By Our Representative Farmers of the Narmada valley, farm labourers, potters, fishermen, tribals, and Dalits gathered in Badwani, Madhya Pradesh in a show of strength to mark the 30th anniversary of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), which was set up on September 28, 1989 in Harshad, district Khandwa. The gathering was addressed, among others, by NBA leader Medha Patkar. Present on the occasion to mark the occasion included Dhanshyam Chowdhury of the Swabhiman Shetkari Sangathsn, Member of Parliament and farmers' leader Raju Shetty, Madhuresh Kumar of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, social worker Anil Hebbar, who has been associated with late Baba Amte, Maninder Singh Raisingh Patel (Bittu), President of the Congress-ruled Janpadh Panchayat, Badwani, and Tamil Nadu artist Oviar Pugale Di. An NBA statement issued on the occasion said, people from villages, towns and villages are watching the displacement of in the Narmada valley, not only of themselves, the la...

By Rajiv Shah In an important revelation, a recent study in one of the world’s most renowned health research journals, “Lancet”, has found that “model” Gujarat is one of the three states where the Suicide Death Rate (SDR) among women has gone up. The other two major states, whose women’s SDR has shown an upward trend during the 26-years study – 1990 to 2016 – period are Bihar and Rajasthan.

Counterview Desk A year ago, on September 28, an 11-year-old girl in Jharkhand’s Simdega district reportedly died of starvation, months after her family’s ration card was cancelled because it was not linked to their Aadhaar number. With no school mid-day meals available during her Durga Puja holidays, Santoshi Kumari had gone with barely any food for nearly eight days before she died.

By Rajiv Shah  Thousands of adivasis and forest dwellers from across Odisha, mostly from tribal regions, marched in a protest rally on September 28 under the banner of Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), Odisha, at Lower PMG, Bhubaneswar, raising concern over “anti-tribal” and “anti-forest dweller” laws like Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016 (commonly known as CAMPA) and Draft National Forest Policies 2018.

Counterview Desk Well-known women’s rights organization, Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), in a statement*, has said it is alarmed by the majority judgment of the Supreme Court regarding the August 28 arrests of Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha and Varavara Rao, terming it as “short-sighted”, adding Justice DY Chandrachud’s dissenting judgment is “exhaustively reasoned”.  Text of statement WSS is deeply condemns the majority judgment of the Supreme Court which has dismissed the PIL filed by Romila Thapar, Devaki Jain, Satish Deshpande, Prabhat Patnaik and Maja Daruwalla and has in effect granted the notorious Pune Police impunity to carry on with its fabricated and malafide investigation in the Bhima Koregaon (FIR No. 4/2018) case. The Court in its vague majority judgement has failed to do its duty as a Constitutional Arbitrator and as the vanguard of the fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Con...

By Rajiv Shah  Hundreds of elderly, widows, single women and differently-abled persons from different districts of Jharkhand gathered near the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi for a public hearing organized by the Jharkhand Right to Food Campaign and Pension Parishad demanding the right to universal social security pensions ahead of World Elderly Day on October 1.

By Gopal Krishna* Verdict of Supreme Court of 4 Judges of the 5-Judge Constitution Bench on biometric data based 12 digit Unique Identification (UID) number branded as Aadhaar is manifestly unscientific and anti-poor. The verdict was delivered on September 26, 2018. It has taken citizens to pre-Magna Carta days (1215 AD) or even earlier, to the days prior to the declaration of Cyrus, the Persian King (539 BC) that willed freedom for slaves.

By Rajiv Shah A 13-state survey carried out a Delhi-based non-profit organization, CMS India, has found that in “model” Gujarat’s just about 12% households households feel that the Narendra Modi government is “committed” towards reducing corruption, which is the lowest of all states, with the sole exception of Andhra Pradesh, where just about 2% of feel that way.

Counterview Desk Pracheta Budhwar, a Bangalore citizen, has started this petition to Britannia Industries’ Managing Director Varun Berry, asking him to remove plastics from its products. Seeking support to sign the online petition on change.org, According to Budhwar, this is particularly important because plastic is interfering “with our hormonal system leading to infertility and possible cancer, I realized, to my horror, that I and the billions of others on this planet are slowly poisoning ourselves to death. Text of the petition: Like millions of others, I love Britannia biscuits and cakes. But the melting butter and chocolate leave a bitter taste in my mouth every time I think about the unnecessary plastic waste that is created with every purchase I make. We know that plastic is extremely bad for the environment, especially single-use plastic. A United Nations Environment Program report states that the most common plastics emit traces of two powerful greenhouse gases that ...

By Rajiv Shah  A just-published paper, “Political role models and child marriage in India”, has concluded that the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, enacted in 1993, which stipulate reservation of pradhans’ positions in one-third of districts by rotation, has led to a situation where the “likelihood of child marriage decreases by 20 percentage points, and age at marriage increases by 2.3 years”, even as delaying the “gauna ceremony is delayed by 1.6 years.”

r By Rajiv Shah  A recent research paper, “The impact of women’s age at marriage on own and spousal labor market outcomes in India: causation or selection?” has said that even though women earn nearly half of what men earn, a delay in marriage, at least in India, has “no significant impact” on their earnings.

Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond After spending three months in jail, Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond, tribal human rights activists of Sonabhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, have been released on bail. These two, along with woman tribal rights leader were allegedly "illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006), says the All India Union of Forest Workers (AIUFWP). Citizens for Justice and Peace(CJP), which has been supporting the AIUFWP, adds, "Now, we await the bail hearing for Sukalo Gond, who we expect will be released next week. This development comes after Sukalo and Kismatiya were produced before the Allahabad High Court on September 7, following a Habeas Corpus petition filed by CJP, where the Court had allowed both women to seek ‘judicial remedy’. Sukalo Gond Roma, who serves as General Secretary of the AIUFWP, said, “We are very happy at th...

Joint statement by RTI and privacy activists on the amendments to Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act proposed by the Committee of Experts under the Chairpersonship of Justice BN Srikrishna: *** The Right to Information (RTI) and the Right to Privacy (RTP) are fundamental rights flowing from the Indian Constitution. The State has an obligation to protect and promote both rights. To strengthen democracy and constitutional freedoms, it is critical that the two rights be carefully balanced. The Justice Srikrishna Committee, tasked with drafting the Data Protection Bill, was therefore expected to develop a framework harmonizing the need to protect certain kinds of personal data with the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005, which lays out the statutory framework for Indian citizens to access information, including personal information. However, the Draft Data Protection Bill, 2018 (DPB) prepared by the committee, fails to safeguard and balance the two. If accepted, the amendments pr...

By Rajiv Shah A just-released study “State of Working India 2018”, prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Employment of the Azim Premji University, has said that if in 1970s and 1980s, when GDP growth was around 3-4%, employment growth was around 2%, but “since the 1990s, and particularly in the 2000s, GDP growth has accelerated to 7% but employment growth has slowed to 1% or even less.”

By Sheshu Babu* "War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it" –Benito Mussolini There are number of instances when the present ruling party promoted 'nationalism' through various programmes. It is leaving no stone unturned to express its patriotic intent and directing people to follow its footsteps. One of the latest example is Parakram Parv, or celebrating surgical strikes, showcasing the valor of armed forces from September 28 to 30.

By Rajiv Shah  Sharply contesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that the recently-launched public health insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), dubbed Modicare, is the world’s largest, renowned development economist Jean Drèze notes, PMJAY is nowhere comparable to “China’s health care system, with its universal coverage”, pointing out, “In per-capita terms, public expenditure on health in China is about five times higher than in India.”

By Anand K Sahay* If Narendra Modi had set the tone in late 2013 and early 2014 by unleashing a no-holds-barred attack on Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, thus inaugurating an era of personalised name-calling in politics in which every FIR led to Jawaharlal Nehru, months before crucial elections, Rahul appears to have taken aim squarely at the Prime Minister, with the available material on the Rafale deal, and the government struggling with explanations on economic fugitives like Vijay Mallya.

By Our Representative A 20-odd farmers' delegation consisting of representatives from Gujarat, Maharashtra and the Union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli is planning to go to Japan in October to represent before the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is funding the Rs 80,000 crore Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project. The delegation plans to go to Japan after JICA "agreed" to listen to the grievances of the project-affected farmers. It will also be meeting the leader of the opposition, student leaders and intellectuals in Japan, and hold press conferences in five cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make a statement that it's not just land but life that is being for the project. Revealing this, senior advocate Anand Yagnik, who is representing the aggrieved farmers in the Gujarat High Court, said , JICA guidelines "categorically say that if any person aggrieved by the land acquisition being carried out on finance from Japan Bank c...

Indian tent turtle, captured in TWS By Our Representative If a wildlife sanctuary is unable to preserve a particular species because of certain extraneous reasons, why not do away with it right away? This appears to be the new motto behind the BJP rulers in Uttar Pradesh, frantically wanting to implement Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious inland waterway project on Ganga. The waterway is slated to pass through Varanasi, Modi’s constituency.

By Rajiv Shah Fresh data released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), released this month, show that while India ranks 130 out of 189 countries in human development index (HDI), with HDI value of 0.640 on a scale of 1, this is “below the average of 0.645 for countries in the medium human development group”, even though it is “above the average of 0.638 for countries in South Asia.”

By Our Representative In a strongly worded letter to Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur on the murder of RTI activist Kedar Singh Jindan in Sirmaur district on September 7, the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI) has said that it "gravely concerned" by the incident. Jindan, it said, was first brutally assaulted and then crushed under a SUV in broad day light near his house. The reason for the murder was, he had "flied numerous applications under the RTI Act to exposed "fraud and irregularities" of the officialdom in the identification of families living below the poverty line (BPL). Pointing out that he had presented his findings in a conference in Shimla on June 29, 2018, the letter states, he had also put forth proof that he had obtained from six families related to members of the panchayat that had used fake BPL certificates to secure government Jobs. Further, he had registered a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bur...

Anil Ambani with Dassault CEO Eric Trappier By Shantanu Basu* This is the Bofors replay. The French government and ours are equal partners, which is why both are going out of their way to put out half-cooked denials and unconvincing statements. I refuse to believe that Reliance Aerospace (RA) developed the capacity to produce Rafale parts in barely two weeks before the administrative approval to the deal was signed. And that Dassault contracted a firm that is neck-deep in debt, in default of overseas obligations, and ship supplies to the Indian Navy setting the naval shipbuilding programme back by at least a decade and have no known capacity to manufacture warplane parts (at least 70% of the total).

In a surprise move, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, newly-appointed chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), a central university based in Hyderabad, has asked it's vice chancellor to celebrate September 29, the Surgical Strike Day, as a day of bravery "in order to accord the highest acclaim to those soldiers who carried it out for the safety and security of our borders" in 2016. Firoz Bakht Ahmed Ahmed, who claimed in a letter to the President of India that he is being branded as an RSS plant and a Modi man, and is not being allowed to function by MANUU vice chancellor Dr Aslam Parvaiz, has asked the latter to "organize various activities, including the parade of the three wings of the forces, and a skit on India army besides organizing a talk-session involving ex-serviceman to sensitize students about sacrifices made by the armed forces." "Students must be told how Army carried out the surgical strikes on seven terror launch pads across the L...

By Our Representative The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), a Gujarat-based civil rights organization, has decided to begin a public campaign under the slogan "Gandhinagar Chalo" in all the districts of the state with its eight-point demands. MCC, which held a state-level meeting, decided to hold a public meeting on December 18, 2018, the International Minority Rights Day to press its demands. Pointing out that the aim of the campaign is to bring about awareness through district-level conferences, addressing media, MCC convenor Mujahid Nafees said, the demands include setting up a Minority Welfare Ministry, allocation of special fund in the budget for minority community development, establishing a state minority commission by passing a law, open government schools up to class 12 in minority areas,recognition of Madarsa degrees equivalent to Gujarat Board, special economic package for the upliftment of minorities, a government policy for the rehabilitation of people dis...

By Our Representative Well-known Canadian author, financial consultant and media analyst Peter Diekmeyer has put a former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar, who writes blogs under the title Indian Punchline, published in several online media sites, as one of the top 10 bloggers of 2017. Diekmeyer, in a personal communication to the ex-diplomat, says, "I prefer your opinions of India over that of western journalists any day of the week." Diekmeyer, in an article introducing his choice of top 10 bloggers, says, "MK Bhadrakumar, an India-based blogger and former diplomat, has been far ahead of the curve in analyzing the return of balance of power politics, in which weaker nations — such as Russia, China and Iran— are increasingly banding together to protect themselves from larger predatory powers." Diekmeyer continues, "India, which will soon be the world’s most populous nation (and possibly one day its biggest economy), will be crucial in determining how the glob...

By Our Representative In a sharply-worded editorial, a top Chinese media outfit, described by BBC as state-run, has said, commenting on India's foreign relations with its neighbours, that "speculation and suspicion" is "certainly not diplomacy". Published in "China Daily", the largest circulating English Monday-to-Saturday newspaper with branches across the world, the editorial notes (September 20) that "several recent events" in Nepal and Bhutan, are "gnawing worrywarts in New Delhi". The editorial  -- which comes close on the heels of a sharp critique of India's foreign policy in a state-supported Russian media outfit, Sputnik International, calling India's anti-Pak diplomacy as having "gone awry" following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "half-baked" push for anti-terror drill down "others' throat" -- says, the " worrywarts" include "Nepalese troops taking part in a ...

Screenshot from the "encounter" By Our Representative In a letter to the Uttar Pradesh police chief, civil rights organization Rihai Manch has accused the police of "killing" two youth, Rashid and Irfan, in a fake encounter in a town in Aligarh district. Releasing a video shot by a news agency, the letter, signed by Rihai Manch president Mohammad Shoeb and general secretary Rajiv Yadav, says that the encounter, which the police claims took place in Harduaganj in Aligarh district on September 20, says that, strangely took place after the media was called to watch the scene. The letter states, the video clearly suggests that the cops were relaxed, which shows that there was no live encounter, as claimed by the police. It quotes family members of the two youth as  claiming that the two were picked up by the police from their houses on September 16. But when the family members reached the police station to find out about them, they were told, the two had fled. However,...

By Mohan Guruswamy* The fortunes of India irrevocably changed on May 29, 1658 when two Indian armies clashed on the dusty fields of Samugarh near Agra. India’s history changed forever. Aurangzeb’s victory over his brother Dara Shikoh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry in India that not only alienated Hindus but also the much more moderate Sufis and Shias as well.

Feb 2017: François Hollande with Anil Ambani  Counterview Desk Following the revelation in a French journal “Mediapart” that it is Government of India which chose Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence and France had no choice, there is a furore across India on how Prime Minister Narendra Modi “paid back” to an industrial close to him for supporting him. The French journal quotes former French president François Hollande to say the Indian government had proposed Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as the offset partner in the Rafale deal and "we did not have a say in this."

By RK Misra* Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Vijay Rupani-led BJP government in Gujarat has ended up tying itself in knots over the just-concluded indefinite fast of Patidar quota stir leader Hardik Patel. The protest fast, which began on August 25, saw the youth leader enlarge his demands to include farmers’ debt waiver and emerge as a bridgehead for the national opposition, BJP rebels, even garnering support from NDA ally, Shiv Sena.

Sagar Rabari By Our Representative Gujarat's top farmers' leader Sabar Rabari has said that there is "nothing new" in the announcement made by deputy chief minister Nitin Patel regarding increase in accidental death compensation to farmers from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh, and for serious injuries from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh. In a statement, Rabari has pointed out that the announcement had been made several years ago when Anandiben Patel was Gujarat chief minister, adding, "In insofar as farmers are concerned, the government headed by the Vijay Rupani-Nitin Patel duo has proved itself to be a miser. Anandiben Patel had announced that the death compensation would be Rs 4 lakh. Instead of implementing her announcement, this government has reduced the amount by half." Further, Rabari regretted, only those farmers and their families who have land titles in their name have been included for compensation. "The reality is, Gujarat has a large number of landless agr...

Counterview Desk The Karnataka-based Safaikarmachari Kavulu Samithi (SKS), an organisation working towards complete eradication of the caste-based practice of manual scavenging, commenting on the death of 5 workers – Umesh (22), Raja (22), Pankaj (26), Sarfaraj (19) and Vishal (20) – on account of being made to clean a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) at DLF Capital Greens, a residential complex in Moti Nagar, West Delhi on September 9, 2018, has said that these deaths “were not accidental and preventable”.

11-year-old Santoshi Kumari, mother Koyli Devi: File photo Counterview Desk To mark the first anniversary of the death of Santoshi Kumari, scholars Reetika Khera and Siraj Dutta, with contributions from Swati Narayan and the Right to Food Campaign in Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Delhi, have prepared a detailed list of hunger deaths in 2015-18 (click HERE ). 

By Fr Cedric Prakash sj* On Thursday September 20, four people were killed in Maryland, US in a workplace mass shooting spree; it was the third workplace shooting in the US in less than twenty –four hours. Earlier that day in Uttar Pradesh, India killed two men in an “encounter” after “inviting” journalists to watch. Since March 2017, sixty-six persons have been killed in UP in ‘encounters’; most of those killed were Muslims. Armed conflicts and violence continue to ravage several parts of the world today from Mexico to Afghanistan; from Yemen to South Sudan. Thousands all over flee war and violence, are displaced from the comfort of what they once called ‘home’ and to seek refuge in more secure areas. It is no rocket science to conclude that for millions everywhere, the peace, which is, rightfully theirs, is totally in ‘pieces’! So how does one observe yet another International Day of Peace on September 21? Do we allow ourselves to be conditioned with yet another day of tokenism and c...

By Moin Qazi* Islam is a massive faith with 1.6 billion followers spread across the Islamic world that stretches over 15,000 kilometers. A considerable section of the community lives as a minority community in many countries, battling issues of stereotyping, discrimination and identity. With the powerful influence of Islamophobic brigades, there has been a massive surge of hatred against Islam and its adherents. Muslims continue to be demonized and projected as uniformly fundamentalist, violent and anti-secular.

Counterview Desk Refused  entry in the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), the central university's newly appointed chancellor Firoz Bakht Ahmed, who claims to be grand nephew of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, has, in a letter to the President of India, said that MANUU vice-chancellor (V-C) Dr Aslam Parvaiz has accused him of being an RSS plant and a Modi man, whose sole aim is to "interfere in the working of the university".

TM Krishna Counterview Desk A galaxy of India's 123 writers, academics, artistes, legal luminaries, activists and professionals from other fields have taken strong exception to the "intimidation" of some of the best known Carnatic musicians by right-wing elements. Being termed 'traitors of Hinduism', 'shamers of Carnatic music' and 'disgusting cretins', these elements, backed, among others by S Ramanathan, founder of the Rashtriya Sanathana Seva Sangam (RSSS), have been carrying on a "vicious" online campaign against Carnatic musicians in Tamil Nadu through Facebook pages, Youtube and Twitter.

Dr Abhay and Rani Bang By Moin Qazi* Women are not dying because of diseases we cannot treat…They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving. – Mahmoud Fathalla, Chair of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research Inclusive growth is now perhaps the strongest buzzword in development discourse. We have all been talking about growth without understanding that development interventions will not be effectual if they don’t benefit all sections of society. The illusion of trickle-down and ripple-effects of growth had kept us on the wrong track for quite long. Development programmes have delivered good outcomes for some segments of society, but sadly only marginal or zero sum for others. It is this realisation that has prompted policy-makers to draft strategies that can deliver outcomes that benefit everyone. An important new learning is that health or healthcare is a key component of inclusive growth. It is an important piece in the develop...