Counterview

By Martin Macwan* We, his friends and colleagues, lovingly called him Indubhai. He is no more . The vacuum created by his departure into a shrinking space for social activism will be difficult to fill. In his 77 year age, he spent 41 long years, serving the most marginalized through multiple activities, especially through his writings.

Counterview Desk Australian arm of the Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization founded in 2019, which claims to advocate for pluralism as "rooted" in the values of Hindu faith, has taken strong objection to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of Australia (VHPA) partnering with schools in New South Wales as an approved provider of Special Religious Education, stating, the values VHPA seeks to propagate are contrary to the Hindu view of shanti (peace), nyaya (justice) and satya (truth).

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  The second wave of coronavirus has stuck hard, particularly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Was the wave surprising or we allowed it to happen? The number of cases are all set to reach a whopping 300,000 per day.

Counterview Desk Independent board members of Ahmedabad's premier public-charitable health institutions, Chinai Maternity and Sarabhai General Hospitals (VS), in a letter to the Commissioner, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), with copies to the VS Hospital chairperson and the Charity Commissioner, Ahmedabad, have protested against the manner in which the legally constituted VS Board and Trusts were "bypassed" while passing the budget worth Rs 163.85 crore for the hospital.

A Mulshi Dam affected village By Nandini K Oza*  The Mulshi satyagraha (struggle) against a dam being built by the Tata company on the river Mula in Maharashtra is one of the first anti-dam struggles of India, fought nearly a hundred years ago. However, not much is known about this important and powerful struggle, though it has been well documented in the book ‘Mulshi Satyagraha’, by Rajendra Vohra.

Counterview Desk  As pandemic rages across the nation, the Modi government is busy with election riding on religious majoritarianism, well-known civil rights network, Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha (JJM) has said, demanding a large number of urgent measures both at the Central and state levels to stop the fast pace at which the disease is spreading across the country.

By Our Representative  As many as 76 civil society organisations across the world, including two from India, have have objected to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the powerful Paris-based intergovernmental economic organisation with 37 member countries, for allocating a mere 161.2 billion USD of official development assistance (ODA), more commonly known as ‘development aid’.

By Simi Mehta, Anshula Mehta In an endeavour to harness India’s massive potential in the 21st century, the Government of India launched the “National Education Policy 2020”. The policy has been hailed as progressive and revolutionary; it has sparked discourse on the future of education.  Given its potential to initiate massive transformations and create substantial change, it becomes pertinent to analyze and question its comprehensiveness, inclusiveness, flaws, ability to impart value education and skills and whether it can make a peaceful, tolerant and just society.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Fourteen years ago, when noted Hindi author and historian Subhash Chandra Kushwaha took the initiative to create a space for folk artistes against the culture of indecency and vulgarity in the name of folk culture, particularly in the Bhojpuri heartland, nobody ever assumed that the event would become hugely popular with the masses and ultimately gain international repute, perhaps the most sought after in this rural hinterland in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.