Pulkit Vasudha

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 24: Ever since repair and renovation work began at the main office of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation at Sardar Patel Bhawan in December last, people coming here to meet officials, are having a tough time. This, because 24 offices have been shifted out of the main building and flung across the city. Whereas earlier, all the offices were available to the public in a single building, now people have to travel to Jamalpur, Kankaria, Mithakali, Kalupur and Khadia to meet the officials.

Take for example Bhupendra Shah, who took a half day’s leave from office and left his home in Virarnagar early on Friday to meet deputy municipal commissioner of finance department. Instead, he found a large black board listing the offices which had been shifted out of the main AMC office to various centres around the city.

Shah is not alone in his search for the elusive corporation offices. Despite public notification in newspapers, over 20 people flock to the control room daily asking directions for the new offices of the health, vigilance, city planning, solid waste management, welfare, and legal departments among others. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 24: The past five years have seen good rains in the state but not good enough in terms of groundwater replenishment. The rate at which groundwater is being replenished is much slower than the rate at which water is being consumed in most parts of the state.

The latest report, which assessed the groundwater situation in 223 talukas in the entire state categorised 69 talukas in a semi-critical condition, 12 in a critical condition and 31 as over-exploited. Ahmedabad, Banaskantha, Junagadh, Kutch, Patan, Mehsana and Sabarkantha figure both in the critical and over-exploited list of talukas.

“The groundwater levels in northern Gujarat are depleting at an alarming rate,” said Anoop Nagar, acting Regional Director of the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) in Ahmedabad. Despite the good monsoon in the last five years, areas such as Patan, Ahmedabad, Mehsana, Banskantha and parts of Kheda have shown a dip in groundwater levels. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 23: For those of us who have grown up hearing the soulful strains of “Sabarmati ke sant tu ne kar diya kamaal”, the Sabarmati river still holds a special place. But what many don’t know is that the river on whose banks Gandhi set up his Ashram has turned into one of the most polluted waterbodies in the state.

The 11 kilometres that the Sabarmati courses through Ahmedabad makes one long murky stretch. While it flows through the densely-populated areas of the city, the river has to carry with it effluents discharged from domestic units. Towards the end of its journey in the city, industrial effluents also find an unregulated and illegal release into the Sabarmati. In all about 36 sewage lines flow into the Sabarmati making it one of most polluted water bodies. In a report tabled in the state Assembly recently, the Gujarat Pollution Control Board stated that most surface water bodies like rivers, lakes, and ponds do not meet the water quality parameters such as the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS).

Though the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has started laying a trunk line to intercept all the sewage outlets, the work will be completed only in March 2009. Till then, Sabarmati will continue to be polluted. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Tajpur (Ahmedabad), July 9: FOR six years now, Tajpur village has been commemorating the 1857 mutiny through a programme attended by Ministers of State. And for six years, the ministers have come, talked about development issues and then bid adieu until the next year. Monday’s programme to mark the completion of 150 years since the revolt too ended with promises of Rs 1 lakh to develop the compound wall of the village martyrs’ memorial. Health Minister Ashok Bhatt, too, asked villagers to take task of development in their own hands. But his words didn’t evoke much response in the village which lost a soldier to the uprising.

“Politicians and ministers have been coming to Tajpur on July 9 every year only to make speeches and to be photographed. They promise funds and infrastructural development for the village and then disappear for another year,” says Kiran Makhwana, a resident. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, Jul 6: Major discrepancies have come up in regard to the condition of the regional transport offices (RTOs) in the state.

In December 2005, Bangalore had almost 23 lakh vehicles on its roads, with 10 regional transport officers and 217 technical inspectors. In comparison, today, Ahmedabad has almost 30 lakh vehicles, with only one regional transport officer and 17 technical inspectors.

In fact, the total staff at the 25 RTOs and assistant regional transport offices (ARTO) in Gujarat, is less than the cumulative strength of the 13 RTO and ARTO offices in Bangalore alone. In 1991, there were approximately 25 lakh vehicles on the roads in the state. Out of the 395 posts in the RTO, only 37 posts were vacant. At present, there are almost 95 lakh vehicles in Gujarat. Out of the 251 positions allotted, 83 are vacant.

Out of these 251 posts, the remaining 168 posts are filled with officers on deputation from the land reforms, irrigation, revenue and water supply departments. Thirty-nine of 54 assistant inspectors are on deputation, as are 12 out of 15 regional transport officers. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmeadbad, July 4: In the wake of the controversy surrounding the sale of Mahatma Gandhi’s letter, which is considered by many to be a national heritage, there seems to be renewed efforts to trace anything and everything written by Gandhi.

The chief trustee of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust (SAPMT), Amrut Modi said, “We are planning to appeal to the public to give us the original letters, articles and notes written by Gandhi.”

The manuscript of Gandhi’s handwritten letter would have gone under the hammer at Christie’s in London last week had not the Indian government intervened and proposed to bring it back to the country. The one-page letter was expected to fetch at least £12,000. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 02: In a world where size matters, it was heartening to see little ones of the Childline India Foundation take centrestage to voice their opinions and grievances with the world they will soon inherit.

The Gujarat chapter of Childline recently arranged a state level children’s meet where 40 under-privileged children interacted with government authorities and brainstormed on issues like child labour, education, health and child rights. About 15 children from Baroda and 25 children from Ahmedabad, all in the 12-18 age group, spoke to various representatives of the State Government during the meet.

Five team leaders made presentations on education, health, child labour, the police force and the railways. Prakash Solanki, 18, expressed his concern about child labour. “Sometimes, it is the family’s economic situation which forces a child to earn a living whereas at other times, it is various powerful individuals with vested interests who push poor children into child labour. In either case, the children have to abandon school and fall into bad company.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 01:“I channeled all my energies into getting the gold medal of my IIM-A batch in 1989. When I got it though, I realized it had not been worth the effort,” said Sachit Jain, the CEO of the Vardhman group, India’s largest integrated textile producer.

Sachit Jain’s personal and professional journey began after he graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. A brilliant student in school, Jain passed out of the Indian Institute of Technology with a single aim in mind – to be the gold medallist of his IIM-A batch of 1989. “My health deteriorated in those last months at IIM and my parents were extremely worried about my high stress levels,” he says. “Until then I had been working towards achieving the medal but then I realized that it is the effort I put in which was more precious to me than the medal itself.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, June 27: RAINWATER harvesting wells recently constructed by the Space Applications Centre will finally provide relief to low-lying residential societies around the SAC which were flooded in the monsoon for years by water flowing out its 80-acre campus.

SAC has built two rainwater collection ponds, each of a capacity of five lakh litres, along the compound wall facing the aggrieved residential societies at a cost of Rs 9.12 lakh. In addition to the eight rainwater recharge wells which were built almost eight years ago, SAC added another eight rainwater harvesting wells two months ago at a cost of Rs 17.24 lakh. Three of these wells are inside the ponds along the compound wall facing Ashoknagar and Jyoti Kalash societies. Read the rest of this entry »