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...