Issues in Gujarat
Urban Belt
Heavy out-migration is seen from rural, tribal and coastal areas as means of livelihood are shrinking in these regions. Agriculture is slowly turning unviable and uneconomical for people having small landholdings. Government has amended certain revenue policies that facilities purchase of agriculture land by non-farmers. This would lead to consolidation of land by few, large capital owning class ejecting small landholders from their primary occupation and disposes them of their only age old means of production - agriculture land. In cities at every cross roads, hundreds of labourers are found standing in search of building contractors who will offer them a job for a day. There are thousands of families migrating from other states like U. P, Bihar and Maharastra to Gujarat in search of work. These workers stay in most inhuman, unhygienic slums in cities. Neither there is food security for these groups nor a mechanism that ensures basic rights of health, education and development. In essence rural poverty is translated in urban poverty.
|