annual report print final.qxd - Asian Centre for Human Rights

INDIA HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2005 Gujarat
discrimination in the society despite
enjoying a high status in the government.
Rajan Priyadarshi, a 1980 batch IPS
officer, does not have a free and dignified
life in his caste-conscious native Kadagra
village in Dehgam taluka in Gandhinagar
district, where till 2003 even the village
barber reportedly did not entertain Dalit
customers. It was reported that he could
not buy a house in the locality inhabited by
higher castes of the village and continued
to have a house in the ‘Dalit vaas’. 38
Another Dalit, Jayantilal Parmar,
chairman of the Ahmedabad Municipal
Corporation’s standing committee, too
continued to have a house in the ‘Dalit
vaas’ of the Kukarwada in Vijapur taluka
in Mehsana district. He told reporters,
“Even if I want nobody would sell me a
house in the upper caste locality. The
social structure is such even today.” 39
PK Valera, an IAS officer who retired
as commissioner (Fisheries) a few years
back, also reportedly faced similar
discrimination because of his Dalit
background. When Valera organised a
social gathering in his native Borisana
village near Kalol in 1997, the person
whom he had given the cooking contract
refused to clean up the utensils saying that
they would not wash utensils at a Dalit’s
place. Valera also worked as a director of
social welfare department in the state. He
told reporters that even today there are
people who do not accept a cup of tea at
his home in his village. 40
Kanti Makwana, a retired DSP, was
reportedly not allowed to take out the
marriage procession of his son by the
upper caste villagers in Govana village in
Harij taluka in Patan district in 2003. 41
VII. Atrocities against the
Adivasis
Despite failure to rehabilitate all the
dam oustees in Maharashtra and Madhya
Pradesh, on 13 March 2004, Gujarat
government cleared raising of an
additional 10 metres for the Sardar Sarovar
dam. The Supreme Court order of 2000
had clearly stated that permission to raise
the height can only be given after all three
states furnish Action Taken Reports
(ATRs) showing that every affected person
by the additional submergence has been
resettled. The Maharashtra government
refused to file the ATR saying it would
only do so when all families were
rehabilitated. Yet the height was raised. 42
Although the Narmada Control
Authority’s website showed `zero
families’ for rehabilitation, according to
Narmada Bachao Andolan, 11,000
families remained to be resettled at the
height of the dam at 110 metres in
violation of the Narmada Tribunal Award
and the Supreme Court order of 2000. 43
In addition, the conditions of 15,812
Tadvi tribals living in the six villages near
the Narmada dam remain precarious as
promises of rehabilitation and
development reportedly given by Pt.
Jawaharlal Nehru while laying down the
foundation stone of the Narmada dam in
1961 have not been kept. They were not
considered “project-affected”. 44
■
71