Ishrat Jehan A top United Nations (UN) report has taken strong exception to the Gujarat government failing to act against high level police officials  responsible for encounter killings of individuals in the aftermath of the 2002 communal riots. The report, released recently, notes that “police officers who have been suspended upon their arrest in cases of suspected extrajudicial killings and charged with extrajudicial killings have been reinstated in senior positions.”

Well-know British weekly, The Economist, has created flutter by  publishing  United Nations Children Fund's (UNICEF's) unpublished data which suggest that Gujarat's ranking in immunization of children has slipped from 16th to 21st position between 2001, when Narendra Modi came to power as state chief minister, and 2014, when he became India's Prime Minster, "riding" on a developmental agenda.

 Justice Markandey Katju, former chairman, Press Council of India and ex-Supreme Court judge, has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court against Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha resolutions condemning his Facebook posts which had called Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Bose British and Japanese agents, respectively. He has filed the petition through senior counsel Gopal Subramaniam, as he is abroad.

The Government of India (GoI) is all set to “drop” one of the most powerful calculation tool – Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) – it had adopted in 2009 to measure the level of pollution in India’s different industrial clusters. One of India’s senior-most environmentalists Rohit Prajapati has said he has received “clear indications” that CEPI wouldn’t be used anymore, there is a strong view in GoI that it “harms” foreign industrial investment into India.

  A site claiming to be India’s first  data journalism initiative , has said, on the basis of an analysis of latest study released by top MNC British Petroleum (BP), that India has becoming the world’s “fastest-growing major polluter”. Prepared on the basis of analysis of a plethora of data in the  study , analyst Sajai Jose said, in 2014 India’s “carbon dioxide emissions growth accounting for the largest share of global emissions growth”.

  The latest US government's "India 2014 Human Rights Report" has criticized Gujarat government for filing a misappropriation case against well-known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad. This, it notes, was done "after a December 2013 decision by a Gujarat lower court rejecting a protest petition "to force the state to file criminal charges against then-Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and other officials for allegedly failing to stop Hindu reprisals in Gujarat in 2002."

 Well-known sociologist Prof DL Sheth has said that, thanks to Indira Gandhi’s imposition of Emergency on June 25, 2015, the RSS-Jana Sangh became part of the mainstream politics from the very “fringe”. Simultaneously blaming Jay Prakash (JP) Narayan for giving holding their hand to the Sangh, Prof Sheth -- who was one of closest associates of top academic who opposed Emergency, late Rajni Kothari -- reveals, the Sangh at one point, even supported the Emergency.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office does not think that it is obligatory on its part to reveal even elementary information about the date-wise number of visits made by a top tycoon to his official residence in Delhi. This has come from a right to information (RTI) plea by a Gujarat-based citizen by Paragkumar Ashokkumar Patel, who wished to “total number of visits, datewise” by Gautam Adani.

Following Reuters Breakingviews Index, which said early this month said that India's gross domestic product (GDP) did not grow by 7.5 per cent in the first quarter of this year, as claimed by the Modi government but just around 5 per cent, world's leading consultants Morgan Stanley has created a flutter by declaring that India could not have growth "anymore than 6 per cent."

A top world organization advocating free speech, PEN International, in a comprehensive study of Indian laws, has said that the legal system of the country makes it “surprisingly easy” to silence those who disagree. Insisting that several laws either require to be repealed or urgently reformed, it says, in India, “if you disagree with something that can be said to promote ‘enmity’, jeopardise ‘national integration’, ‘maliciously’ insult religion, or foster “enmity between groups’, it is not difficult to invoke censorship.”

 A study, "No, Yoga Does Not Cure Any Disease", by a Karnataka-based researcher-consultant, Dr Srinivas Kakkilaya, has claimed that "all the available evidence as of now, and the systematic reviews and meta-analyses, indicate clearly that yoga does not cure or prevent, or significantly alleviate, any ailment, that affects humans", adding, "If a lie is repeated often, it is said, people will eventually believe it."

Romel Sutariya In an official communication, the Gujarat police suggests it doesn’t think there is anything wrong with detaining activists seeking to protest against programmes involving state chief minister Anandiben Patel. In a letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), New Delhi, the state police has justified the detentions, which took place on December 20, 2014, ahead of the chief minister’s visit to Chhotaudepur in South Gujarat.

Belonging to Mota Kandagra, one of the adversely affected villages as a consequence of industrialization along the coastal region of Kutch district, Gujarat, Minal, 11, and Sonal, 13, remember the joyful lives they led just two years ago. They never knew what hunger was. They went to the local school, played with their friends and were loved and treated well. Their father had a small farm and was a successful farmer.

Sujatha Singh Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, has refused to part with information sought under right to information (RTI) Act about the reasons behind sacking of ex-foreign secretary Sujatha Singh early this year. Revealing this, well-known RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak said, “After the unceremonious exit of Singh, I filed an RTI application asking for the Cabinet note, file notings and list of persons who attended the meeting of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC).”

 In an important  research paper  having major policy implications for India, International Monetary Organization (IMF) has declared that the “trickledown theory” -- which believes that economic growth would take care of poverty alleviation – is proving to be counter-productive. Top pro-Narendra Modi economist Arvind Panagariya, new vice-chairman of Planning Commission’s fresh avatar Niti Ayog (Policy Commission), and his Columbia University mentor, Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, are well known advocates of trickledown.

Dr Tushaar Shah, one of the most renowned water resources experts of India, has taken strong exception to the Narendra Modi government for “ignoring” the agricultural sector in the National Solar Mission, which aims at adding 100 gigawatts (GW) to the already existing power capacity of around 300 GW of the country, slated to be doubled by 2022.

  A recent study by an independent Delhi-based policy research institute has pointed to complete failure of Gujarat government’s coastal management authority to act against top corporates’ open violations of environmental norms in the coastal region. Giving instances of coastal projects undertaken by industrial groups of Adani, Reliance and Essar, the study says, though the Gujarat Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) may take cognizance of some violations, it would generally “drop” the cases citing “various reasons.”

Chauhan in BR Chopra's Mahabharata In a scathing attack on Gajendra Chauhan’s  appointment  as new chief of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), the protesting students of India’s one of the most prestigious institutes have drafted a petition telling him that he was chosen because he was “meant to be a puppet of the government”. Telling him that he lacks “capabilities” to lead the institute, the petition says, there is “a huge anomaly” in his body of work and “the very principles and aesthetic FTII stands for.”

Yellow box on left corner suggests flood level at 146.64 metres in 2013 In a major revelation, an independent Fact-Finding Team on Sardar Sarovar Project's (SSP's) submergence areas has said, on the basis of its recent field visit to SSP-affected villages, that Government of India (GoI) has completely ignored in its calculations several of the areas in Madhya Pradesh which may face massive submergence because of unprecedented floods.

Meenakshi Ganguly The Human Rights Watch (HRW), well-known US-based elite NGO, has blamed the previous Congress-led UPA government for kick-starting the process of suppressing civil society organizations, which has taken new proportions under the current Narendra Modi government. HRW's South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly has been quoted  by a report as saying that the "clampdown began, in a way, with the previous government by the Congress party."

Manisha walking to her school To mark Gujarat’s 13th round of Kanya Kelavni (June 11-13) annual child education enrolment fete, Unicef India has preferred to tell the story of 14-year-old Manisha of village Garol in the tribal district of Chhoudepur, Gujarat on a social network site. Her story has been singled out because as she remains “the only girl walking the 2.5 km distance to school every day”, says a photo feature by Unicef.

  A well-researched study by Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK's leading independent think tank, has regretted that the Gujarat government’s recent top-down approach to urban development, especially in Ahmedabad, has “negatively affected poor people”, even as damaging “relations between government and civil society.”

  The   Gujarat government’s claim that its social sector expenditure has been on a radical upswing – an urgent requirement considering the state’s known poor performance in health, education, water resources and poverty alleviation – appears to have gone phut. If the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) document “State Finances: A Study of Budgets 2014-15”, is any guide, Gujarat ranks 14th among 18 non-special category states in spending funds for the social sector, despite a high rate of growth.

In a fresh attempt to "suppress" dissent, the Gujarat government has put under house arrest well-known South Gujarat activist Lakhan Musafir, who is leading adivasis' struggle for preserving their land, sought to be acquired for the Statue of Liberty project off Narmada dam. This is the second time has been put under house arrest ahead of Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel's visit to Narmada in less than two months' time.

Well-known environmentalist Rohit Prajapati has alleged, on the basis of a recent survey of Lunia village in Vadodara district, that chemical industries in the region are indiscriminately and illegally using rare and highly scarce groundwater resources of farmers to continue polluting in the area. "It is shocking that even the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has no idea how groundwater outside the premises of industrial area is being used for industrial purpose", Prajapati has said.

  A top American thinktank expert has suggested that the Government of India’s unprecedented insistence in favour of urbanization as the only panacea for achieving a higher growth rate is highly premature, as it emanates for lack of analysis of ground realities by policy makers. In a recent  study , Yukon Huang, senior associate at the Carnegie Asia Programme, has underlined there is complete lack of “incentive” for rural people in India to shift to the urban areas.

While it is well known that Africans were taken as slave labourers to Americas in 18th and 19th century, few know that the British enslaved Indians, too, taking them all the way to Jamaica to work in sugar and banana plantations. A unique documentary, “Dreadlocks Story”, written, directed and produced by Linda Aïnouche, ethnographer-researcher and cultural analyst, has highlighted this unknown fact by tracing the cultural roots the Indians who over the last about two centuries have mixed with the Africans in Jamaica, a Caribbean island.

Well-known feminist-turned-Narendra Modi protege Madhu Kishwar has sharply attacked the Prime Minister's "use and throw attitude", saying this is the main reason why most of his well wishers are "sulking." Insisting that the BJP high command "better understand" this, Kishwar, who has been in limelight for criticizing Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani, warns, "The kind of social media warriors that had once flocked to Modi can’t be hired for money."

  Top international news agency Reuters' Breakingviews Index is all set to create a flutter: It has declared that one-third of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, as projected by Government of India, is "statistical mirage", adding, "Unless something has changed dramatically in recent years in how companies and consumers behave, the economy is more likely to be expanding at 5 percent, not the 7.5 percent claimed by the authorities."

Well-known social scientist Reetika Khera, quoting a right to information (RTI) plea, has  said  that the the Unique Identification (UID) or aadhar has failed in its chief mission of offering one-stop identity to millions denied with public benefits because they had no identification. The RTI reply says, as of April 2015, as many as 83.5 crore persons were provided with aadhar numbers, of which just about 2.19 lakh (0.03 per cent) were issued to people "who did not have a pre-existing ID document."

  The latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) study of state budgets has revealed that Gujarat’s outstanding liabilities, also identified as “total debts”, have crossed Rs 2 lakh crore in 2014-15, reaching Rs 2,100.4 billion, or a little above Rs 2.1 lakh crore, up from Rs 1,886.4 billion in 2013-14, a 10.19 per cent rise.

Google now says the image of Modi does not "reflect" its opinion Internet giant Google may have made a conditional apology "for any confusion or misunderstanding" caused on image search results showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as one of the ten on "top 10 criminals”. However, in what may prove to be an embarrassment to Modi supporters on twitter who had gone berserk demanding action against Google, the top search engine did not removed the Modi image from the search result whole of Thursday.

  A right to information (RTI) activist has calculated that several RTI requests filed to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), including his own, suggest that Rs 9 crore were spent during Narendra Modi’s much-publicised US visit in September 2014. However, it did not lead to any concrete result -- the activist cites a Government of India document which says that "there were no memorandums of understanding signed during Modi's visit to the US."

MJ Akbar In a major revelation, "The Caravan", a journal devoted to politics and culture, has  said  that Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat had asked in 2012 the top business house Essar to pay for an advertisement-cum-writeup to a Noida-based weekly on Gujarat's development under him. It is quite another thing that the business house politely turned down Modi's plea.

In an unusual scathing attack on the Right to Education (RTE) Act, passed by Parliament in 2009, renowned academic and educationist Anil Sadgopal has said that five years of its implementation has clearly shown that the law is nothing but a means to privatize India's education system. In a recent critique, forwarded to Counterview by Shiksha Adhikar Manch (Right to Education Forum), a Bhopal-based non-profit body, Sadgopal said Act is merely "meant to help corporates, NGOs and religious organizations to profiteer."

Photo on IITM webpage: Ramakrishna and Goddess Kali   Radical Socialist, calling itself “an internationalist Marxist organisation based in India”, has “dug out” what it believes is an objectionable post on the website of a web-page of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IITM) site, "enough" for the government authorities to act against a right-wing organization which authored it.