Balwant Singh Gujarat’s chief information commissioner Balwant Singh, in a ruling, which is unlikely to be taken kindly by RTI activists, has said that senior IAS official Sanjay Prasad’s two-year-old report on the death of three Dalit youths in police firing of September 2012, may be made public, as it relates to a “human rights violation”, but under certain condition.

  India’s civil society organizations have strongly objected to the new Foreign Contribution Regulation (FRC)  Rules  notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which require the NGOs to give an "affirmation" that they are not used the foreign contribution for activities that are likely to “prejudicially affect” the sovereignty and integrity of the country, the security, strategic, scientific and economic interests of the state and the public interest.

In fresh evidence, Gujarat’s public healthcare has taken a beating over the last10 years, with rural areas witnessing one of the sharpest 7.9 per cent fall in the provision of government health services in India, Only two states witnessed a higher fall than Gujarat in rural public healthcare services -- Karnataka (13.2 per cent) and Maharashtra (9.5).

A new research work, which would which is likely to sound music to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chosen economic advisors, especially Niti Ayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, says that the former UPA government’s flagship programme National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), has had a negative impact on school going children, especially in the age-group 13-17.

  Making a scathing critique of the prevailing social bias in collection of data on health in India, a recent  study  published in the well-known global health journal “Lancet” has said that “about 80% of patients visit a private practitioner, which they do at their own expense”, yet most “health-related data are obtained from public hospitals and public health-care service units.”

  A new  report  by the World Bank, “Global Findex Database 2014: Measuring Financial Inclusion Around the World”, has said that the Government of India’s high-profile Jan Dhan scheme, launched for bank transfer subsidies to the poorer sections of India’s population, has been lacking any “explicit purpose”, one reason why around 43 per cent of the country’s accounts are "dormant."

Even as ranking India 130th in the ease of doing business among 189 countries, up from 134th a year ago, the latest World Bank report, “Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency” has quietly suggested that all’s not well on the social front in India. It has pointed towards “unreliable electricity supply”, which has adverse “consequences for a society’s well-being and living conditions.”

  An internal Gujarat government note, prepared by the state revenue department and in possession of Counterview, has admitted that the recent amendments to the state’s land various ceiling Acts are meant to “enable the industrialist to speedily establish industry”, in such a way that the industrialist could “purchase” the land for industrial purpose “without prior permission of the district collector.”

The "proposed" GIFT smart city A fresh document, obtained by a Gujarat-based right to information (RTI) activist, Roshan Shah on October 8, has revealed how very slow is the progress in implementing the pet "smart city" project floated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s when he was Gujarat chief minister – Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (GIFT). Envisaged in 2007, there are just two towers in the GIFT premises, one of which has partially started functioning.

  A new report, “2015 Global Hunger Index” has ranked India No 80th of 117 countries selected for calculating global hunger index (GHI). While this is better than Pakistan (No 93), this is no consolation, as it India’s ranking has been found to be lower than the other important neighbouring countries – China (No 21), Nepal (No 58), Sril Lanka (No 69), and Bangladesh (No 73).

  The Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015,  unanimously passed  in the two-day monsoon session of the Gujarat state assembly – after Congress MLAs were suspended for creating a “ruckus” – is finally beginning to get national attention. The Bill is lying with President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, awaiting his final nod after the Gujarat governor, O.P. Kohli, sent it to Delhi for approval. According to sources, the risk-averse Kohli felt that its provisions needed “Central scrutiny”.

Contradicting the  claims  of Gujarat-based activists and the Opposition Congress, a senior Gujarat government bureaucrat has told Counterview that main purpose of controversial the Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015 “is to transfer surplus land, lying idle, within municipal corporation and municipality bodies, for public purpose”, and “not to take away land meant for Dalits, tribals and other marginalized groups, as is being made out.”

It is now official. In what may be interpreted as yet another attack on the free functioning of non-government organizations (NGOs) in India, the Government of India has expressed the view, in black and white, that the trustees of society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and receiving foreign contribution under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), cannot be allowed to work as independent mediapersons. This has come to light in one of the several objections raised by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India, regarding reasons given to prominent human rights activist Teesta Setalvad on why MHA has decided to suspend FCRA license of Sabrang Trust, which she heads along with her husband, Javed Anand.

Govardhanram Tripathi India's pioneering literary classic in Gujarati, “Saraswatichandra”, is finally  available  in English. Translated by well-known Gandhi expert Tridip Suhrud, who has been instrumental in implementing one of the most ambitious projects of  digitizing  the entire Gandhi heritage, Suhrud terms the late 19th century novel by Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi as ranking among the “most accomplished literary works” of India.

  At a time when lynching of Mohamad Ashfaq on the “suspicion” of keeping beef in his refrigerator is sought to be justified by powerful politicians of the country, facts have come to light suggesting that two of the most important pillars of modern India, Mahatma Gandhi and Baba Ambedkar, opposed ban on cow slaughter tooth and nail.

  Even when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meeting Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as part of his effort to gather international support for his high-profile Digital India campaign, a new report, sponsored jointly by UNESCO and International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and released by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, has found that India has slipped in global ranking for the use of internet, both broadband and internet in general.

  A senior policy expert attached with US government has sharply criticized the Government of India for not doing enough in opening up its economy to the world. Pointing out that “India’s international competitiveness is lagging badly”, the expert says, “The shares of both manufactured and services exports in the economy have stagnated for over three years”, and “the responsiveness of Indian imports to global growth has declined sharply.”

Gujarat is, again, No 1— assessed for “ease” of doing business. At least this is what a new report, titled “Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms”, is said to have made out by a World Bank report. The moment news broke out, I was amused, and decided to go to the source. I visited the World Bank site, and found a small summary, prompting one to visit the Government of India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Policy (DIPP) site to download it . Initial remarks on the World Bank site were revealing: “This report captures the findings of an assessment of reform implementation by states, led by the DIPP, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, with support of the World Bank Group and KPMG as the knowledge partner, and facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).” A clear effort of the government of India to “highlight” Gujarat model, this time with the help of an “auth...

  Latest information, gathered by Gujarat-based non-government organization (NGO) Janvikas, indicates that even a decade after the Gujarat government declared it favoured implementing the controversial 15 point programmes of the Prime Minister for “ameliorating” the plight of minorities, things remain struck where they were in 2006. Official sources say, the matter has been under “active consideration” ever since, and there is no indication when it will be implemented.

  A high-profile study by top international consultants, Lloyd’s, has found that Ahmedabad’s 11.82 per cent of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), or 14.01 billion dollars out of the city GDP of 118.50 billion dollars, would be at risk because of manmade or natural threats. The study, titled “Lloyd's City Risk Index 2015-2025: Analysing the economic exposure from 18 threats”, has been carried out on 301 top world cities.

I think it was 1994 when I first met Japanese scholar Takashi Shinoda, an Indologist, during my routine visit to the Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research, Ahmedabad, at that time still known for some quality research. Once headed such academics of highest order such as DT Lakdawala and YK Alagh, the institute has since collapsed – at least this is what I learn from Gujarat’s academic circles, with whom I had developed good rapport before I was shifted to Gandhinagar to report on government affairs for the Times of India in 1997. Unassuming, Shinoda took me to the institute canteen for tea, and told me of his latest area of interest – social mobility and occupational diversification of different castes over several decades. What he told me was indeed of great interest to me – that Gujarat’s “enterprising” Patels, who I thought till then were mainly a farming community, had still not overtaken the Banias in business. However, he underlined, “The way things are happening...

As I was sipping morning tea the other day, an idea came to my mind: Why not ask the age of the young man who is said to be “leading” the current Patidar or Patel reservation stir, Hardik Patel – an agitation that has put Gujarat back on the national map after more than a year. In fact, ever since Narendra Modi left Gandhinagar to occupy the gaddi in Delhi, the view has gone pretty strong, at least in my media fraternity, that Gujarat has “lost its importance”. A few TV channels have even “withdrawn” their senior journalists from Gujarat, telling them that there is “no news in the state”. I sent a message on WhatsApp, a facility I generally avoid using, to a young “pro-reservationist” leader in Ahmedabad, whom I happen to know somewhat. He promptly returned with his answer “23, I suppose”, and after a while phoned me up to tell me the “importance” of the agitation, which has spread from North Gujarat to Ahmedabad and Surat, engulfing “upper” castes as well – Banias, Brahmins, Kshatriya...

Patidar leader Hardik Patel, 22 A well-informed official source close to the political establishment has conveyed to the Government of India, particularly the Prime Minister’s Office and the intelligence-gathering network working for it, that Narendra Modi’s former detractors in Gujarat BJP are behind the current Patidar (or Patel) caste stir for reservation that has engulfed the state.

  Amidst major hue and cry around “time lost” during the recently-ended Parliament session, with accusations flying high that the tax-payers’ money is being “wasted”, data of Lok Sabha sittings suggest that the last session when the BJP was in opposition saw the highest per cent of time lost since 1991.

The year was 2012, when D Jagatheesa Pandian, a Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat, was state energy secretary. Accompanied with two journalist colleagues, I dashed into his room on finding he had no guests to entertain. A seasoned official who became Gujarat chief secretary two years later, Pandian welcomed us with a broad smile. One who had the longest stint at the state-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), almost 10 years, Pandian, to most of us, was synonymous to GSPC’s oil-and-gas exploration. One who can claim to have made Gujarat number 1 in the use of gas by providing most of the over 3,000-km-long gas pipeline network, he was also known to us as Gujarat’s “gas man” for another reason – he took GSPC to the KG Basin off Andhra coast, apart from going “multinational” to Egypt, Australia, Yemen and Indonesia for “exploratory” exploits. It is quite another thing that, not only GSPC’s multinational ventures, even the KG Basin oil-and-gas fields, have been either abandoned or ...

A high-profile analysis, released by Reliance thinktank Observation Research Foundation (ORF), says that even if Indian economy achieves 8% growth rate, it is unlikely to achieve per person energy consumption levels that represent "decent quality of life" for several years now. It adds, the talk of "India’s energy take-off" may prove to be an ’optical illusion’, which has been caused by "China’s slow-down."

DD Kosambi A top US-based Hindutva scholar, representing a prominent pro-Narendra Modi thinktank, has regretted that right-wing historians in India have failed to develop what he calls "alternate history or even a robust theology in academia, either within India or the West." In a well-researched  article  titled "Saving History from Historians", Murali Balaji says, there is in fact, a "general lack of interest by most Indian academics to pursue a robust Hindu theological scholarly agenda."

Top international consultants AT Kearney have noted that, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India drive, India has dropped from the top 10 positions in foreign direct investment (FDI) confidence index for the first time since 2002. In a just-released report, “Connected Risks: Investing in a Divergent World”, the consultants’ rankings show that India in 2015 ranks No 11th, down from the seventh position in 2014.

  While the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), the ambitious state-driven “smart” city project envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about seven eight ago, has refused a right to information (RTI) applicant, Roshan Shah, any details regarding details of the progress made in the project, an influential international business daily has created flutter by  revealing  facts on slow progress in the ‘smart’ city project.

The Narendra Modi government -- which allowed a more stringent Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Ordinance, promulgated by the previous UPA government in March 2014, to lapse after it came to power -- wants to "secure" Dalit votes for the forthcoming Bihar assembly polls. According to sources, it has "decided" to introduce the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill this monsoon session of Parliament.

  A well-researched Dutch report, which has sharply criticized Gujarat and Rajasthan governments for failing to take any steps against child labour in Bt cotton farms, has surprisingly praised multinational corporations (MNCs), including the controversial Monsanto, for taking “exemplary” initiatives in fighting the evil. It has said, efforts by “Bayer, Monsanto, Du Pont and few local companies have had some positive impact in reducing the number of working children.”

  Top international consultants, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and multinational NGO Save the Children have said that Government of India's (GoI's) ambitious smart city project has ignored "child-friendly” and “inclusive” approach. Their just-released new report, “Forgotten voices: The world of urban children in India”, says that while “defining” the smart cities scheme, the GoI failed to go “beyond accommodating the aspirations of the new middle class comprising of professionals and investors”.

  One of the major “policy thrusts” adopted by the Government of India is known to be to follow a still unexplained “Gujarat model of education” for the country as a whole. Not only very little official information is available on what this “model” is and how top policy makers wish to pursue it, latest data of the Socio Economic and Caste Survey (SECC), released by the Centre suggest that Gujarat one of the worst performers at higher levels of learning.

  The latest Socio Economic and Caste Survey (SECC) 2011, released recently by Government of India, has revealed that, despite claims of Gujarat "model" to remove poverty, things are not so rosy as it may seem for the vulnerable sections of rural population. Not only do a much higher proportion of families in Gujarat live in kuccha houses, more Dalit households are dependent on manual casual labour than most of the 21 major states.

  A just-released report, “State of Information Commissions and the Use of RTI Laws in India: Rapid Study Based on the Annual Reports of Information Commissions”, prepared by a team of researchers headed by Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) has said that Gujarat has one of the highest proportion of rejection of right to information (RTI) applications, close to a fifth (19.5 per cent), for reasons not pertaining to the RTI Act.

 In an important  research paper  having major policy implications for India, International Monetary Organization (IMF) has declared that the “trickledown theory” -- which believes that economic growth would take care of poverty alleviation – is proving to be counter-productive. Top pro-Narendra Modi economist Arvind Panagariya, new vice-chairman of Planning Commission’s fresh avatar Niti Ayog (Policy Commission), and his Columbia University mentor, Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, are well known advocates of trickledown.

  A recent study by an independent Delhi-based policy research institute has pointed to complete failure of Gujarat government’s coastal management authority to act against top corporates’ open violations of environmental norms in the coastal region. Giving instances of coastal projects undertaken by industrial groups of Adani, Reliance and Essar, the study says, though the Gujarat Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) may take cognizance of some violations, it would generally “drop” the cases citing “various reasons.”

Yellow box on left corner: flood level 146.64 metres, 2013 In a major revelation, an independent Fact-Finding Team on Sardar Sarovar Project's (SSP's) submergence areas has said, on the basis of its recent field visit to SSP-affected villages, that Government of India (GoI) has completely ignored in its calculations several of the areas in Madhya Pradesh which may face massive submergence because of unprecedented floods.

While it is well known that Africans were taken as slave labourers to Americas in 18th and 19th century, few know that the British enslaved Indians, too, taking them all the way to Jamaica to work in sugar and banana plantations. A unique documentary, “Dreadlocks Story”, written, directed and produced by Linda Aïnouche, ethnographer-researcher and cultural analyst, has highlighted this unknown fact by tracing the cultural roots the Indians who over the last about two centuries have mixed with the Africans in Jamaica, a Caribbean island.

  A controversial study, carried out by a prominent US-based research organization, has said that “despite relative economic advantage, India’s majority Hindu population is 25 percentage points more likely to defecate in the open than the minority Muslim population.” The study quotes Manusmriti (Chapter 4 verse 151) to suggest why it may be more prevalent among Hindus, “Far from his dwelling let him remove urine and excreta”.

  Despite big talk about Gujarat being a model state of urban development, latest figures, made available at a workshop organized by Paryavaran Mitra, an Ahmedabad-based environmental NGO, has said that just about 14.67 per cent of the solid waste collected in the state’s eight municipal corporations and 159 municipalities, is processed. This puts Gujarat way behind the national average of 27.94 per cent of the solid waste being processed, with seven out of 20 selected states performing better.

  Well-informed sources in Gujarat government have told Counterview that the latest lion census enumerators could find just 22 lions in Gir National Park, the no-man’s “fully protected” territory within the Gir forest area to “preserve” the rare species. Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, while making an  announcement  of 523 lions in Gujarat, up from 411 in 2010, refused to give any breakup of the number of lions found in the National Park.

Top Gujarat government ex-bureaucrat known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Maheswar Sahu, wants the state officialdom to tighten the state’s noose over corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of industrial houses. In a recently released book, “Small but Meaningful: CSR in Practice”, Sahu, who retired as additional chief secretary, industries, in 2014, has said the state must introduce “economic disincentives for irresponsible corporate behaviour”, even as encouraging “socially responsible business practices.”

It is titled “Small but Meaningful”, and is subtitled “CSR in Practice”. Authored by Maheswar Sahu, an influential Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat who retired as state industries secretary in 2014, who claims to be “instrumental” in organizing Narendra Modi’s high profile Vibrant Gujarat business summits of 2003, 2009, 2011 and 2013, the book has Jeevan Prakash Mohanty, a researcher at the Energy and Resources Institute, as the second author. While poor production and print quality may seem jarring, making many to believe it is over-priced (Rs 1,100), a peep into the book would provide one with an insight into how independently and analytically some of our high-profile bureaucrats have been thinking. One of the claims of the book is, it offers “case studies” of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of 11 business houses in Gujarat. However, what strikes one most, as one glances through each of the case studies, is that Sahu and Mohanty accept whatever information is offered to ...

   Fresh data in the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report, ‘Household Consumer Expenditure across Socio-Economic Groups,’ make an important revelation. Released in February 2015, the figures provided in the report suggest that the purchasing power of the three socially disadvantaged groups in Gujarat – scheduled tribes (STs), scheduled castes (SCs) and other backward classes (OBCs) – is considerably less than in most of the Indian states, especially in the rural areas. But this is not the case with the dominant sections in the rural areas, identified as ‘Others’. Calculated as monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE), the purchasing power figures are based on NSSO’s survey in 2011-12. The data speak for themselves, and need little comment. In Gujarat’s rural areas, the STs’ average MPCE is Rs 1,155, which is less than 12 out of 20 major Indian states (Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam, Tamil ...

Navsarjan School A decade-long experiment, taking shape 100 kilometres from Ahmedabad, halfway to Rajkot, the business hub of Saurashtra region of Gujarat, appears have largely gone unnoticed. Just next to the National Highway 8A, not very far from the sleepy Katariya village, the premier Dalit rights NGO of Gujarat, Navsarjan Trust, is running a higher primary school, for classes 5 to 8, seeking to turn it into a “model” for other schools to follow. It is one of the three schools run by Navsarjan — the other two being near the Rayka village in Ahmedabad district and Sami village in Patan district. As we entered the campus the other day, nobody seemed to be around. An eerie quiet prevailed, as if. Suddenly, a child spotted us, and declared “Martinbhai!” And, all of a sudden, a horde of children began peeping through a window, and many of them came out, welcoming us, smiling, eager to shake hands with their Martinbhai — and me. What a striking contrast it was from other primary schools,...