Amidst continuing strike by sanitation workers attached with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in favour of regularizing their employment, latest facts reveal there are more than 200 spots where they are "forced" to do the despicable job of manual scavenging in a city which is desperately waiting to acquire the UNESCO Heritage tag.

One of the topmost Indian experts on water resource management, Prof Tushaar Shah, has warned that the massive unplanned drive, which has begun across the country, to allow installation of highly subsidized solar pumps to suck out scarce groundwater resources for irrigation may cause a major environmental disaster, if not properly handled.

Polluting coal-fired power plant along Ganga in West Bengal A media study team, investigating pollution levels of Ganga three years after the Narendra Modi government came up with its Ganga Action Plan to clean up India's most revered river, has revealed that only 10 per cent of the sewage produced along the mainstream of the river, and collected over its 2,500 km stretch, is treated.

A civil rights group has taken strong objection to the Government of India seeking to "coerce" the country's residents into accepting 12 digit biometric UID/aadhaar mumber as a fait accompli at a time when a petition of right to privacy under aadhaar is under consideration of the Supreme Court.

Jignesh Mevani A major plank of young Jignesh Mevani, widely projected as the new Dalit icon of Gujarat, is that the state government should provide five acres of land to each Dalit family, and it should part of the solution to rehabilitate those doing the despicable job of manually scavenging of dead cattle. The view apparently stems from the understanding that agriculture is a respectable profession, and can certainly provide a good livelihood option. Mevani has threatened, in case five acres land is not offered by September 15, he would launch a “rail roko” agitation. Trained as a lawyer under late Mukul Sinha, a well-known Gujarat High Court advocate who shot into prominence for his tough counter-questions to those who appeared before the Nanavati-Shah Commission of inquiry into Gujarat riots, Mevani’s “passion” for land is not new. It existed five years ago, too, when I first met him in the Times of India office in Gandhinagar. He had told me how most of the land, which had been r...

LPI among top lower middle income group countries A new World Bank report, which rates the logistics performance of 160 countries for on the basis availability of infrastructure to international traders, has found that India considerably improved its performance from the 54th position to 35th between 2014 and 2016.

  A former high-profile Government of India official is all set to create a flutter by pointing out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have taken up the cause of Balochistan, yet the “credit for spreading universal publicity on human rights abuses in Balochistan goes to the London-based Amnesty International”, under attack in India.

  Considered a “face” of the Gujarat riots and a “brand ambassador” of Hindu Rashtra, the recent Dalit uprising in Gujarat has made Ashok Mochi aka Parmar a symbol of Dalit-Muslim unity. Highlighting this,  a report  points to how he seen participating in Gujarat riots in 2002.

On stage: Thangarh family members In first of a series of shows of strength following the success of the August 15 Una rally, called to protest against flogging of four Dalit youths on July 11, the Gujarat Scheduled Caste Anti-Atrocities Struggle Committee on Sunday held a well-attended rally in Gadhinagar in order to highlight the plight of the three Dalit families who had lost their sons in police firing in Thangarh four years ago.

Arvind Subramanian Close on the heels of the appointment of Urjit Patel, formerly with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Reliance Industries Ltd, as the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor, hardline BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy has stepped up his attack on Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser (CEA) of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

  Even as thousands of Gujarat-based Narmada dam oustees on Sunday took out a rally, blocking the road leading to the spot where the dam is located in the Kevadiya colony, 150 of them were arrested. They were protesting against the alleged refusal of the state government to "rehabilitate" them.

The People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), India's premier human rights organization, has said that there is little difference between political party in power in Indian states seeking to impose “coercive, anti-democratic, sedition provision of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to silence dissent and crush criticism.”

Modi aide and Niti Ayog vice-chairman Panagariya's tweet While top aides of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have  declared , on the basis of the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2016, that India showing an improvement of 15 points in a year suggests the Modi government’s strategy to encourage innovation, significantly, most of the GII score is based on data collected in 2014 or earlier.

Photo tweeted by Modi of Nagla Fatela villagers Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suffered a major embarrassment when the Government of India's Press Information Bureau (PIB) was forced to issue a statement which virtually amounted to denying Modi's claim in his Independence Day speech that a village near Delhi, Nagla Fatela, received electricity under him 70 years after Independence.

An injured undergoing treatment in Rajula An atmosphere of unprecedented tension and fear prevails among the local Dalits, who participated in a major protest rally organized by the Ahmedabad-based Una Dalit Atyachar Ladat Samiti under the leadership of Jignesh Mevani. Those who had come to participate in the rally were violently attacked about 12 kilometres from Una, where the rally took place on August 15.

From left: Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar at Una rally In a strong message to the powers that be, thousands of Dalits gathered for a rally, held in Una town of Saurashtra region, pledged to begin a rail roko (stop the train) movement in case the Gujarat government fails to begin allocating, within a month, five acres of land to each rural Dalit family seeking rehabilitation from the despicable caste practice of manual scavenging and disposing of cattle carcasses.

Sarvaiya (right) Amidst news coming in that the Dalit Asmita Yatra has reached Una on August 14 evening through “an alternative route” because people from some of the nearby villages pelted stones on those reaching the town for an Independence Day rally, the family of Balubhai Sarvaiya has received a fresh threat that he would not be spared for “killing” a cow.

A Bastar tribal whose daughter was picked up, killed An eight-person fact-finding team under the auspices of the All-India People’s Forum (AIPF) has found an unprecedented atmosphere of mutual suspicion and insecurity among the villagers of the Naxal-infected regions of Chhattisgarh it visited – Bastar, Dantewada, Sukma and Bijapur districts -- with the region fast turning into a Hindutva laboratory.

The year was 1993. I had just joined the Times of India, Ahmedabad. With very little knowledge of Gujarat then, as part of my frantic effort to know the state, its people, culture, society and politics, I would meet as many people as I could –experts, activists, politicians, others. One person whom I would often visit was Achyut Yagnik, considered then – as now –the main contact point for journalists landing up in Ahmedabad. As friend, philosopher and guide, Yagnik would also help researchers, Indian and foreign, in every possible way, sending them to Gujarat’s different parts to interact with knowledgeable individuals. One such researcher was Shalini Randeria. An ethnic Gujarati settled in Germany, Prof Randeria is currently rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. There was a special reason why I could connect myself with her –we were in the same class in Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Delhi, in 1960s. Yagnik handed me over a photocopy of her PhD thesis which she had just compl...

Dalit rally in Botad town By Our Representative Intelligence officials, attached with the Gujarat government's home department as also the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, have begun a frantic attempt to find out the “antecedents” of those leading the Ahmedabad-Una padyatra (foot march), seeking oath from Dalit community leaders to take a pledge not to ever lift dead cattle, a caste-based occupation.

 Three Dalit research students of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), all of them colleagues of Rohith Vemula, forced to commit suicide allegedly because of saffron pressure early this year, have called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest “outrage” against cow vigilantes as “dishonest”.

Modi, Saurabh Patel, Mukesh Ambani In a surprise move, Saurabh Patel, long considered the most industry-friendly face of Gujarat powerdom, has failed to find place in the new Cabinet. There is no official explanation why Saurabh, who was in charge of three most important portfolios in the Cabinet minister, finance, industry and energy and petrochemicals in the Cabinet, was humbled.

You can be a frank and an approachable leader, but is that enough for you to solve social issues which bog society? Soon after Vijay Rupani became Gujarat chief minister on August 5 evening, a top Sachivalaya insider, whom I have known for more than a decade, phoned me up to know what people thought of “the new incumbent”. Hesitant, I told him that he knew Rupani for quite some time, in fact ever since Rupani was in the Rajkot Municipal Corporation, hence he should know better. Refusing to be named, he didn’t mince words, “Rupani is frank, approachable, dynamic”, adding, “It has always been a boon to work with him.” I have known Rupani a little bit, though certainly not as much as this insider, who keeps a close tab of what’s goings on in the nerve centre of Gujarat politics. Without any doubt, Rupani is “approachable”. Off and on, while covering Sachivalaya, I would consult him about political goings on around Modi, and though he was frank and approachable, he never crossed the BJP’s ...

  Setting aside feverish speculation over the past few days that Nitin Patel would become the next chief minister of Gujarat following the resignation earlier this week of Anandiben Patel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday opted for his well-known protege, Vijay Rupani, for the crucial post. Unlike Patel, who is known for his short temper with party colleagues as well as with others, Rupani is suave and affable – a characteristic lacking in the current tribe of BJP politicians in the state.

  Top civil rights groups across the world have sharply criticized the World Bank’s new set of environmental and social safeguard policies,  approved  by its board of directors on August 4, saying they were “frustrated and disappointed” that the Bank “couldn't agree on stronger policies to fully guarantee the rights of communities affected by the projects they fund.”

Mica used to create shimmer in cosmetics An explosive investigation into India’s illegal mica mines in Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, which employ children as young as five, has revealed that that there have seven child deaths in the past two months, but these deaths have suffered a massive “cover-up”.