Ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s India visit in December second week, 13 villages in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, have declared their opposition to the proposed nuclear project by passing a unanimous resolution. While the plant is to be built by the French company Areva, the Japanese Mitsubishi is likely to supply crucial components for the nuclear reactor of the plant.

  A top international survey, which is likely to create ripples in India’s corridors of power as well as the corporate world, has said that incidence of corporate fraud in India has taken a massive leap of 11 per cent, from 69 per cent in 2013-14 to 80 per cent in 2015-26, which is essentially the period when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been in power.

  A new research work, which would which is likely to sound music to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chosen economic advisors, especially Niti Ayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, says that the former UPA government’s flagship programme National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), has had a negative impact on school going children, especially in the age-group 13-17.

  Was there an attempt to rig elections to the six municipal corporations held in Gujarat on November 22? If available information with Counterview on Ahmedabad is any indication, it would seem so. In fact, indications have emerged that there was a meticulous planning to ensure that, at several places, voters are unable to cast their votes, and among the “victims” of this planning were not just ordinary voters but even persons like octogenarian ex-BJP chief minister Keshubhai Patel.

  Well-known US-based think-tank, Pew Research Centre, in a new study has found that India ranks No 24 of 38 democratic countries it has surveyed for coming up with Free Expression Index (FEI). The United States ranks No 1 with an FEI of 5.73, followed by Poland (5.66), Spain (5.62), Mexico (5.4), Venezuela (5.17), and Canada (5.18).

Anti-Narmada dam agitation in Madhya Pradesh The final report of the Independent People’s Tribunal on Sardar Sarovar, “Claims and Realities of Development and Rehabilitation”, released in Delhi, says that “thousands of families, especially the tribals, fisher folk and landless poor” have not being given “any alternative place to live”, though the Gujarat government is going ahead with raising the height of the Narmada dam from 121.92 metres to 138.68 metres.

In an important exposure, Gujarat, touted till recently by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “model” state for others to follow, has been ranked No 15 among 20 major Indian states in child development index (CDI). The ranking has been  calculated  for 2013-14 by two top economists Reetika Khera and Jean Dreze on the basis of the Government of India’s recently released summary findings of the Rapid Survey On Children 2013-14 (RSOC).

  A Bangalore-based startup, which helps citizens file queries under the Right-to-Information (RTI) Act,  OnlineRTI.com , has revealed in the year since Narendra Modi’s government took charge, there has been a whopping 90 per cent increase in bank frauds, as per Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data obtained through RTI.

  Making a scathing critique of the prevailing social bias in collection of data on health in India, a recent  study  published in the well-known global health journal “Lancet” has said that “about 80% of patients visit a private practitioner, which they do at their own expense”, yet most “health-related data are obtained from public hospitals and public health-care service units.”

The India Resource Centre (IRC), which claims to have run a running campaign against the Coca Cola’s expansion plans for its bottling plant in Mehdigunj, Varanasi, for seeking to use groundwater in an area which was declared overexploited believes that the Government of India’s new guidelines for industrial use of groundwater in water stressed does have any “measuring and monitoring mechanisms for groundwater recharge, and the guidelines are open to abuse by industries.”

The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), India’s powerful organization of top corporate giants, has declared that the “corporate results at the end of first quarter of current fiscal (2015-16) painted a rather gloomy picture, as the financial performance of Indian companies, especially manufacturing sector firms, deteriorated.”

A fresh international alert has come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins his first UK visit: A  study  carried out by three top scholars for the London School of Economics (LSE) has said that at 8.6 per cent rate of growth officially projected by the Government of india, the country is all set to emit 9,285 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum by 2030, next only to that of China.

  A new  report  by the World Bank, “Global Findex Database 2014: Measuring Financial Inclusion Around the World”, has said that the Government of India’s high-profile Jan Dhan scheme, launched for bank transfer subsidies to the poorer sections of India’s population, has been lacking any “explicit purpose”, one reason why around 43 per cent of the country’s accounts are "dormant."

A recent estimate by the mines, minerals & People (mm&P), a national alliance of mining affected communities, has said that every year around 80,000-90,000 cases of illegal mining are reported by governments across India. While the MB Shah commission, which investigated into their operations, assessed that they cost a whopping Rs 60,000 crore to state coffers, the fine realized from them per year is just a pittance, about Rs 11 crore.

Well-known psephologist Yogendra Yadav believes that a major reason why the TV channels have failed to properly predict what would happen in the Bihar elections was a “sampling bias built in the methodology of the exit polls” which failed take into account upper caste bias.

The Coalition for Genetically Modified (GM) Free India, the apex body of tens of organizations fighting for promoting organic food, suspects that the recent application made for the approval for commercialization of GM mustard, moved with the apex regulatory body Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), which is under the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, may be accepted.