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He was addressed as “dinosaur” by late Congress chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhury, but Gujarat government officials recall him for being too much of a “simpleton”, who easily succumbed to all types of pressures, whether from the family, or bureaucrats, or politicians whom he trusted blindly. Whatever he has been, former chief minister Keshubhai Patel, who has allowed his decades-old association with the BJP to lapse just a few days ahead of his 83rd birthday, July 24, will now attract attention on how he seeks to influence Gujarat’s polity, about to witness assembly elections six months from now. Despite being old, his supporters say, he is seen as “Keshubapa” by the economically better off and socially influential community of Leuva Patels, especially in the Saurashtra region, to which he belongs. I came in contact with Keshubhai in 1998, though I met him once earlier, somewhat briefly, in early 1994 when he was opposition leader in the Gujarat state assembly. In 1998, he led his part...

Medha Patkar It was a Sunday. I was preparing to drive down to Ahmedabad from my Gandhinagar residence on June 17, in the afternoon. Suddenly, I got a phone call from one of the most controversial activists of India, Medha Patkar. She said, she was in Ahmedabad, why not meet? I readily agreed. I may have talked to her several times on phone to find out what she thought on issues related with the Narmada project, but never had an occasion to meet her. She had come to Ahmedabad for the second time in a year to appear in an Ahmedabad court regarding a case involving assault on her during - what many in consider - her "unwarranted" visit to Sabarmati Ashram in 2002 to attend a gathering of Gandhians and activists to protest Gujarat riots. Organizers of the 2002 meeting, including well-known danseuse and activist Mallika Sarabhai, were quick to distance themselves from Patkar’s sudden appearance saying the meeting was in no way "connected with the Narmada cause with which Pat...

Last Wednesday, when three senior ministers from Government of India - P Chidambaram, Ambika Soni and Salman Khursheed - landed up in Ahmedabad merely to "showcase" the Centre’s contribution to Gujarat’s development, I was taking a round of Sachivalaya in Gandhinagar. Time was 3.00 pm, and the ministers were about to address the media, which is what they had come for. I entered the room of one of the senior-most bureaucrats, who was found to be frantically changing TV channels in order to catch the station which would broadcast the press conference live. Flanked by three other officials, all working under him, this bureaucrat curtly remarked: "What the hell! Our chief secretary has asked us to watch live the three ministers’ press conference." The officials had their pen and paper ready. Amused, I walked out and moved towards Gujarat chief secretary Achal Kumar Joti's office, just a few yards away. I peeped into the conference room attached to the office - and t...

YK Alagh Does Gujarat government fudge figures to “prove” its success story? The suspicion is, indeed, not new. I recollect how chief minister Narendra Modi, post-2002 riots, insisted for at least three continuous years that Gujarat’s annual rate of growth was 14.6 per cent. I also believed him (and his aides) till one fine day a senior bureaucrat showed me unofficially – that the high rate was being shown even for the year when it was around six per cent! At a press conference that followed – a rarity nowadays – I asked Modi about his comment on this six per cent. He looked around for a while, and on getting a reply from an aide murmured, “When you are already on a high pedestal, it is difficult to go higher.” One can possibly say, then, he had political reasons for hyping Gujarat’s growth story. He wanted to establish himself, wanted people to forget riots and see how Gujarat had already become No 1 under him. Things, apparently, have not changed more than half-a-decade later, though...

A few days back, I happened to have an informal chat with a senior Congress leader. Belonging to Gujarat, this leader has made his way to the high command, going pretty close to party president Sonia Gandhi, which he more often than not nauseatingly proclaims, not unusual for a Congressman. Yet, I found something uncommon in him. I have known him before he decided to join politics more than a decade ago. At that time, he was more of a human rights activist, running an organisation in a backward Gujarat region which fought for the sake of a neglected section. I would enjoy visiting the far-flung areas under his influence talking with workers trained by him. One may dispute his approach and ways, but his unflinching commitment to the cause of the poor seemed impressive. I always thought, this leader's decision to enter politics was wrong, as he would have to make odd compromises. Yet, he would brush aside my suggestion as "failure to understand certain advantages of politics....

Ever heard of a proposed location called Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT)? If you haven’t, you are either ignorant or you have actually missed out on grabbing a real opportunity. At least this is the conclusion one should draw after perusing through an authoritative presentation on the dream project of Gujarat’s No 1, chief minister Narendra Modi, dished out by his powerful propaganda machine. Believe it or not, this high-level presentation on the proposed state-sponsored GIFT project declares that “85 per cent of Gujarat’s residents want to relocate to GIFT.” Interestingly, the presentation is quiet on which “Gujarat’s residents” it is talking about, where the survey was made, and by whom. As if this isn’t enough, it insists, “While only 24 per cent of non-residents (sic!) are willing to shift to Gujarat as a state, the percentage almost doubles (45 per cent) when it comes to shifting to GIFT.” Again, no sources have been quoted. If you do not know what GIFT is about, the...

It was a Sunday. On June 25, 2005, Gujarat's chief minister Narendra Modi called an urgent press conference to announce the "biggest ever gas find in India", valuing at around Rs 2 lakh crore. Quietly sitting at my residence, I had to rush to Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration (SPIPA), Ahmedabad, which is Gujarat's counterpart of Indian Institute of Public Admnistration (IIPA), Delhi. It was raining rather heavily, and my daughter had to virtually sail through the flooded city to reach Satellite Road to drop me at SPIPA. Modi announced that premier state PSU Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) had "discovered" 20 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, "more than the total gas find of India", at KG basin off Andhra coast. All of Modi's ministers were called on the occasion to listen to him. I interacted with several of them at the high tea that followed. They unanimously called it "Modi's great feat". I remember, how...