In the post-independence era, urbanization in the wake of large-scale industrialization has brought about wide spread environmental degradation. Industries sprang up all over Gujarat in the sixties in an unplanned fashion which uprooted hundreds of small and marginal framers following land acquisition. "The plight of the land losers", according to the HPC, "has been aggravated partly by inadequate negligible compensation and partly by the failure of existing policies and programmes to rehabilitate them adequately, economically and socially.'' Apart from this, most of the villages affected by land acquisition are suffering from inadequate or near absence of basic minimum needs, the rapid felling of trees, disappearance of greenery, destruction of village forests, indiscriminate disposal of solid and semi-solid wastes by industries in and around affected villages are leading to serious health hazards for the people. "There has been nearly no rehabilitation worth the name of the land losers' families", laments the HPC (High Powered Commission)