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...