By Leo Saldanha* I heard Prime Minister Narendra Modi's “Mann ki Baat” address to the nation on May 31, 2015. About how this innovation has captured the attention of the nation and people world over, there is plenty that has been said on TV and also written about. The point of this piece is to ask what is Modi's project when he so shares his thoughts and feelings with the “people”. Just plain listening to Modi's “Mann ki Baat” gives one the feeling that Modi is reaching out, explaining stuff, making people part of his decisions.  But pay careful attention to his tone, the undertones particularly, and one notices a rather dark and patronising manner in which Modi renders his messages. Take today's episode, for instance. Modi spoke of the heat wave; the Kisan Channel that is being launched; the One Rank One Pension promise to Jawans; about success and failures in examinations and how to deal with them; and also announced he would lead the nation in commemorating June 21st...

By Our Representative Following feminist-turned-Narendra Modi protege Madhu Kishwar's sharp critique on the way Union human resources development minister Smriti Irani is handling education, well-known right-wing economist Laveesh Bhandari has taken a dig at the ruling BJP's "poor performance" in the sector. "The sector’s three overarching reform priorities—pedagogy, resourcing, and decision making—the government, thus far, has largely performed poorly on each measure", Bhandari has declared.

Counterview Desk Reproduced below is the abridged version of statement issued by the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC), which was barred from continuing its activities on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras: We, the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC), an independent student body of IIT Madras (IITM) have been derecognised by the Dean of Students (DoS), on May 22, 2015, who stated that we have misused the privileges given by IITM.

Pandian with Aloria By Our Representative The Gujarat government on Saturday appointed GR Aloria, a 1981 batch IAS bureaucrat, as new state secretary. The posting comes weeks after Gujarat home department under him wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, seeking inquiry into the American philanthropic organization Ford Foundation’s grants to NGOs run by human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, fighting tens of 2002 communal riots cases, even as highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity.

By Our Representative Has the Adani Group finally managed to win an important battle against those who are opposed to the Australian dollars 16.5 billion coalmining project in Queensland province? If the latest statement by a spokesperson of the indigenous people, who have been opposing the coalmines on the land which they claim is theirs, is any indication, they seem to be fighting a losing battle.

By Our Representative The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IITM) authorities’ decision to “derecognize” the Ambedkar Periyar Student Circle (APSC) following an inquiry into APSC’s “controversial” views by the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has led to a strong reaction from those running the APSC. In their reply, APSC office bearers have wondered whether expressing a different view from the one held by Modi government could be construed as an attempt to spread of hatred.

By Mohan Guruswamy* In his speech to a farmers' gathering in the capital the other day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised them to retain a third of their holding for farming, another third for fodder for the cattle and livestock, and the final third to grow timber. He seems to be oblivious of the reality. The average size of a farm holding is 1.15 ha. Of which the PM wants the farmer to reserve about 0.36 ha for growing crops for sustenance and sale, 0.36 for fodder for livestock, and the rest for growing timber, which will take a quarter of a century to mature. How will the family live and who will feed them? These things apparently don’t figure in his imagery. He clearly is thinking of the Badal or Pawar kind of farmers who drive imported SUV's and have huge benami farmland holdings. Besides farming for such folk is just to ascribe income gotten by other means. The data contained in the 2011 Agriculture Censs reveals a stark picture for Bharat. The PM will do well to see i...

By Our Representative A just released volume, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015", by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), prepared in coordination with International Fund for Agricultural Development and World Food Programme, has revealed that over the last thee years there has been an absolute rise in undernourished persons in India over the last five years -- from 189.9 million to 194.6 million between 2011 and 2015. The report insists, economic growth alone cannot fight issues of malnutrition.

By Our Representative Human Rights Watch (HRW), the influential US-based elite NGO which supports large number of civil society organizations across the world, has asked South Asian countries, including India, to "work with the United Nations and others" to bring about a "binding solution" to a major humanitarian crisis caused by Rohingya Muslims fleeing Burma on dangerous boats to escape persecution. India shares 1,624-km-long border with Burma, but is silent on what is happening next door.

Congress' Bharat Solanki By Our Representative In a rare show of unity of opposition to the ruling BJP in Gujarat, around l 50 Gujarat-based non-government organizations (NGOs) shared stage in Ahmedabad with senior state Congress leader Bharatsinh Solanki, on one hand, and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sukhdev Patel, on the other, to decide on launching an anti-Narendra Modi protest movement in the state, starting on August 9 and ending on August 15.

Medha Parkar By Our Representative The National Alliance for People's Movements (NAPM), the apex body of tens of people's organizations across India, has asked SS Ahluwalia, chairperson, Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), for extending the deadline for receiving inputs on Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment Bill, 2015). The deadline for getting responses to the controversial bill ends on June 8.

By Our Representative The cat is finally out of the bag. Much to the chagrin of the Government of India's "liberal" supporters around the world who swear by its developmental agenda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man, BJP chief Amit Shah, has made it clear that the ruling party has not left its "core agenda" -- including building Ram Temple at Ayodhya through a law in Parliament, and abrogation of Article 370, which would put an end to the special status to Jammu & Kashmir, and having a uniform civil code.

Add caption By RK Misra* Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative but success is a science. If you have the conditions, you get the results.Thus goes an old saying. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heading a BJP majority government loosely garbed in an almost redundant National Democratic Alliance (NDA) completes an year in office, it is time to delve deep and dissect dispassionately to foresee the future. Over a year ago, the conditions were ideal. A decade of familiarity had already bred contempt. A thoroughly besmirched Congress-led UPA had to go. The young had little patience for the old. And in the vacuum came charging the knight in dazzling armour, riding astride a pedigreed horse called Gujarat. The results followed. Narendra Modi milked both ‘chai’ and ‘chant’ to bag the chair. One year into power, the shining shield has given way to name-sporting suits but India’s dapper prime minister resolutely refuses to get of the high horse called Gujarat. All roads from Delhi c...

By Our Representative Is Ahmedabad becoming increasingly conservative when it comes "allowing" womenfolk to work outside the household? It would seem so, if the latest data, released by the Government of India's top data collection centre, National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), is any indication. Apparently, the economic situation, riddled by lack of service protection and security to women, would have added to aggravating the situation for women workers in Ahmedabad.

By Rajiv Shah  The National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO’s) report, “Employment and Unemployment Situation in Cities and Towns in India”, dated May 20, 2015, has revealed that, among seven major Indian cities, Ahmedabad women’s work participation ratio is not only one of the lowest. An analysis of the NSSO data for two separate periods – 2004-05 and 2011-12 – suggests that the city’s women have lately increasingly shunned from going to work, and those who continue to work, have preferred to work more as self-employed, mainly as home-based workers, instead of working as salaried workers in factories and offices, or as casual workers on work sites. In fact, while the NSSO data suggest the existence of a huge male-female gap in the participation in productive labour activity as an all-India urban trend, there is clear indication that the gap is specially very sharp in Ahmedabad. Below are given some graphic details in order to illustrate the trend in worker-population ratio (WPR...

By Our Representative The Parliamentary Standing Committee for the Ministry Human Resource Development in its recent report submitted to the Rajya Sabha has expressed serious concern over the "declining trend" in budgetary allocations by the Government of India for education over the last few years. The report finds that the cut for the year 2015-16 is particularly drastic, leading to the committee raising an alarm.

Yogendra Yadav talking with activists outside Mehdi Nawaz Jung Hall By Our Representative The Gujarat government has clamped down on Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) splinter group Swaraj Samvad by refusing to "allow" it to hold an activists' meet in Ahmedabad at Mehdi Nawaz Jung Hall, which was booked for the meet. The Gujarat police told Swaraj Samvad activists just an hour ahead of the meet that they could not be allowed inside the hall because its leader Yogendra Yadav, who had come for the purpose, was a "political person", and that there could be "political speeches in the hall."

By Our Representative A French "ethnographic inquiry" into Ahmedabad's Muslim ghetto Juhapura, where more than 2.5 lakh people live, has termed the area "a modality of the governance of Ahmedabad’s Muslim minority mobilised by the Modi government from 2002 to 2014".Saying that it is the same Modi who will be celebrating one year as Prime Minister on May 26, the "inquiry" comments, "During this year, the election of Narendra Modi has increased risks of threats on freedom and religious practices of non-Hindu minorities".

By Our Representative In a new report, one of the world’s most reputed consultants, Ernst and Young (E&Y), have said that nearly 80 per cent of the senior business executives in India think bribery/ corrupt practices “happen widely in business in the country”. Compared to last year, this is up by 10 percentage points. In all, E&Y surveyed 3,800 senior management personnel across 38 countries. The report comes close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrating one year's "corruption-free" Government of India.

Ashis Nandy: Victim of Anti-Atrocities Act "abuse" By Our Representative In a development which is likely to please those who have long argued against giving special treatment to dalits and adivasis, but may lead to some angry reactions among senior dalit activists, a top world body which has been involved in campaign for freedom of expression since 1921 has asked the Government of India to drop certain provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which have been willfully "abused".

By Our Representative Top British weekly “The Economist” has said it again. In a commentary marking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s one-year in office, it has said that the alleged improvements in the economy is because of “serendipity” -- because of “oil prices.” Titled “Modi’s rule: India’s one-man band”, it adds, the country has a “golden opportunity to transform itself”. But the way Modi is moving suggests the country “risks missing” the opportunity.

By Our Representative In an extraordinary development, reports from Tamil Nadu say that PepsiCo's bottling plant, situated in village Suriyur, has sought police protection for water being trucked in to a disputed plant located in a water-stressed area. In statement, India Resource Centre (IRC), a project of Global Resistance, has said, the plant is sure to “receive police protection”, considering the type of governance prevailing in the state.

By Our Representative A Washington-based global research organization has ranked India an average country in Environmental Democracy Index (EDI), which it has worked out on the basis national-level laws, regulations, extrapolating them with rights of transparency, participation, and justice. Ranking India 24th in the list of 70 countries it has selected for analysis, the World Resource Institute (WRI) has ranked India 28th in environmental transparency, 41st in environmental participation, and at almost the top – second – in environmental justice.

By Merlin Francis* This is our second Nirbhaya but from Hyderabad. But you wont hear about her. Because she is not from Delhi. Or maybe because protesting for her tragic death is not part of a bigger plan to overthrow a central government. But she died. She was 25 years old. Mother of a little boy. She died on May 19. After being raped by her live in partner and his friends for three months in confinement... On the 13th her mum got a call from the boyfriend of the lady that she was throwing up blood and was asked to come down, when the mother reached the place the guy gave the mother Rs 500 and asked for the girl to be taken to the hospital and that he would follow, but the chap absconded..What later followed was a nightmare... The girl told her mother that her phone was snatched away by her boy friend and he used to get his friends to rape her for 3 months, she was in a relationship with this chap from November 2014 and at the time of her death was 4 months pregnant....When she could ...

By Venkatesh Nayak* On May 13, 2015 the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government used its majority in the Lok Sabha to boorishly push through a set of regressive amendments to the Whistleblowers Protection Act (WBP Act) despite the very vocal and well-reasoned objections of the Opposition. Some MPs of the treasury benches also questioned the wisdom behind these amendments. In brief, the regressive amendments passed by the Lok Sabha: 1) Seek to take away immunity of whistleblowers from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (OSA) which is part of the original Act; 2) Prohibit a whistleblower from making any complaint (about corruption, the commission of any offence or the abuse of power or discretion within Government intended to cause substantial loss to the public exchequer or undue gain to a private party) if the information in the complaint relates to any of the grounds mentioned in Section 8(1) of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 inserted as the new Section 4...

By Rajiv Shah A controversial study, carried out by a prominent US-based research organization, has said that “despite relative economic advantage, India’s majority Hindu population is 25 percentage points more likely to defecate in the open than the minority Muslim population.” The study quotes Manusmriti (Chapter 4 verse 151) to suggest why it may be more prevalent among Hindus, “Far from his dwelling let him remove urine and excreta”.

By R Sreedhar* The new draft National Tourism Policy is really a mockery of the policy formulation process. For one, the government must be clear of what policy is and what are structures and process. While a policy needs to be a short statement of the of the intent of the government which follows up with the required legislative and procedural processes, the draft produced by the Ministry is clearly a consultant’s rambling on the basis of some wishful thinking and imagination, and reads like a badly drafted project report. Poor understanding of the situation on the ground and the ways in which people and tourism are intertwined is as much an ingredient as is perhaps a vested interest to gain bureaucratic and corporate control. The draft document made available for a limited window for response states that the vision is to “develop and position India as a ‘Must EXPERIENCE’ and ‘Must REVISIT’ destination for global travelers whilst encouraging Indians to explore their own country and re...

By Gagan Sethi*  On the morning of January 26, 2001, when the earth decided to shake itself a bit on Gujarat soil, little did one know that a disaster of such huge proportions would be the consequence. For serious urban planners the message was: Don’t mess around with nature. I remember being told, “People don’t die because of an earthquake, they die because of poor quality of housing.” It may be difficult to accept, but this is entirely true. Yet, the paranoia of earthquake-resistant housing remains only with those who experienced the shake-up; the learning hasn’t yet gone to other states of India. Housing stock being built still does not yet factor the earthquake. Though this learning is uppermost when I think of the earthquake year, the story I narrate is a little different. I left for Kutch the same day afternoon after ensuring that my family was at a safe place, at my father’s farm house. Kutch was calling. We had a huge contingent of staff and programmes there, but had with n...

By Our Representative A draft report, prepared by an Ahmedabad-based NGO, Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has alleged that, in a major setback to an important social sector scheme in India, the momentum for setting up the Gram Nyayalayas -- village courts -- has been lost, and there is a clear sense of “lack of ownership” about the scheme across India’s governing institutions.

By Our Representative At a time when a large group of media house representatives is covering Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip to China, Mongolia and South Korea, an incisive analysis wonders why is there indifference towards a major humanitarian crisis taking shape across the border in Myanmar, with whom India shares 1,624-km-long border. This is happening despite the fact that the Rohingiya crisis in Myanmar has lately come under direct scanner of the United Nations, the analysis complains.

By Our Representative One of the world's prestigious climate change e-journal, "Inside Climate News" (ICN), has said  that attacks on civil society groups that campaign for climate change will undermine "India's global standing, the stability of its democracy and its role in upcoming climate talks", which take place Paris this December. The e-journal is the third web-based news organization to win the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which have gone to ProPublica and Huffington Post.

By Our Representative The Gujarat government on Saturday announced an organic farming policy, becoming the ninth state to have done so in India. The states that have already put in operation respective organic farming policies are Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland. The policy document admits, the state government was forced to do it because of the failure to promote organic farming in Gujarat so far.

By Rajiv Shah Despite big talk about Gujarat being a model state of urban development, latest figures, made available at a workshop organized by Paryavaran Mitra, an Ahmedabad-based environmental NGO, has said that just about 14.67 per cent of the solid waste collected in the state’s eight municipal corporations and 159 municipalities, is processed. This puts Gujarat way behind the national average of 27.94 per cent of the solid waste being processed, with seven out of 20 selected states performing better.

By Suneet Chopra* The hot debate over the land acquisition ordinances of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is not accidental or restricted only to the matter of access to a scarce resource. Land rights, and especially those that we achieved after our struggle for independence from colonial rule, are crucial to our social existence as citizens with equal rights under the Indian Constitution. The denial of any of these rights is an attack on our right as citizens of India. It must never be forgotten that for over a thousand years we were able to keep a fifth of our population in the shackles of untouchability and semi animal conditions by simply denying dalits land rights in the village. A similar situation prevails in the case of women who may reproduce the family line but are denied the right to land in both the family they are born in and the one they may marry into. Social marginalization like this may be traditional but it violates our rights as full citizens of a st...