Counterview

By Haider Abbas*  “Modi Ji aapko sharam nahi aati”, shrieks the crying Payal Rohatgi, in a video available on Youtube. She is a cinema actress and she asks PM Modi as to why Hindus are getting killed in West Bengal (WB) in post-poll violence. If her speech is put to analysis it is a clear exhortation for Hindus to start to kill Muslims. Twitter has banned her account. She has in the past supported the rape-accused Asaram Bapu too.

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  It was a scene which will forever be etched in the memory of millions the world over: on May 25 2020, on a street in Minneapolis, US -- a white police officer Derek Chauvin, had his knee pressed down on the neck of a black American George Floyd. This continued for more than nine minutes.

Counterview Desk  Senior Gujarat-based environmentalists Rohit Prajapati and of the Krishnakant of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) in a letter to the Union secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, have said that “illegal” sand mining in Bhavnagar, coastal district, is “contaminating and degrading the ground water, rivers, lakes, other water resources and check dams.”

Counterview Desk  The civil rights group, Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan (DRRAA), in a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has expressed concern over failure to distribute ration for the month of May from the ration shops. This is adding to the economic distress of the working poor who have lost their sources of livelihood during the lockdown imposed by the government to combat Covid-19, the letter said.

By Haider Abbas*  The deplorable medical conditions in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and overall in the country has been all in the making for quite some time. As we sit in big cities, we do have access to social media news and have a clue of ‘things-around’, but condition have turned far worse in small villages, qasbas and districts, where people are dying in large numbers due to the new variant of Covid-19.

By Mansee Bal Bhargava*  While addressing the nation few days ago, the Prime Minister called upon the youth (Bal Mitra) to help maintain Covid-appropriate behaviour, insisting that the lockdown would be the last resort . Later, the final year medicos are asked to jump into the medical practice for covid care due to the shortage of the healthcare human resources during this unprecedented medical crisis.

By Our Representative  India has emerged as the second most Covid-19 affected nation in the world to lose 141 journalists, almost four scribes per day, even as the global tally reached 1,248 scribes in 75 countries due to corona complications since March 2020, when the pandemic hit the human race.

By Arjun Kumar, Ritika Gupta, Sakshi Sharda*  Migrant workers have been assured multiple times that an economic lockdown will not be imposed and yet photographs have already started to emerge of reverse migration. Given this context, Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) and Working People Charter organized a Panel Discussion on Reverse Migration amidst the Second Wave of Coronavirus Pandemic: Challenges and Solutions. The chair of the session was Prof Arun Kumar, Malcolm S. Adiseshiah Chair Professor, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, and retired professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

By Our Representative  The travel ban and penalties on Australians travelling from India under the pretext of the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis has come under heavy criticism from the country's human rights organisations. The Humanism Project said that it is "deeply concerned" at the travel ban on Australian citizens returning from India, stating, it is nothing but "criminalisation of such travel under the Biosecurity Act."