By Our Representative Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Dr Nasim Ahmad Zaidi has revealed that. despite noteban, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had seized over Rs 350 crore during the recently concluded five state assembly elections, which is “three times higher than what was seized in the 2012 assembly elections”, though adding, this is only “tip of the iceberg.”

Kodankulam nuclear power plant, Tamil Nadu By Our Representative Top US-based researchers have warned that average costs for plants coming online in 2020 are Rs 4.40 per kWh (or unit) for domestic coal and Rs 5.15 kWh for imported coal, which is considerably more than the prices for photovoltaic solar and onshore wind power – Rs 2.97 per kWh and INR 3.46 per kWh, respectively, wondering why India consists on having new coal-fired plants.

By Our Representative In a unique move, Gujarat’s grassroots activist Natubhai Parmar, who shot into prominence by unloading truckload of cow carcasses before Surendranagar district collectorate during post-Una protests against cow vigilantism last year, has decided to collect 182 kg of plastics in a cow prototype to stage yet another protest. Parmar, who heads Navnirman Sarvajanik Trust, a local Dalit rights organization, has issued a leaflet which says that the 182 kg of plastic “signifies” 182 MLAs of Gujarat state assembly.

Letter to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath by PS Krishnan, IAS (Retd), Former Secretary to Government of India , Ministry of Welfare; Member, National Monitoring Committee for Education of SCs, STs and Persons with Disabilities, Government of India: As a person working country-wide for the legitimate rights of scheduled castes, STs and SEBCs during my entire service in the IAS from 1956 to 1990 and before that and after that, spanning nearly seven decades, I request you to consider taking the following measures:  (i) Reverse your Government’s recent decision to implement the order passed by the previous Akhilesh Yadav Government to scrap reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in the post-graduate courses at private medical and dental colleges in the State. This decision goes against the l...

By Kamal Mitra Chenoy* The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership, which has refused to read the writing on the wall despite many warnings, weakening its progressive and popular narrative and going in for high pitched confrontations with the Union government, lieutenant governors (LGs), and Arun Jaitley, has paid a heavy price at the hustings.  It has compounded this defeat by solely blaming the electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the debacle, a charge which is seen as that of an unrepentant loser, and is unprovable. In any case, political parties have a right to inspect EVMs up to 45 days after the polling. A 'paper trail' would also reduce any chances of rigging, if that is suspected in future polls. Of course, the "rout" is based on a great mismatch between the vote share of the contending parties and the seats won in the MCD polls. While the BJP's votes share was 36.1% in the MCD 2017, it won a huge 181 wards out of 270, though less than the exit polls predicted. ...

By Rajiv Shah The Gujarat state assembly may have cleared a law allowing an extremely harsh punishment entailing a maximum of life and a minimum of 10 years imprisonment for cow slaughter. However, in less than month after the Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was passed in the absence of the Opposition Congress, with the visitors’ gallery packed with saffron-clad Hindu priests, Gujarat’s Dalit organizations wonder if the law would apply to those who force cows to consume plastics along with leftover food offered to them. Passed eight months after self-styled cow vigilantes brutally beat up four Dalit boys on suspicion of cow slaughter in Una, a small town in Saurashtra, the new law goes so far as to make offences under the amended Act non-bailable. The Bill was cleared amidst Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani declaring, “I am not against any food”, but in the same breathe adding, he wanted to make Gujarat “shakahari (vegetarian).” One of those who has decided to c...

By Sadhan Mukherjee*  In 1963, the then East German writer Christa Wolf created a worldwide sensation when her book Divided Heaven came out. The basic story is that just before the Berlin Wall came up, a couple from East Germany, Manfred and Rita, visits West Berlin, the show piece of the West. Theirs is the story of love as well as sacrifice. The glitter of the West could not convince Rita to stay on in West Berlin and she goes back to East Germany. But their pathos was palpable. “At least they can’t divide the sky,” says Manfred, who decides to stay on in West Berlin. But Rita chooses her socialist ideals, and East Germany, over a life with him in the West. “The sky?” Thinks Rita, in response, “This vault of hope and desire, love and sadness?” ‘Oh yes,’” she says, “The heavens are what split first.” The wall came up in 1961 and was demolished in 1989. In 1990 the two Germanys and two Berlins were reunited. How many couples and how many families were divided in world over i...

By Fr. Cedric Prakash sj* There is a steely determination in Zozan. As one listens to this 25-year old woman, one cannot but feel that she will go places. In a very casual way, she shares what she would like to do most in life: to learn new languages and to travel to distant lands. In some ways, Zozan Hassan Khalil has begun doing both. She has already crossed international boundaries but as a refugee.  When the war in Syria became just too bad, together with her parents, brother and sister, Zozan had to flee in February 2013, their native town of Al-Hasakah, in northeast Syria. It was not an easy journey.  The vehicle driver who brought them had the ‘right connections’ at the various checkpoints. They eventually made it into the Kurdistan area of Iraq. Then carrying their few possessions they walked through the mountainous terrain right up to Dohuk.It was not easy, but they now felt safer. Zozan looks back at the days in Al- Hasakah. She was a student doing her engineering s...

Counterview Desk Text of the letter, which retired IAS bureaucrats, of 1968 batch, have written to Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Rane on the lynching of Pehlu Khan: We are very disturbed by the lynching and murder of Pehlu Khan in Alwar. He was attacked on April 1st at Behror in Alwar District and died of the injuries a few days later. We are also dismayed by the acts of omission and commission of the government following the incident, including the delay and marked reluctance in arresting all those guilty of the act. You are aware of the fact that Pehlu Khan and four others were returning to Haryana from Rajasthan with the cows they had bought, and the necessary documents corroborating the fact that the purchase had no relationship with cow slaughter. Cows of a well-known breed of milch cattle were being transported from a cattle fair in Rajasthan to their village in Haryana. While one may have strongly differing sentiments on the importance of cows, and their slaughter...

Hitler with Mussolini By Sadhan Mukherjee* Supreme Court Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan’s write-up on Rising Fascism in India (click HERE to read) makes an interesting reading, but I beg to disagree with him on several counts. He hangs his write-up on a single peg of history which does not apply even to all European countries. Timothy Snyder whom he quotes seems to have an oversimplified approach to history. While he talks of European democracies degenerating into fascism, Nazism and communism, he is trying to use history to suit his choice. Was Czar’s regime in Russia a democracy? What Lenin brought about was socialism, not communism. In fact, communism never reached its working stage anywhere in the world; it remained a utopia. Fascism also did not originate in Germany but in Italy in 1919. It was adopted by Hitler who further embellished it. Also the basic plank for the growth of fascism was the economic downturn and the distress of common masses caused by the unjust terms of the...

By Prashan Bhushan* “In the 20th century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. "History can familiarise, and it can warn. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny. Now is a good time to do so.” -- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century *** Timothy Snyder is his scathing critique of the rise and flourish of fascist regimes in Europe, draws an unspoken parallel to the totalita...

Bharati Sinha, a Delhi-based journalist, earlier with the India Today group, writes on her Facebook timeline  on how she is being harassed by ICICI Bank in Delhi. We reproduce the text: I am an extremely private person and use Facebook strictly as a public platform. I have never used smartphone and am only on the public platform of Facebook. I have used smart phone only for a few months early last year, to know and see how it works. After almost a full year of running around and investigating the unexplained reasons for very powerful forces trying to ruin my reputation, my financial standing, my credibility, my health, I am coming across some answers. However, each answer is leading to more questions. Recently, I have come to know that multiple accounts and fixed deposits were opened in my name and against my PAN number AAYPS9407R in ICICI Bank as far back as 2001. I had a salary account (Savings A/C 000701065065) with ICICI Bank’s Phelps Building, A Block, Connaught Place branch. ...

Yezidis fleeing: August 2014 By Fr Cedric Prakash sj* April 19th was New Year Day for the Yazidis. It was a joy to meet with some of them in Sarsink in the Dohuk District of Iraq on that day, to greet them with a “Jajna ta Piroz”. Each family had a tray laden with several bowls filled with cookies, boiled eggs with their shells colourfully painted), candies and fruits (and for good measure, a packet of cigarettes too!). They happily shared these, with some soft drinks, to those who visited them. It was a similar experience the next day at Sharya-Khadima. The New Year Day for most people is a day of celebration. Unfortunately, it is not so for the Yazidis, who have been forcibly displaced from lands which they once called home. Many of them had to flee in August 2014 from towns like Sinjar (also known as Shingal) in the Nineveh Province of Iraq, to escape violence and persecution at the hands of the ISIS. It is believed that more than 5000 Yazidi men were massacred at that time. Many ...

The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information* has welcomed the Maharashtra Chief Information Commission’s order asking the chief secretary to create an online system to enable RTI applicants to know the status of their pleas. Text of the NCPRI statement: *** The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) welcomes the landmark order passed by Chief Information Commissioner, Maharashtra that could greatly empower RTI users, Heads of Departments, and the Commissions to track and monitor every Public Information Officers (PIO) response to every RTI application across the state of Maharashtra. The order was passed in response to a complaint filed by the former Central Information Commissioner, Shri Shailesh Gandhi complaint under section 18 of the RTI Act that pointed out that citizens were unable to know their status of their RTI application, once it was submitted. In its order dated 16.04.2017, the commission has directed the Chief Secretary, Government of Maha...

By Our Representative Ramachandra Guha, renowned historian and biographer, has said that the Congress does not have the “mantle” to take on the BJP under the leadership of the Gandhi family, insisting, an alternative to the saffron party can only emerge if the party is taken over by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who has “vision, credibility, integrity and focuses on growth.”

By Our Representative Bhumi Adhikaar Andolan (BAA), the apex body of tens of land rights organisations of India, has given a call for nationwide struggle against what it claims "terrorism in name of cow protection" by vigilante groups, warning nationwide strike if no action is taken against them.

By Rajiv Shah India loses US dollars 41.17 billion dollars, or 2.34% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as a result of corporate tax avoidance. While in quantitative terms this loss is the fourth largest in the world, next to the United States (188.8 billion dollars), China (66.8 billion dollars) and Japan (46.8 billion dollars), the loss as percentage of GDP tells a totally different story.

By Our Representative Taking part in a day-long dharma in Jaipur, well-known social activist and religious leader Swami Agnivesh has said that the cow vigilantes (gau rakshaks) should be tried for terror crimes and tried under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, which is directed against the integrity and sovereignty of India.

By Rajiv Shah In its new report , well-known US-based Pew Research Centre has said that “among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Nigeria had the highest overall levels of government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion.”

Protest in Jaipur against murder of Pehlu Khan By Our Representative An alliance of Left and civil rights organizations, the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan (BAA), has decided to organize a mass dharna in front of Parliament on April 19, 2017 to demand setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) under the direct supervision of Supreme Court to probe the role of the police and the Sangh Parivar in the conspiracy which led to the murder of Pehlu Khan in Alwar early this month.

By Our Representative As the view   that India is "losing" Kashmir is getting stronger, shrill voices are coming through ex-army ranks to hand over Kashmir to the army. One such demand has come from Major Gaurav Arya (veteran), who calls himself “unapologetic patriot”, in a blog , which says, “Kashmir does not need a healing touch. That bus has left long back.”

Senior activists and concerned individuals* met in Gujarat on March 17 in Janvikas to discuss implications of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) for civil rights organizations. Text of the minutes: *** GaganSethi (Janvikas) began by asking Harinesh Pandya (Janpath) to give a broad picture of FCRA and how it is affecting the civil society in Gujarat. Harinesh Pandya said, Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was passed in 2010, when the Congress was ruling. Ever since then, the government at various levels began acting against civil society organizations which were not to their liking, especially those that opposed its anti-developmental globalization agenda such as setting of nuclear power plants. There was an effort to suppress their voice. After the government changed in 2014, FCRA began being used more extensively for suppressing civil society. First it cancelled FCRA license of 13,000 NGOs, uploading their names in bulk, citing technical violations. Then selective tar...