Following feminist-turned-Narendra Modi protege Madhu Kishwar's sharp critique on the way Union human resources development minister Smriti Irani is handling education, well-known right-wing economist Laveesh Bhandari has taken a dig at the ruling BJP's "poor performance" in the sector. "The sector’s three overarching reform priorities—pedagogy, resourcing, and decision making—the government, thus far, has largely performed poorly on each measure", Bhandari has declared.

Pandian with Aloria The Gujarat government on Saturday appointed GR Aloria, a 1981 batch IAS bureaucrat, as new state secretary. The posting comes weeks after Gujarat home department under him wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, seeking inquiry into the American philanthropic organization Ford Foundation’s grants to NGOs run by human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, fighting tens of 2002 communal riots cases, even as highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity.

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IITM) authorities’  decision  to “derecognize” the Ambedkar Periyar Student Circle (APSC) following an inquiry into APSC’s “controversial” views by the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has led to a strong reaction from those running the APSC. In their reply, APSC office bearers have wondered whether expressing a different view from the one held by Modi government could be construed as an attempt to spread of hatred.

A just released volume, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015", by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), prepared in coordination with International Fund for Agricultural Development and World Food Programme, has revealed that over the last thee years there has been an absolute rise in undernourished persons in India over the last five years -- from 189.9 million to 194.6 million between 2011 and 2015. The report insists, economic growth alone cannot fight issues of malnutrition.

  Is Ahmedabad becoming increasingly conservative when it comes "allowing" womenfolk to work outside the household? It would seem so, if the latest data, released by the Government of India's top data collection centre, National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), is any indication. Apparently, the economic situation, riddled by lack of service protection and security to women, would have added to aggravating the situation for women workers in Ahmedabad.

The National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO’s) report, “Employment and Unemployment Situation in Cities and Towns in India”, dated May 20, 2015, has revealed that, among seven major Indian cities, Ahmedabad women’s work participation ratio is not only one of the lowest. An analysis of the NSSO data for two separate periods – 2004-05 and 2011-12 – suggests that the city’s women have lately increasingly shunned from going to work, and those who continue to work, have preferred to work more as self-employed, mainly as home-based workers, instead of working as salaried workers in factories and offices, or as casual workers on work sites. In fact, while the NSSO data suggest the existence of a huge male-female gap in the participation in productive labour activity as an all-India urban trend, there is clear indication that the gap is specially very sharp in Ahmedabad. Below are given some graphic details in order to illustrate the trend in worker-population ratio (WPR) between 2004-05 a...

  By Our Representative A French "ethnographic inquiry" into Ahmedabad's Muslim ghetto Juhapura, where more than 2.5 lakh people live, has termed the area "a modality of the governance of Ahmedabad’s Muslim minority mobilised by the Modi government from 2002 to 2014".Saying that it is the same Modi who will be celebrating one year as Prime Minister on May 26, the "inquiry" comments, "During this year, the election of Narendra Modi has increased risks of threats on freedom and religious practices of non-Hindu minorities".

In a new report, one of the world’s most reputed consultants, Ernst and Young (E&Y), have said that nearly 80 per cent of the senior business executives in India think bribery/ corrupt practices “happen widely in business in the country”. Compared to last year, this is up by 10 percentage points. In all, E&Y surveyed 3,800 senior management personnel across 38 countries. The report comes close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrating one year's "corruption-free" Government of India.

  A study of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Massachusetts, US, has said that the strong son-preference in India leads to have more children if the first born is a girl, and this adversely affects the children’s school education. Advocating strong need for family planning in order to have higher enrollment and fewer school dropouts, it adds, “Children from larger families are less likely to have ever been enrolled in school”, and this is even more true of children belonging to “rural, poorer and low-caste families.”

Ashis Nandy: Victim of Anti-Atrocities Act "abuse" In a development which is likely to please those who have long argued against giving special treatment to dalits and adivasis, but may lead to some angry reactions among senior dalit activists, a top world body which has been involved in campaign for freedom of expression since 1921 has asked the Government of India to drop certain provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which have been willfully "abused".

  A Washington-based global research organization has ranked India an average country in Environmental Democracy Index (EDI), which it has worked out on the basis national-level laws, regulations, extrapolating them with rights of transparency, participation, and justice. Ranking India 24th in the list of 70 countries it has selected for analysis, the World Resource Institute (WRI) has ranked India 28th in environmental transparency, 41st in environmental participation, and at almost the top – second – in environmental justice.

  Well-known pro-Narendra Modi economist Arvind Panagariya, whom critics label a "neo-liberal", has  said  that Government of India's (GoI's) latest policy changes -- ranging from Make in India campaign, to land and labour "reforms" -- are meant to trigger migration of people from rural to urban areas in search of jobs. Quoting a representative study, he says, "Indian farmers and their children recognize the superior prospects that faster-growing industry and services can potentially offer."

A controversial study, carried out by a prominent US-based research organization, has said that “despite relative economic advantage, India’s majority Hindu population is 25 percentage points more likely to defecate in the open than the minority Muslim population.” The study quotes Manusmriti (Chapter 4 verse 151) to suggest why it may be more prevalent among Hindus, “Far from his dwelling let him remove urine and excreta”.

  A draft report, prepared by an Ahmedabad-based NGO, Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has alleged that, in a major setback to an important social sector scheme in India, the momentum for setting up the Gram Nyayalayas -- village courts -- has been lost, and there is a clear sense of “lack of ownership” about the scheme across India’s governing institutions.

  A US government-supported study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), released in its International weekly journal of science, "Nature"", has noted that, despite its massive gains, "India is not yet a major player in world science" and its "publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China".

At a time when a large group of media house representatives is covering Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip to China, Mongolia and South Korea, an incisive analysis wonders why is there indifference towards a major humanitarian crisis taking shape across the border in Myanmar, with whom India shares 1,624-km-long border. This is happening despite the fact that the Rohingiya crisis in Myanmar has lately come under direct scanner of the United Nations, the analysis complains.

One of the world's prestigious climate change e-journal, "Inside Climate News" (ICN), has  said  that attacks on civil society groups that campaign for climate change will undermine "India's global standing, the stability of its democracy and its role in upcoming climate talks", which take place Paris this December. The e-journal is the third web-based news organization to win the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which have gone to ProPublica and Huffington Post.

The Gujarat government on Saturday announced an organic farming policy, becoming the ninth state to have done so in India. The states that have already put in operation respective organic farming policies are Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland. The policy document admits, the state government was forced to do it because of the failure to promote organic farming in Gujarat so far.

  Despite big talk about Gujarat being a model state of urban development, latest figures, made available at a workshop organized by Paryavaran Mitra, an Ahmedabad-based environmental NGO, has said that just about 14.67 per cent of the solid waste collected in the state’s eight municipal corporations and 159 municipalities, is processed. This puts Gujarat way behind the national average of 27.94 per cent of the solid waste being processed, with seven out of 20 selected states performing better.

Handicrafts and artisans of Kutch are said to be a major identity of Gujarat's culture, both in the rest of India and abroad. Taking advantage of this, a state-sponsored proposal was floated in June 2007 to develop a Handicrafts and Artisans Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on 132 hectares (ha) land in village village Moti Chiral, near Bhachau town in Kutch district, Gujarat. Eight years after it was "formalized", the Narendra Modi government has dropped it like a hot potato.

Sharad Sawant in Geneva addressing campaigners Reports from Geneva say that India has opposed listing the chrysotile asbestos at a meeting called under the UN auspices to exclude hazardous substances in international trade. The International Ban Asbestos Association (IBAA), a top campaign body, has said that India is the company of such countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Belarus, Sudan and Cuba, all of whom do not want "exclusion" of the hazardous material in world trade. In a strongly worded criticism of the Indian stance, the French campaign body Association Nationale de Défense des Victimes de l'Amiante (ANDEVA) said, “India is the biggest importer of asbestos."

Dalits gather to prepare anti-untouchability representation In incident which will embarrass Gujarat administration, the Dalits of a village "adopted" for development by its head, chief secretary D Jagatheesa Pandian, have faced social boycott during a function in the village temple. The village is just 25 kilometres from Gujarat's capital Gandhinagar, and, say local Dalits, despite their complaint to the district collector, a copy of which was sent to the chief secretary, the government has "not cared to look into the matter."

Senior activists have taken strong exception to the Government of India proposal to amend the #Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014 (WBP Act), introduced as an amendment bill in the Lok Sabha on Monday. Right to information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak has said, while till now the government refused to implement the law, which aims to create a statutory mechanism for whistleblowing about corruption, abuse or misuse of power or authority, in a fresh move, it is coming up with several "unreasonable restrictions on whistleblowing."

 Well-informed sources in Gujarat government have told Counterview that the latest lion census enumerators could find just 22 lions in Gir National Park, the no-man’s “fully protected” territory within the Gir forest area to “preserve” the rare species. Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, while making an  announcement  of 523 lions in Gujarat, up from 411 in 2010, refused to give any breakup of the number of lions found in the National Park.

  In an alarming revelation, a high-powered Government of India committee headed by top scholar Prof Amitabh Kundu has calculated that #Gujarat's 162 slums, of which 130 are notified, have the lowest tenability index than anywhere else in the country. The committee, appointed by the previous UPA government in January 2014, submitted its report recently to the Union ministry housing and urban poverty alleviation to "calculate" which are slums and slum-dwelling households could be regularized.

Mahesh Pandya In a move that is prompting senior #environmentalists to raise serious doubts about its motives, the Government of India has begun its “national consultation” on finalizing rules on hazardous waste, e-waste, solid waste, plastic waste and biomedical waste by keeping the country’s senior environmental experts at bay. While the consultation has already taken place in #Delhi (May 1) and #Mumbai (May 8), they are scheduled for May 22 in #Bangaluru and May 23 in #Kolkata.

  Gujarat’s prestigious CEPT University’s Centre for Urban Equity has joined hands with the Leeds University, UK, and the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in a major research project on smart cities amidst experts at a seminar in Ahmedabad on the project agreeing that the Government of India lacks any clarity on how to identify a particular city as “smart”.

  A recent analysis by a non-profit institute, IndiaSpend, has suggested that Gujarat has one of the highest number of pending cases in the district and subordinate courts. With 2,251,122 pending cases, Gujarat's pending cases are higher than all other states except for Uttar Pradesh (5,714,695), Maharashtra 2,937,846, and West Bengal (2,583,685). The figures are as of April 1, 2014.

Par river near village Jhari Well-known advocacy group South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has estimated that if the Par Tapi Narmada (PTN) Link Project is implemented as part of the Government of India's ambitious river inter-linking scheme, then 75 tribal villages, 3,592 hectares (ha) of forests in Western Ghats and a minimum of 7,559 ha of land will be submerged. This apart, it is likely to displace around 35,000 adivasis.

  Top American thinktank, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in its latest  analysis , based on info-graphics, has said that unless the Congress is able to arrest its hasty decline, the party could be writing itself into electoral irrelevance. However, it suggests, on the basis of the current trend, that it may be advantage regional parties in states, and things may not favour BJP as much.

Around 70 civil rights organizations have come together to strategize “a collective response to the stifling of civil society space” in the wake of the recent Government of India clampdown on NGOs, telling Prime Minister Narendra Modi that government steps are “coercive” in nature, are “without reasonable cause or due process”, and seek to “cripple” the ability of NGOs to “carry on their legitimate and sanctioned work.”

A ship being manually pulled to the shore at Alang In one of the sharpest indictments of the Alang Shipbreaking Yard, situated on the south Saurashtra coast of Gujarat, Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, in an  online exposure  titled "Asia's ship graveyards", has said that "ship owners earn more money from selling their vessels to scrapyards" at Alang than anywhere else in the world, and they do it at the cost of making workers work in extremely hazardous conditions.