs 43,386 “for the entire range of physical urban infrastructure for the next twenty years”.