Film makers Shubhradeep Chakravorty and Meera Chaudhary By Our Representative In a surprise move, India’s Censor Board chairman Pahlaj Ninalani has followed instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, in order to ban the documentary, “En Dino Muzaffarnagar” (Muzaffarnagar Today), inviting ire from well-known human rights advocate in Supreme Court, Prashant Bhushan.

By Our Representative A Facebook post has created flutter. Poster by Ela Smetacek , who “lives in Delhi", the post talks of a national emergency having overtaken the forests in Uttarakhand. These forests,it says, “Have been burning for over a week now, with no media coverage whatsoever.”

By Our Representative The three-day protest fast by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), ended in Bhopal on April 29, putting up strong demand to make public the Jha Commission report, which looked into corruption in the rehabilitating and resettling (R&R) of the Narmada dam oustees.

By Pankti Jog* A Namak Satyagraha Samiti has been formed in Gujarat, consisting of agariyas (traditional salt farmers), salt manufacturers and traders, to fight the “unjust” state notification to impose five per cent value added tax (VAT) on salt. Apart from the recently added VAT, the Government of India and the state government are charging cess and royalty on salt, respectively.

By Venkatesh Nayak* The print and electronic media have extensively reported the recent apprehension of a person of Indian origin by Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies . Pakistan is said to have summoned India’s envoy to that country and issued a demarche about the alleged “interference by India in its internal affairs in Balochistan through its intelligence operative belonging to the Research & Analysis Wing” (R&AW) of the Cabinet Secretariat (Cab Sec). The Official Spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs has vehemently denied that charge while confirming that the apprehended individual is indeed a retired Indian Navy officer and has sought consular access to him. As no other details are officially available from the Indian government, it is not possible to state anything more about this incident given its security implications. Saying anything else will only amount to indulging in speculation that may have harmful effects in several quarters. However, what should ...

By Our Representative In a sharp admission, officials of the Gujarat government have told an NGO-sponsored workshop in Ahmedabad that during Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister, the state officialdom did “virtually nothing” in addressing the plight of the construction workers. The workshop was organized on the occasion of the International Workers Memorial Day, which is observed on April 28.

By Rajiv Shah A recent Financial Times Group thinktank may have claimed that Gujarat turned into No 1 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) destination among all Indian and Chinese states (see Counterview, April 22 ), Government of India’s (GoI’s) own  FDI data show that, far from being No 1 among the two countries, it is No 5 in India.

By Our Representative In a surprise move, an Australian conservation group, Coast and Country, has announced it has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Queensland province for a judicial review of the environmental clearance granted to India’s powerful Adani Group’s $16 billion Carmichael coalmining project, proposed to be implemented in the Galilee Basin.

By Our Representative Top Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan has sharply criticized the Government of India (GoI) for sitting on 170 recommendations by the Supreme Court collegium for appointments to High Courts over last two months, saying this has come about after the Supreme Court struck down the GoI’s wanting to have a National Judicial Appointments Commission.

By Our Representative In a strongly-worded critique of the efforts by the Government of India (GoI) to use Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) against non-government organizations (NGOs), a United Nations (UN) report has said terms such as ‘political objectives,’ ‘political activities,’ or ‘political interests’ are being applied against NGOs “in an arbitrary and capricious manner”.

By Our Representative In a major announcement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), led by top social activist Medha Patkar, has declared its decision to hold a protest fast (chetavni upvas) from April 27 to 29, 2016 at Bhopal against the Madhya Pradesh government's alleged failure to rehabilitate thousands of Narmada dam oustees.

Anti-industrial corridor protest in Raigad By Our Representative  Stepping pressure against five major industrial corridors sought to be built by the Government of India -- Delhi-Mumbai, Amritsar-Kolkata, Vizag–Chennai, Chennai–Bangalore and Mumbai-Bangalore, a high-level meeting of several people's organizations have decided to begin a Corridor Virodhi Sangharsh Abhiyaan in October, which will undertake a nation-wide yatra preceded by regional meetings.

By Our Representative United Nations (UN) special rapporteur Leilani Farha has taken strong exception to “discrimination” against minorities in housing in India's big cities, pointing towards how “private landlords, real estate brokers, and property dealers will often refuse to rent to someone who is Muslim, or impose unfair conditions.”

By Our Representative At a time when India’s rulers are basking in happiness that international consultants, Ernst and Young, have pointed to how India has overtaken China in foreign direct investment (FDI), considering this an indicator of the new business climate under the Modi government, a World Bank report has found that the country utterly lacks in dynamism in entrepreneurial activity.

Jhabua tribals By Birendra Nayak* Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on December 4, 2015: “Reaffirmed my belief in equal progress of all states. Strides of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh & Odisha in ‘Ease of doing business’ are great.” This reaction may have come a bit late.

By Our Representative In a surprise development, senior Congress leader from Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh, who also happens to be deputy leader of the Congress' parliamentary party, has been denied permission to address Punjabi diaspora in two Canadian cities -- Toronto and Vancouver. Singh says he was informed about this by India's foreign secretary Dr S Jaishankar.

By Our Representative Gujarat has “topped” the list of 10 most sought-after destination states for foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2015 in a comparison drawn between India and China by a new report by the Financial Times Group's thinktank FDI Intelligence. The report says, Gujarat "attracted $12.4bn and claimed 10% of all capital investment into both countries."

By Our Representative India's right to information (RTI) activists, in close coordination with those of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state, have made a strong plea for the “transfer”, and not "buyback", hydro power projects put up in J&K to the state, and greater transparently in supplying power to other states.

By Venkatesh Nayak* A problem commonly raised by participants at our training workshops on the right to information (RTI) held across Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), over several years, is the frequent and long power outages they experience, almost on a daily basis. Having sojourned through several parts of the Kashmir valley, apart from far flung areas like Kargil, during the last few years, I experienced, first hand, these long periods of power supply breakdown. LCD projectors and public address systems would stop working abruptly in the middle of a workshop due to power outage and one had to resort to other methods of teaching RTI procedures. In Kargil, a major complaint that youth participants voiced at our workshop held last year was the increased frequency and duration of power outages during the exams season. During a visit to Srinagar, earlier this year, when the State was placed under Governor’s rule and negotiations for installing a new government were still on, I came across me...

By Dr Shaikh Ghulam Rasool* The J&K RTI Movement calls for complete transparency in the ongoing negotiations between the Government of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K Govt) and the Government of India (GoI) regarding the transfer of hydro-electric (hydel) projects in the State, currently being executed by NHPC Ltd. Data recently revealed under the Central Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) shows that between 2001-2015, the NHPC has earned at least Rs. 194 billion (Rs. 19,431 crores) from the sale of power generated by the hydel projects based in J&K. Of this, J&K Govt. had paid Rs. 41 billion (Rs. 4,129 crores) to NHPC to buy 19.7% of the power that was generated by the hydel projects situated in the State. This information has been supplied by NHPC in response to an RTI application filed by Mr. Venkatesh Nayak of our partner organisation, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. Seven hydel projects, namely, Kishanganga, Uri-II, Bursar, Sewa-II, Pakal Dul, Nimmo B...

By Our Representative Top global consultants Ernst & Young’s (E&Y’s) 14th Global Fraud Survey has found that a high 39 percent of business executives in India believe that “bribery/corrupt practices happen widely in business”, which is one of the highest in the world. Of the 57 countries surveyed, a higher percent of business executives of just 16 countries talked of existence of the malaise.

By Our Representative Thanks to what has been described as “global decline” in press freedom, India has “improved” its ranking in the Press Freedom Index (PFI) from 140 in 2014 to 136 in 2015 and 133 in 2016. Ironically, the “improvement” has come about alongside deterioration of its overall PFI from 40.34 in 2014 to 40.49 in 2015, and 43.17 in 2016. The calculation is based the criterion “higher the figure, the worse the situation”

By Our Representative In what is being interpreted as a victory of sorts for well-known social activist Medha Patkar, the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan (GBGBA) of Mumbai, which she leads, has taken “assurance” from the Maharashtra government not to forcibly evict slumdwellers in order to safeguard the mangroves next to the sea shore.

By Rajiv Shah Is Gujarat government refusing to spend enough on social sector in accordance with its capacity, as reflected in its high value of the gross state domestic product (GSDP)? It would seem so, if the latest data, released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its “State Finances: A Study of State Budgets 2915-16”, are any indication.

Bheemchhaya slum area By Our Representative A new threat looms large over around 1,500 slum-dwelling families of Mumbai: The Ghar Bachao – Ghar Banao Abhiyan (GBGBA) has claimed that the Mangroves Cell of the Maharashtra forest department is likely to evict around 700 families after April 23 in Cheeta Camp and 800 in Bheemchhaya, Vikroli, Kannamwar Nagar in the first week of May.

By Our Representative Latest Government of India data suggest that, despite the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) cleanliness dive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2014, 47.1 per cent of Gujarat’s rural population still defecates in the open, which is worse than as many as nine other major Indian states.

Adrian Burragubba By Our Representative Have the Adanis finally won the battle against the traditional land owners of Australia, seeking to stall the $16 billion coalmining project in the Queensland province? The top British daily "The Guardian" reports that they have "voted in favour of allowing a coalmine to be opened by Adani in central Queensland."

By Our Representative Ignoring Government of India taking strong exception to a United Nations (UN) special rapporteur (SR) report on caste-based discrimination, the United States (US) State Department’s “India 2015 Human Rights Report” has gone ahead and noted “significant discrimination against Dalits in access to services, such as health care, education, temple attendance, and marriage.”

By Our Representative The recent Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) (Gujarat Amendment) Bill, 2016, passed in the state assembly and awaiting the Governor's accent, appears to all set drastically water down the high compensation amount stipulated in the Central LARR Act, passed in 2013 by the former UPA government.

Non-hospitalized treatment:  Urban reliance on govt hospitals (%) By Our Representative Gujarat is all set to “beat” all Indian states in privatization of basic healthcare services, if the latest data, released by the Government of India, are any indication. Based on primary survey, the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) data show that just about 24 per cent in Gujarat’s rural areas and 15 per cent in urban areas receive non-hospitalized treatment in government hospitals, while the rest relied on private facilities.

By Rajiv Shah Gujarat may be claiming to have provided the widest internet coverage compared to the rest of India through the state-sponsored Gujarat State Wide Area Network (GSWAN). However, a recent Government of India survey shows that access to internet in the state’s urban areas is just to 41.3 per cent of its households, which is far below the national average of 48.7 per cent.

By Our Representative Three senior scholars at the Harvard Kennedy School, US, have said in a recent scrutiny that, while India “boasts superior rates of women serving in political office compared to other emerging economies”, yet the country not only “lags well behind its competitors in its rate of women’s labour force participation” but also letting women to go out of home alone.

By Our Representative Despite the prediction that the Indian economy would grow by 7.7 per cent next year (click HERE ), the World Bank in its latest report, “South Asia Economic Focus Spring 2016: Fading Tailwinds” has regretted that “private consumption growth” in the country has been driven “by non-agricultural (largely urban) households, as rural areas have been under stress.”

By Our Representative Amidst continued apprehensions that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not seem interested in his announced neo-liberal "economic reforms" to further open up the Indian economy to world investors, the World Bank has stepped up its pressure saying India can achieve 7.7 per cent rate of growth in 2017 only if it early quickly moves in that direction; lest it would miss the bus.

By Fr Cedric Prakash sj* Pope Francis has done it again! In a brief but historic visit to the Greek island of Lesbos, Pope Francis demonstrated in word and by deed that he took a stand with the refugees of the world; and by doing so, he merely reiterated his consistent and unequivocal support for the dispossessed of the earth today: the refugees, the migrants, the forcibly displaced, the other vulnerable and marginalized people. “You are not alone!”, he told the more than three thousand refugees at the Moria camp, on the island. Many of them face deportation under a new EU-Turkey agreement which states that those migrants (mainly Syrians) arriving illegally on the Greek islands after March 20th would be sent back to the country of their origin. Pope Francis acknowledged ‘the great sacrifice’ the people in the camp had made saying that he wished “to draw the attention of the world to this grave humanitarian crisis”. He went on to say, “do not lose hope; the greatest gift we can offer to...

By Our Representative A new documentary on Tehri Dam, released in Delhi, has strongly raised the pitch in favour of dam free rivers, even as focusing on human and ecological crisis in the Himalayan region after the construction of dams such as Tehri, allegedly ruining the lives and livelihoods of local communities.

By Our Representative In a strongly-worded defence of the minorities in Pakistan, the country's human rights activist and journalist Rabia Mahmood has said that Hindu girls in Pakistan "are victim of abductions and forced conversions through marriages”, even as pointing towards how poor Hindu farmers are victims of land grab, too.

By Our Representative In a surprising move, a top Dalit rights organization, Dalit Bahujan Adivasi Collective (DBAC), has taken strong exception to Prof Romila Thapar, one of the foremost historians of India, for the 2016 Ambedkar Memorial Lecture (AML) at the Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD).

Wetland off Nirma cement plant By Rajiv Shah A just-released book by senior Gujarat-based scholar Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly, who has served as professor at a top Indian IAS training institute, seeks to make a controversial suggestion: About the need to look at Gujarat not as a land of “Gandhi, Sardar Patel, and, of late, Narendra Modi”.

By Venkatesh Nayak* Recent media reports have highlighted a statement attributed to a serving senior bureaucrat in the Union Ministry of Coal about the inhibiting impact of the Central Information Commission (CIC) on the decision-making processes relating to development. According to these reports, the Secretary in charge of that Ministry is said to have made a comment on Facebook about the substantial contribution of 5 ‘Cs’ namely, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) , the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the Comptroller & Accountant General (C&AG) and the Courts apart from the CIC , to the creation of an inhibiting environment for quick and effective decision-making that impacts development. It is not clear which Ministries and Departments he had in mind while making this comment. However, the performance of the Coal Ministry and the public sector enterprises under its jurisdiction vis-a-vis the implementation of The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) is wor...

By Rajiv Shah Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly, who has just finished her stint as professor at the Centre for Rural Studies, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, the premier institute which “trains” IAS babus in administrative skills, has come up with a new book – an “ethnographic” account of five major mass movements of Gujarat.

By Our Representative A Mumbai slum dwellers' delegation, which met Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, has demanded that the "cut-off date" approach for rehabilitating slum dwellers should be dropped, as it "protects" only limited number of slum dwellers.

By Our Representative   A top Indian online site analysing global metals and energy indices has created a major flutter by revealing that 40 well-known Indian energy companies are being investigated by a Union Finance Ministry wing for "over-invoicing of imported coal", leading to "artificially higher prices being "passed on to electricity consumers across the country."

By Our Representative A major “outcome” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Saudi visit (April 2-3), highlighted by his “spin doctors”, is that the two countries are entering an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination in the security field in the fight against terrorism. Facts, however, have come to light suggesting that the India-Saudi Arabia joint statement seeks to target Iran, and not Pakistan, for terrorism.

Dalits sitting in front of Amreli district collector's office By Our Representative Twenty three Dalits, belonging to the Rohit community, are sitting in front of the Amreli district collector’s office since early January 2016, seeking a new status for themselves: They want to be declared as forced migrants, as they faced internal displacement following the rape of an 18-year-old Dalit girl and threat from dominant castes to take back the case. The incident took place in Vadali village, situated in Rajula taluka of Amreli district of Gujarat’s Saurashtra region.

Modi in Arunachal Pradesh By RK Misra* Past is never past. It returns to haunt the future. See how. And I quote: “It is a matter of great concern that the federal structure is under increasing strain, merely to suit the whims and fancies of the rulers in Delhi .What we are witnessing today is the systematic disruption of our country’s federal structure both in letter and spirit.

Protest against Queensland government on April 4 By Our Representative Australian environmental groups appear to be reconciled that top Indian business group Adani Group's ambitious $22 billion coalmining lease project for Carmichael may finally have its day. This became clear from a statement by top international NGO Greenpeace following Queensland's provincial government minister Anthony Lynham saying the project would continue.

Modi at Wembley By Our Representative Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious project to raise $1.5 billion from rupee bonds, about which he announced in London last autumn during his visit to London, has fallen flat. Top US business daily “Wall Street Journal” reports, “India’s attempt to diversify and deepen its corporate debt market has fallen flat, thanks to lack of demand and bad timing.”

Biometric impression taken in Pakistan for SIM card By Our Representative A recent press meet with foreign correspondents in Delhi is likely to create a major sensation with its "revelation" that that Government of India’s ambitious Digital India project seeks to link mobile SIM cards with the unique identity number (UID) or Aadhaar, which has been "copied" from similar projects in Pakistan and Bangladesh.