ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Mathew KalathilSubscribe to Mathew Kalathil

Crisis of Confidence in Gujarat

to their new consciousness about the roots of the system, women are now determined to actively encourage 'devadasis' to join them in the programme. Some have even pledged that they will not allow any more girls from their village to be dedicated.

Satyagraha by Sardar Sarovar Oustees

Disputes Act for 'work suspension'. It is another name for lock-out. One fails to understand why the Left Front government should make undue efforts for securing loans for Bengal Lamps, especially when the union spokesmen have complained of many financial irregularities of the management. From different reports, it seems that the West Bengal government has not investigated in depth the financial position of Bengal Lamps.

Sardar Sarovar Claims and Reality

by the Delhi administration. It accepted petitions related to 2,427 deaths, 2,403 injuries and 3,537 cases of damage to houses. But the Delhi High Court recently uphold the claims of 1,200 people whose cases were earlier rejected by the Administration. Meanwhile the government, in December 1987, accepted "in principle" the recommendation of the Misra Commission to enhance the compensation. The Srivatsav Committee on police mechanism recommended increasing 3 more police districts, 12 more police sub-divisions and 25 more police stations. (One such police station "to prevent future riots", on the recommendations of the committee, is set up at Delhi University campus.) This is the only committee whose recommendations were readily accepted by the government, Rs 310 million was allocated for the implementation of these recommendations in the current financial year. The amount spent for compensation, on Dhillon Committee recommendations, was Rs 75 million.

Sad Story of the Oustees of Sardar Sarovar

The activities for resettlement of the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada river in Gujarat cover mostly landholders though a large number of landless labourers have also been displaced by the project. Even the landholders have been cheated by being sold lands encumbered with heavy debts or, quite unbelievably, lands which were soon to be acquired for the same Sardar Sarovar project.

When Law Enforcers Turn Criminals

Illegal detention of tribals by the police is common in the tribal areas of Gujarat Such detention has little to do with the investigation of crimes, but are only a means of extorting money from the illiterate tribal people and intimidating them.

GUJARAT-Rich Farmers Muscle and Musclemen

paid state employers salary. Besides the junior doctors in Delhi and other states are, by the same token, trainees but their governments run by Congress(I) and Janata Party recognised that the junior doctors are at least entitled to more than the lowest paid employees and so granted a rise in their stipends. ABJDF, however, challenged the concept of trainee and asked, if they were only trainees, why then such hue and cry is raised and there is virtual closure of the hospitals when the so-called trainees cease work ?

GUJARAT-Menace of Moneylenders in Sagbara

Menace of Moneylenders in Sagbara Mathew Kalathil THE Antyodaya Programme and the Integrated Rural Development Programme have attempted to bring a certain number of poor families above the poverty line within a given period of time. The protagonists of such programmes at times give the impression that rural impoverisation is about to be effectively brought under check. While imaginative programmes for eradication of poverty are needed, it is also necessary to look at the process of rural pauperisation. What condemns people to live below the poverty line? How many people are affected by the process of pauperisation? How does the process operate? Who are responsible for its operation? what can bring the process under control? A look at some cases from Sagbara taluka of Bharuch district suggests that usurious moneylending is a major factor explaining the rapid pauperisation in the area. It is more than likely that such cases abound in other areas also.

GUJARAT-Law and Order in a Shambles

GUJARAT Law and Order in a Shambles Mathew Kalathil GANDHI JI's Gujarat is no longer nonviolent. In Nandod and Jagadia talukas of Bharuch district alone more than eleven unnatural deaths have been recorded in the recent past. But as tribals are the victims in these incidents they neither hit the front pages of newspapers nor do police investigations book the culprits. The following are the details of a gruesome murder and it is a typical case illustrating how the law and order machinery works in Gujarat, even though the home portfolio is held by Chief Minister Amarsing Chaudry himself.

GUJARAT-Riots with a Political Motive

solve the payments problem. The further ticklish question is how the "contradictions" between foreign trade policies and foreign policy are perceived by the Prime Minister and how exactly they are proposed to be resolved. These questions have to be squarely faced and answered without equivocation and in all honesty.

GUJARAT- Ghost Industrial Training Institute

GUJARAT Ghost Industrial Training Institute Mathew Kalathil THE disclosures about tampering with marks of MD students in a medical college in Bombay have been shocking. A fraud of even greater magnitude is in the making in Sagbara taluka of Bharuch district in Gujarat. A Mini Industrial Training Institute in Sagbara is preparing to issue Industrial Training Certificates in four trades to 82 trainees without imparting instruction to them for a single period.

GUJARAT- Extortion by Police Tribals Everyday Plight

an integrated energy pricing structure in the beginning of the plan period." But neither the coal nor oil price hike stemmed from the idea of evolving an "integrated energy pricing structure". As a point of fact there is little understanding, much less researched evidence, of the impact of raising energy prices on energy policy in particular and the economy in general.

GUJARAT-Cover-up of Gang Rape by Policemen

February 22, 1986 must, therefore, logically follow. What is required by the World Bank-IMF strategists is austerity, ruthlessly imposed from above, for the mass of the people and liberalisation for commercial enterprise and investment, above all, in the private sector, Indian and foreign. The official policy has been moving on these lines steadily for the past several years and has acquired accelerated pace and momentum in the course of the last one year. All the policy propositions and prescriptions laid down by the World Bank and IMF have now become an essential stock in trade of the Government of India's socio-economic policy and management. There may, of course, be occasional deviations and minor aberrations. But those who talked glibly about robust independence, political as well as economic, of the Government of India when it dispensed with the last instalment of the IMF loan under its special financing facility must now think afresh. The IMF loan arrangements, in fact, achieved their essential purpose of bringing about the desired shift in official socio-economic policy in India. The World Bank has carried on from that point with its policy-linked credit lines to keep the Government of India moving on the set course The latest hike in prices only emphasises this position and has brought right into the open the real content and direction of official socio-economic policy under the tattered banner of liberalisation of the economy. It is a policy of imposing austerity on the mass of the people in order to subserve and promote the in- terests of those who command economic assets and power. World Bank-IMF strategists demand austerity for the masses and a bonanza for the asset-holders. The government's socio-economic policies in India are moving on the prescribed path.

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