Excerpts from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) brief, “COVID-19 Impact on International Migration, Remittances, and Recipient Households in Developing Asia”, by Aiko Kikkawa Takenaka, Economist; Raymond Gaspar, Consultant; James Villafuerte, Senior Economist; and Badri Narayanan, Consultant, Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, ADB:   ***  Globally, jobs and worker welfare are severely affected by the pandemic. But some sectors are hurt more than others. Hard-hit sectors include retail and wholesale trade, hospitality and recreation, manufacturing, and accommodation and food service sectors, which are engaged largely in nonessential service activities with frequent face-to-face interactions (ILO 2020). Migrant and informal worker are among those facing the most severe impacts, as they often do not have regular contracts nor strong bargaining power. Migrant workers are more vulnerable from layoffs once prolonged lockdowns and production breaks drive com...

By NS Venkataraman* Speaking in a meeting on August 28, 2020, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar  said that “realism should shape India’s China policy”. He further said that India’s China policy will be “critical to India’s prospects” and will require “going beyond traditional assumptions.”

By Kate Fried, Mir Jalal* On August 24 evening, a federal court ruled that the World Bank Group cannot be sued for any damage caused by its lending, despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the same case that these institutions can be sued for their “commercial activity” in the United States.

Prof Vibhuti Patel By Simi Mehta, Ritika Gupta*   As India has crossed 3.4 million coronavirus cases, these extraordinary times have created conspicuous situations both at personal and professional places for women. There have been rise in the cases of domestic violence and intimate partner violence within households. Also, there has been an increase in the layoffs and loss of jobs for women in professional places.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* Even as India appears to be sinking amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, camera addicted and selfie-savvy Prime Minister Narendra Modi is busy with sharing his multitasking photos, his photography skills and his love for animals, birds and wildlife. Economic and social crisis does not seem to disturb his focus on camera. The positive vibe photos of Modi feeding peacocks at his residence are flooding social media timelines.

By Firoz Bakht Ahmed* "Bari aristocracy hei zabaan mein Nawabi ka maza deti hei Urdu faqiri mein!"  (The language is so rich in aristocratic ethos To a pauper it gives a king’s royalty all across!) The fragrance, candour and timelessness of Urdu, basically an Indo-Aryan language was stamped at the two-day International Urdu Webinar by the NCPUL (National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language) recently in New Delhi. Indeed, since time immemorial, Urdu had been the lingua franca of Sindh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, undivided Bengal, Punjab, Doaba etc. besides being the language of the heart and soul.

Counterview Desk The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), a multinational civil society network, has opposed the state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) , which is “pushing” for constructing the Teesta Stage IV Hydroelectric Power (HEP) project in North Sikkim.

By Hardyal Singh, Manpreet Singh*  The World Sikh Parliament members from 26 countries deliberated over a conference call on the issue of the Satluj-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal issue. Water is the source of life. India’s Supreme Court is preparing to deliver yet another deadly blow to Punjab’s riparian rights over its own crucially important river waters. 

Reproduced below are excerpts from "Letter from Kashmir: Valley of Unrest", by Sonia Faleiro , published by “Harper’s Magazine” (July 2020) with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Faleiro (born 1977) is an Indian writer of narrative non-fiction, and has been acclaimed for her novel “The Girl” (Viking, 2006), followed by “Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars” (2010), and “13 Men” (2015). This article is on her impressions of Kashmir Valley around the events that took place around August 5, 2019: ***  One winter’s night in the Kashmir Valley, the power went out. A bone-piercing cold swept through my hotel room in Srinagar. The next morning, the radiator, the water heater, and all the light switches were useless things. I knew that I would feel isolated in the Valley, given that India had imposed a communications blockade three months earlier, snapping internet, cellular, and landline connections for seven million people. Nevert...

By Atul, Sandeep Pandey* Rona Wilson is a prison rights activist who has been in jail since April 2018 and denied bail several times. The Pune Police raided his home in Delhi on April 17, 2018, and arrested him subsequently for his alleged role in the Bhima Koregaon violence in January that year. A few months later, the agencies also accused him of being part of a larger naxal plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Rajeev Gandhi style and overthrow the current government.

By Anjali Bhardwaj, Amrita Johri* The post of the Chief Information Commissioner of the Central Information Commission (CIC) has fallen vacant with the retirement of Bimal Julka with effect from August 27, 2020. This is the fifth time in the last six years that the Commission has been rendered headless. Four posts of information commissioners are also vacant in the CIC. Currently more than 35,000 appeals and complaints are pending in the commission resulting in citizens having to wait for months, even years for their cases to be disposed, thereby frustrating peoples’ right to know. Since May 2014, not a single commissioner of the CIC has been appointed without citizens having to approach courts. The failure of the government to make timely appointments of commissioners is a flagrant violation of the directions of the Supreme Court. In its February 2019 judgment, the apex court had categorically stated that if the CIC does not have a Chief Information Commissioner or required strength ...

Release Sudha Bharadwaj protest in Chhattisgarh   Counterview Desk India’s top civil society network, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), expressing “solidarity against state repression of activists, lawyers and progressive persons”, has demanded that all political prisoners, including Sudha Bharadwaj, who has been imprisoned for two, years should be released forthwith.

Counterview Desk In a statement, the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a network of civil society organizations seeking better living conditions for poorer sections, even as asking India’s political class to “stop political mudslinging”, begin providing relief and restore right to life to the vulnerable sections, has said that Union government has particularly “completely failed” to respond to the public health and economic crisis engulfing the country.

Counterview Desk More than 400 gender rights groups and human rights organisations across the country have announced Hum agar uthhe nahin toh… (If we do not rise…) campaign on September 5, 2020, marking the third anniversary of the assassination of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh. “The campaign is aimed at uniting voices against targeted attacks on the constitutional rights of the people of India”, a joint statement issued by them said.

By Our Representative  Several well-known civil rights organizations, endorsing a call initiated by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) to conduct protest actions from August 28 to September 5, against “deterioration” in civil liberties in the recent past, have regretted that the 12 “renowned” lawyers, professors, academics, writers and activists remain imprisoned under “fabricated charges” for the violence at Bhima Koregaon, while the actual perpetrators “walk freely.” 

By Sandeep Pandey* In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic threat a raging debate is going on at present regarding the holding of the Joint Entrance Examination Mains, the preliminary examination required to be cleared for admission to prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and other engineering and technology institutions, during September 1-6, 2020, by the National Testing Agency, in which 8,58,273 candidates are to appear.

By Surabhi Agarwal* Shoma Sen was arrested on June 6, 2018, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for charges which include inciting violence, being involved in raising funds for the banned CPI (Maoist) party and harbouring its fugitive members.

By Mike Ghouse* Religious discrimination is on the rise across the world and must be contained before it harms businesses and our social progress. A religiously or politically prejudiced employee can affect others’ morale, cause a lot of headaches, bring lawsuits, and affect the organization’s ability to function cohesively. He or she can waste the CEO’s time and the precious resources defending and correcting the mistakes rather than focusing on business development and creating employment.

By Our Representative The Majur Adhikar Manch (MAM), an Ahmedabad-based labour rights organization working among migrant workers, has alleged that cops of the state capital, Gandhinagar, have “beaten up” a tribal witness, who had been called to give statement in case of an accidental death. The tribal, Ter Singh, who is resident of village Margala, taluka Fatehpura, Dahod district, had to be taken to the Civil Hospital for a Medico Legal Report (MLR), MAM said.

Counterview Desk The virtual Janta Parliament, a civil society sponsored programme, has ended after listening to representatives from several opposition parties, including D Raja (CPI), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), K Raju and Kodikunnil Suresh (Congress), Manoj Jha (Rashtriya Janta Dal), Sanjay Singh (Aam Aadmi Party), and others, all of whom agreed on the need for a common minimum programme of action in the backdrop the Government of India using the pandemic situation into an opportunity to push its pro-corporate agenda.

By Madhu Chandra* “Commission for Minority Religion and Linguistic Minority” known as “Misra Commission” was setup by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in 2005 to study and report on socio-economic condition of Christians and Muslims converted from Scheduled Caste origins. The Justice Misra Commission report was submitted on May 22, 2007. Since then UPA Government has delayed to give its consent that Supreme Court of India could give its verdict to 60 years denial of constitutional Rights to 20 million Indian Christians from Scheduled Caste origins. The commission report has suggested to De-link Religion from Scheduled Caste and Dalits who, irrespective of their religion, suffer caste stigma and Scheduled Caste status to should be given all Dalits irrespective of their religions. UPA Government did not give its consent as per the recommendation of Misra Commission, then why was the Commission asked to study the socio-economic condition of Dalit Christians? Thereafter the den...