Urbanization Backfires!

The commercial capital and the city in center, Ahmedabad is getting all the glitters and revamp. Roads, junctions, buildings and public places are rejuvenated over the last few weeks following the Vibrant Gujarat’s international investors’ summit. Would it have happened for the citizens of Ahmedabad in order to provide civil services? I strongly do not think so. I buy the idea that we hide those dirty table and broken shoe rack when we invite guests at our place, but we don’t lose the priorities of our family needs. The areas of the city, which were not likely to be touched by these visitors are still in despair. No one to look at those even! Anyway, this was just to make a way to the following points.

“In the past six months, Modi has spent Rs.750 crore of State money on propaganda – equivalent to the amount Gujarat spends on social welfare and nutrition in a year.” Dionne Bunsha says in his recent article in Frontline, from the publishers of Hindu

Surat, the city of diamonds, sends out 80% of diamonds being used in jewelry in all over the world. Out of 250-300 diamonds factories with more than 2500 grinders, there are only 15 functional. We may just flip a page over a headline of a suicide but there have been 80 in last 2 months and most of them are either diamond workers or their family members. Earning a sufficient living for family is now standing in queue for relief. BECAUSE, perhaps we do not know how to live in a villages and remain in villages. There is no eligibility or courage I might have to say this, but it does at least leave me with a lot questions. The blind migration (URBANIZATION) over easy jobs without having any qualification or any special skills. Thousands left villages, left well settled farming practices and ended up in these “not forever” diamonds. I see it more as the disconnection with the soil, seeds and the dust at the cost of making those artificial beauty objects. I think, no one wants dirty and scruffy hands at the end of the day.

State Government spent 750 crore rupees to provide A-class cars, 5 star accommodations and luxurious services to the investors, and there are queues of diamond workers to get welfare relief. After the discomforting communal divide which has rooted some very downbeat feelings within thousands of hearts (I use ‘thousands’ as out of millions, I doubt that there is much sensitivity in the people of Gujarat regarding these issues.) and the huge distance between the rich and poor, it’s the intensive time of disparity between rural and urban, specially at the time of global melt-down!

“Some get roads to glide and some, a death-ride!”

There is a lot to be heard about villages and victims of our social imbalance, please read on Dionne Bunsha: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2424/stories/20071221508312900.htm