Gujarat : From Mahatma's Milepost To Modi's Model
BY
R.K.MISRA
Gujarat
is the flavor of the Indian season.
Mahatma
Gandhi, the man who won us independence
is Gujarat’s gift to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who flagged off the
country’s year long ,high profile celebration of the Mahatma’s 150th
birth anniversary on October 2,2018, hails from here as does Amit Shah who runs the ruling BJP .There
are two state Governors and additionally a long line of bureaucrats,
technocrats and politicians from the
state doing duty in Delhi and around the country .
Two
days before he kicked off , the India-wide celebrations, the Prime Minister
spent a busy day in Gujarat on September 30 with a slew of back to back engagements. One of them
was the inauguration of the World class museum at the Alfred High School in
Rajkot where the Mahatma had studied. Just two kms from it is the Rashtriya Shaala , a
97 year old school founded by Gandhiji which closed down for want of funds two
months ago. There were over a thousand
students at one time but the government during the present Prime Minister’s
tenure in the state did not find the
primary school and the classical music school grant-worthy. Request to
corporates for donations failed to get the desired response and the institution
closed down. Interestingly chief minister Vijay Rupani hails from Rajkot and
the present vice-chancellor of the Gandhian Gujarat Vidyapith, Dr Anamik Shah
is also a product of the Rashtriya Shaala. And the thrust of the Prime
Minister’s speech was that past regimes had ignored Gandhi !
Inaugurating the Rs 300 crore chocolate plant of Amul,
near Anand, India’s milk town, on the same day ,the Prime Minister was himself
guilty of ignoring the late V.Kurien, the
father of the cooperative milk
revolution in the country and the man who made Amul possible.
There was not
even a picture of the man. Not wholly unexpected, for a piqued chief minister Modi had ensured his
ejection from key positions including IRMA and GCMMF. Incidentally the day
Kurien passed away, Modi was present at a function in the vicinity of Anand but
remained straight-faced even when informed and moved on. Old timers sorely
missed Kurien when they witnessed the dairy cooperative members being given a miserly eat while the
VVIPs enjoyed a Rs 2500 per person lavish meal spread,at the function !
Though
Prime Minister Modi is the present messiah of the Swachh Bharat movement, interestingly,
it was Mahatma Gandhi who had launched the biggest sanitation drive
in the history of Ahmedabad in 1919,cleaning
almost 3000 tonnes of garbage. Thirteen plus years of Modi’s helmsmanship and four years of his successors later, Gujarat accounts
for three of the country’s most polluted
rivers and Pirana in Ahmedabad as one of the most toxic garbage dumps.
Spread
over 84 hectares this dumping yard of 1982, today constitutes three 75 feet high
massive mounds of garbage each weighing 69 lakh metric tonnes. Highly toxic,
spewing methane and carbon dioxide, it requires 48,000 litres of water per day
or 17.5 million litres of water per year to keep under control. And 4700 tonnes
of garbage is added to it every day. Air-conditioners ,5kms away from the
landfill site, are developing leaks due to corrosion.
Studies reveal
massive groundwater pollution in the
vicinity over four decades. Please remember that Ahmedabad stands sixth in the
country in per capita plastic waste
generation. So it is that a 2012
consultancy study aimed at a zero-waste city by 2031 undertaken at a cost of $
20,000 is long forgotten and gathers dust while a veritable time bomb ticks in
Ahmedabad’s backyard!
On
September 20, a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order, quoting a Central
Pollution Control board(GPCB)report had bad tidings for the state. Of the 351
polluted river stretches in India 160 were in five state of Gujarat, Assam,
Maharashtra, Kerala and MP, Rajkot’s Bhadar stretch being India’s third most
polluted. In Vadodara, Mahi and Dhadhar river are in death throes and domestic
sewage is sending Tapi river, off Surat city into convulsions. The NGT verdict:
Gujarat is among the top lethargic states in dealing with untreated domestic sewage
and industrial pollutants. The crowning irony, Gujarat was first in Asia to form a Climate Change
department and was last to suggest a climate change plan in the country !
BJP
has been ruling Gujarat for close to a quarter century and is thus culpable
for both acts of commission and omission
in the state. It’s failure in submitting Coastal Zone Management Plan(CZMP) as
mandated by the NGT, has resulted in projects worth Rs 50,000 crores being held
up. This is because the NGT has directed the Ministry of Environments and
Forests(MOEF) should not grant
development permission in the regulated areas unless CZMP is submitted.
It
is only after the hollering from the NGT on September 20 that Gujarat has
finally agreed to formulate a river rejuvenation policy. Gujarat had all along
chosen to be deaf to the Union water Resources ministry request for a list of
lakes, water bodies and their current status. This despite the fact that in
2005,the state government had notified 44,138 lakes.
Thus
it is that the Prime Minister’s own home
state and one that he projects as a
model for the country, does not present
a flattering view of his own rule !
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