Counterview Desk Shantaben, 45, is one of the 75,000 women working at construction sites, 2,595 of them in Gujarat’s business capital, Ahmedabad. Migrated with her family from tribal-dominated Dahod 20 years ago, she gets up at 3:30 am, spends around an hour looking for a functional pay-and-use toilet. “If I’m delayed, I will not be able to finish my household chores in order to reach the labour naka in time to find work”, she says.

By Our Representative After waiting for more than 40 days, well-known Right to Information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak has received a strange reply to his RTI plea regarding procedure followed by the Union ministry of defence in “sanctioning” the prosecution of members of the defence forces for human rights violations committed under the Armed Forces (Jammu & Kashmir) Special Powers, 1990 (J&K AFSPA).

By Our Representative Following reports that ATMs across India have gone cashless, bringing back nightmares of the cash crunch during demonetisation, especially in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Telangana, top civil rights leaders and bank association office bearers have suspected this is nothing but they have called in a joint statement "mad rush" of the Modi government "to join the league of cashless countries".

By Venkatesh Nayak* Last week, there was both good news and “not so good” news on the AFSPA front across the country. The good news is, people in Meghalaya can heave a sigh of relief over the lifting of the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) from their State. Meanwhile, the Central Government has claimed that it does not hold files of 47 cases in which it denied sanction to prosecute members of the defence forces for alleged offences and human rights violations said to have been committed in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) while operating under a similar law of 1990 vintage. On new year’s day, this year (2018), the Ministry of Defence informed Parliament that it had received requests from the J&K Government for sanction to prosecute security personnel in 50 cases that occurred between 2001-2016. While the requests were pending in three cases, the Government had denied sanction to prosecute the accused in other cases involving allegations of “murder or killing of

By Our Representative "Model" Gujarat's State Information Commission (SIC), the official Right to Information (RTI) watchdog, appears to be competing with India's Central Information Commission (CIC) for "returning" appeals and complaints filed under the powerful transparency law, RTI Act, claimed to be the brainchild of ex-Congress presiding Sonia Gandhi.

By Our Representative Even as releasing its new report highlighting concerns regarding the performance of information commissions in India, including the Central Information Commission (CIC), a public hearing in Delhi organized by advocacy groups, Satark Nagrik Sangathan and National Campaign for People's Right to Information, has confirmed its key findings -- delays, skewed composition of information commissioners, vacancies, lack of penalty imposition and transparency in their functioning.

Inside a silicosis unit in Khambhat, Gujarat By Our Representative In a strange paradox, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) did not have time to listen to a foremost representative of victims of silicosis, a fatal occupational disease prevalent in Central Gujarat, Jagdish Patel of the Peoples Training & Research Centre (PTRC), at the public hearing, held on April 27-28, at the high profile Karai Gujarat Police Academy, situated 20 kilometres off Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

By Our Representative Even as Gujarat government has begun paying , following a Supreme Court order, Rs 10 lakh compensation each for the death of 170 workers because of suffocation in manholes, thanks to a long-drawn-out battle by people's organizations, facts have come to light suggesting that it is showing high degree of indifference in this regard for the accidental death of 877 construction workers.

By Our Representative Two well-known Mumbai-based non-profits working among the city's urban poor, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan (GBGBA) and Habitat and Livelihood Welfare Association (HLWA), have alleged that "thousands of housing of poor in Mumbai are under threat of eviction" following the "much hyped" decision of the authorities to come up with the Development Plan or DP 2034.

By Our Representative An analysis of the self-sworn affidavits filed by sitting MPs and MLAs has revealed that the BJP has the largest number of MPs/MLAs -- 27 out of 58 -- with declared cases against themselves related to hate speech, as against Congress' just 2. Done by India's advocacy group Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in association with National Election Watch (NEW), the analysis suggests that there is an urgent need to have a deeper look into this aspect in order to strengthen democratic institutions.

By Rajiv Shah A recent German government-funded study , undertaken jointly by the NGO Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which mainly deals examines the working conditions of migrant workers in the cash-rich sugarcane zone of South Gujarat, has gone a long way to suggest large scale prevalence of child labour during the harvesting season.

By Rajiv Shah A German government-funded report has said that more than 50.4% of an approximate 1.25 lakh migrant labourers working in Gujarat’s prosperous sugarcane block of Bardoli, most of them tribals from Dhule and Nadurbar districts of Maharashtra and Dangs and Tapi districts of Gujarat, remain in a permanent state of debt, with their incomes going into “negative” as the harvesting season draws to a close.

Surendra Gadling By Our Representative The recent police raids on the homes of well-known human rights activists and a senior lawyer in Pune on the pretext of gathering information about their alleged complicity in fomenting the Bhima Koregaon violence on January 1, 2018 and the subsequent bandh is all set to snowball into a major crisis in the state. Things may acquire political colour, as the Maharashtra Chief Minister has qualified the raids as an there was suspicion of "Maoist links".

NBA rally in Bharuch, Gujarat Counterview Desk A Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) analysis based on recent developments in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh around Narmada: In the middle a drought-like crisis that has gripped regions depending on the Narmada, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani recently sparked off a fresh controversy by inaugurating a water-park! The Chief Minister opened the Rs 1,100 crore water-park in Anand district of central Gujarat on April 8 amidst massive agitations by farmers of neighbouring villages.

By Our Representative At least two top international non-profits, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Save the Children (StC), have asked Indian parliament not to adopt into law the recent ordinance which introduces capital punishment for those convicted of raping a girl under 12." "With this populist call, the government wants to cover up the fact that its supporters may have engaged in a hate crime", said Meenakshi Ganguly of the HRW. "Death Penalty is not the answer,” added StC's Bidisha Pillai.

By Adv Masood Peshimam Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently said that guilty would not be spared but the ground reality is different in our country. The way the accused are set free in the Mecca Masjid blast case, the setting free of Maya Kodnani, an erstwhile minister in Modi cabinet in Gujarat, and the earlier bailing out of Sadhvi Pragya, Colonel Prohit and others in Malegaon blast give the impression that the season of acquittals has come. The prospect of certain set of accused walking free has brightened with the Modi government at the Centre. They cannot be defined as saffron terrorists as if the radicalisation and terrorism are only confined to Muslims. Only Muslim terrorists are acceptable in day-to-day parlance. The concept of terrorists other than Muslim is not only discarded but treated as offensive. Eleven years after a bomb ripped through Mecca Masjid, killing nine people, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Special Court acquitted all the five accused in a mu

By Our Representative Even as critical of India's human rights record, including police and security force "abuses" like "extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, rape, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, and lengthy pretrial detention", unlike previously, in its new report the US Department of State is quite soft Government of India.

By Moin Qazi* “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead Historians will tell you that an explosion of creativity occurs the moment the world starts complaining that there is nothing left to invent, or that the search for solutions to complex problems has come to an end. This explosion is fate’s way of reminding us that there is always something just over the horizon of knowledge. Social entrepreneurs are now using their talent to seek better answers to tough social problems at a time when the world has never needed them more. They are responding to challenges with solutions that leave business-as-usual in the dust. They want to use the power of knowledge and the principles of business to create a better world. Making money is not necessarily their first objective. Their primary objective is to make a contribution. The rise of soloists signals the ultimate atomisation of the modern w

Anand Tentumbde By Rajiv Shah  There appears to be a steady recognition among well-known Dalit rights leaders that the community, which continues to suffer from centuries-old oppression, needs to come out of the huge euphoria around considering India's topmost Dalit icon Dr BR Ambedkar as some sort of a demi-god. At least two of them -- Anand Teltumbde and Jignesh Mevani -- have openly declared that there is a need to look beyond Ambedkar.

By Our Representative A new report by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), an amalgam of various non-profit organizations based in Srinagar, brought out against the backdrop of the uproar around the January 2018 rape and murder of a minor girl in Kathua, has said that the gruesome incident is part of what it calls "pattern of state violence against children", pointing out, "In the first three months of 2018 not less than 5 minors have been killed, including the Kathua minor girl."

By Our Representative The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC), a Delhi-based advocacy group, has approached Dainius Puras, Special Rapporteur on Right to Health, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to seek the release Dr GN Saibaba on parole on medical grounds. An English lecturer at Ramlal College, Delhi University, he was arrested by the Maharashtra Police on May 9, 2014, for his “association” with Maoist groups.

By NJ Thakuria Expressing "concern" over "creating sentiments with unhealthy debates and aggressive attacks over the organizations", which reportedly supported the Centre’s initiative to amend the citizenship laws at the Joint Parliamentary Committee hearing in New Delhi recently, the Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA) has insisted on "rational debate" over the cotroversial issue.

Martin Macwan addressing the meet By Our Representative Babubhai, who belongs to Rinjha village of Dholka taluka of Ahmedabad district, has been taking rounds of the district collector’s office, situated about 100 kilometres away, for the last 11 years. He has been pleading with the government authorities to ensure that the 22 families get the physical possession of the land, allocated to them only on paper decades ago.

By Venkatesh Nayak* To say that the banking sector in India is going through a “crisis phase” would be a bald understatement. Bad loans or “non-performing assets” (NPAs) have risen to unprecedented levels in 2018. According to the statistics that the Union Minister of State for Finance, tabled in the Lok Sabha on 06 April, 2018, NPAs in gross numbers (pun intended) stood at INR 6.89 lakh (more than USD 150 billion) crores at the end of June, 2017. There is speculation in the media that this figure might have reached INR 9 lakh crores by now. The banking sector was saddled with INR 2.67 lakh crores worth of gross NPAs at the end of the fiscal year 2014-15 — almost a year after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) took over the reins of government. More recent reports indicate that the rate of recovery of written off bad loans has also been extremely poor during the last four years. Some economists are once again calling for the privatisation of public sector banks (PSBs) to improve th

Counterview Desk India’s 25 public sector banks (PSBs) received more than 73,000 Right to Information (RTI) applications in the financial year 2016-17, which is 9% of the total number of RTI applications received by all reporting public authorities of the Government of India. However, a new study has found that they accounted for a whopping 33% of the rejections, too.

Counterview Desk Text of the note by Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD) Moderator, Odisha Odisha activists working on different rights based issues in the State protested against growing atrocities against women and girl children in the country at Lower PMG, Bhubaneswar on 18th April 2018.  Raising serious concern over the very recent two cases happened in last two weeks i.e., one the rape of a minor girl of Unnao and murder of her father in police custody who came to file complaint to seek justice and second, the gang rape and murder of an 8 year old minor girl belongs to a Muslim nomadic tribes, they said “This is a severe and unspeakable brutality which has shaken the morale and humanity of the entire nation.” The protestors alleged that most shamelessly, by sacrificing all the rationale and morale into astray, in two of these incidents, the Ruling BJP with political patronage and support of Hindu Ekta Manch is involved in both the States”. Condemning the protest by Ja

Deve Gowda with Siddaramaiah By Our Representative Despite the hype created by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah that the Congress would surely romp back to power in the forthcoming state assembly polls scheduled for mid-May, there appear to uncertainty within at the very top in the grand old party, if an article published in a media outfit directly controlled by party chief Rahul Gandhi is any indication.

Proposed smart city Dholera off Ahmedabad: No space for urban poor By Our Representative Gujarat's civil society groups have strongly protested against their exclusion during consultations, currently being held in different parts of the country as part of preparations of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's (AIIB's) second Annual Governors' Meeting in Mumbai on June 25-26 in Mumbai. The consultations in Gujarat are to be held in a top Ahmedabad hotel on April 19-20.

By Our Representative In an unusual exercise, a premier national TV news channel, NDTV, has estimated that there has been a 490% spike in hate speeches over the last four years of the Narendra Modi government. Collated from public record and analysed by Nimish Jaiswal, Sreenivas Jain and Manas Pratap Singh, their analysis is based on 1,300 articles and their cross references such as Documentation of the Oppressed and Amnesty International's Halt the Hate Tracker, and recent tweets.

By Our Representative India's top data consultancy firm, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), has estimated that the weekly unemployment rate spiked to 7.41 per cent in the week ended April 8, which is the highest weekly unemployment rate in 78 weeks, or since early October 2016. Pointing out that the monthly estimate are based on different set of crieteria, CMIE says, it would be 6.75 per cent in April 2018, the highest since July 2017.

By Anand K Sahay Fake news” (FN), much heard about lately, is not news at all and is not part of any form of journalism. Typically, it is a part of the dirty tricks aspect of right-wing politics in many countries, as well as of intelligence outfits. The CIA has practised this dark art with consummate skill across the globe to outflank America’s opponents. Journalism casts light. It seeks to spread credible information, analysis and views without which we will flounder in today’s complex and rapidly changing world. FN, on the other hand, spreads darkness. Its purpose is to confuse, spread falsehood and manipulate the unsuspecting minds of newspaper readers, television viewers and radio listeners, in order to disrupt the tempo and ethos of democratic politics. In fact, the word “news” in its name is misleading. It should plainly be called what it is — “false information”. “False information” is related to the pursuit of retaining power or making a lunge for power in deceitful way

By Sheshu Babu* Atrocities on women including rapes and murders have been discussed and debated at length. Also, violence on girls and girl- child have been highlighted many times. But, these days, girls below teen age are not only raped and tortured for days but also killed in a most grotesque way. Any word, whether ' terrible ' or ' horrific ' sounds euphemistic in describing these cold-blooded murders. Even more pathetic is the support given to these murderers by organisations, politicians and lawyers making police system, which is already inefficient, ineffective. Kathua and after Even as Asifa case has gained prominence and demands to punish culprits are on the rise, there are reports of a brutally raped and tortured body of a minor girl aged about 10 was found in Surat, Gujarat (April 14, 2018, kracktivist.org ) . Another girl aged about 9 or 10 was mutilated and the body was found near Rohtak, Haryana (April 16, 2018, timesofindia.indiatimes.com ) . These