It was early 1970s, when I was sought to be navigated into Marxism-Leninism by my then “political mentor” and a senior student colleague, Sohail Hashmi. A total novice in politics, I was doing bachelors in English at Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, while he was in human geography. Impressed by his argumentative power, I would often look upon Hashmi – formerly very active with CPM, but now more into culture, heritage, and things similar – as one of those who would, very soon, trigger a proletarian revolution in India, like Lenin and his colleagues did in Russia! While I don’t care to remember most of what Hashmi had taught me (perhaps he himself would have unlearned some of it), I still recall a seemingly academic argument he had advanced in order to prove how Hindus and Muslims faced similar exploitation. This is what he told me, roughly: “Make a graph and draw two separate lines of class exploitation – one for Hindus, another for Muslims. You would find that both Hindu and Musl...

  Some of the world’s top institutes favouring free market have got together to declare that well-known UK-based NGO Oxfam’s latest  report  “An Economy for the 99%”, which claims that eight richest men in the world, between them, have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the world’s population, is “misleading”.

Speaking on “Shrinking Democratic Spaces and the Role of Civil Society”, doyen of rural journalism in India, P Sainath, has said that a major reason for dwindling democratic values is astonishing growth in inequalities in India. He was giving a public lecture at the Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Ahmedabad, to mark the 30th anniversary of premier non-government organization (NGO), Janvikas.

A  Muslim resettlement colony in Ahmedabad A new book released on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Janvikas, one of the premier civil rights organizations of India, has estimated that around 50,000 Gujarat 2002 riot-affected Muslims should be qualified to be considered internally-displaced persons (IDPs) – a term coined by the United Nations to identify those ravaged by violent social conflicts.

Veteran historian Prof S Irfan Habib has taken strong exception to what he calls efforts to drag into controversy one of India’s topmost nationalist icons – Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose – by those who have little to with him – or with his "politics during the freedom struggle.”

  A new report by top UK-based multinational NGO Oxfam on dangers of global inequality has  estimated  that over the next 20 years, 500 people world over will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.

 Well-known academic and social activist Bela Bhatia, who has been working for several years in the Maoist-infested area of Bastar in Chhattisagarh, has been threatened to leave her house, where she currently lives – Papra village outside Jagdalpur town – or face “severe” consequences.

  The World Economic Forum, in its recently-released “The Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2017”, has ranked India No 60th in inclusive development index (IDI) out of 79 countries it has categorized as “developing economies”.

Data provided by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 not only suggest that girl child education remains a major hurdle in rural Gujarat (click HERE ), widely regarded by Government of India as a “model” state for other states to follow. Gujarat is found to be behind a large number of states even in learning levels at the primary level.

The 11th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2016), released in Delhi, has revealed that Gujarat, a model state for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, remains one of the poorest performers in enrolling girls in rural schools, both at upper primary and secondary level.

Tribals protest in Ahmedabad for land rights A new compilation on providing cultivation rights to tribal farmers has revealed that in the backward Dahod district of Gujarat, out of a total of 20,150 claims submitted to the local forest rights committee, formed by the state government to verify and hand over land titles, just about 3,162 farmers -- just 15.68% as against the state average of 40% -- have been handed over cultivation rights over the last one decade.

 In a prediction which has stunned India's top policy makers, the powerful consulting firm, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), has said that India’s real gross domestic product (GDP) growth would slip to 6% in 2016-17, and would remain “about 6% per annum for the next five years.”

 India's authoritative data collection and analysis firm, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), has predicted that the consumption demand will drop by a whopping 4% in the second half of 2016-17, thanks to the “shock” of a sudden withdrawal of 86% of liquidity on November 8, 2016.

Modi at Vibrant Gujarat summit, 2017 Experts attached with Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL's) thinktank have strongly advocated “federalization of foreign policy” for India, insisting, globalization has “eroded traditional boundaries”, and “the Central government by itself is not well-equipped to meet the challenges posed by new political, economic and social forces.”

In an unusual defence of the Khadi Village and Industries Commission (KVIC) – better known as Khadi Gramodyog – “deleting” Mahatma Gandhi on the KVIC's 2017 calender, printing instead the photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP has said that Modi alone has “followed” the Mahatma as no one else, “whether it is Gandhi's spectacles or thoughts.”

 In one of the sharpest critiques of air pollution in the recent past, a fresh report has said that air quality levels in urban India between 2010 and 2015 deteriorated by 13% at a time when these improved by 17% in China. The pollution levels improved in the US by 15%, and 20% in European Union (EU), it reveals.

  By Our Representative Bodakdev, a posh locality of Ahmedabad, Gujarat's business capital, has been witnessing an unusual protest since December 26, 2016. Any passer-by can see a temporary stage and tents erected and various posters installed containing slogans and other information.

  Blogger James Wilson, a consultant with the Government of Kerala, debunking the popular myth that Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) were 30-40% of the total currency in circulation, has said, quoting official sources, that, in value terms, they did not form more than 0.0018% of the total currency in circulation in 2015-16, with a declining trend over the last five years.

In a major confirmation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly backs social media trolls who use abusive words against anyone criticizing him, BJP's top dissident leader Arun Shourie has said, Modi had “a reception for them” after they abused him for being critical of Modi in a  TV interview with Karan Thapar .

Shantikanta Das Hardline BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy has directed his guns against Union economic affairs secretary Shantikanta Das, who has been one of the chief implementors of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's November 8 demonetization move, calling him a "Chidambaram confidante", and asking Modi not to make Das new Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman.

  By Our Representative A day after he was stopped from protesting against the Vibrant Gujarat world business meet – which began in Gandhinagar's Mahatma Mandir on Tuesday – by detaining him for the whole day along with his supporters (click  HERE ), Gujarat's top Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, with tens of his mainly rural Dalit supporters, reached Ahmedabad railway station to carry out “rail roko” (stop train) agitation.

  The National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), representing tens of mass organizations across India, has asked the National Human Rights Commission chairman to immediately intervene and inquire into “illegal” release of water from Gandikota reservoir, submerging six villages in of YSR Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh.

Mevani supporters detained at Adalaj Anti-Narendra Modi protest against the Vibrant Gujarat world business summit, planned by top Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani with last-hour help of Sagar Rabari of the Khedut Samaj Gujarat, a non-political farmers' organizations, fizzled out on Tuesday, with the detention of the two leaders. A dozen of their supporters were also detained at Adalaj, the spot "fixed" for starting the protest.  

 The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has rejected a right to information (RTI) application filed by senior RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak to part with any information on the use of pellet guns while dealing with protesters in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since July 2016, saying it “is not related to human rights violation.”

  Neither Gujarat government’s education department, nor women and child department, has any information about private pre-primary schools operating in the state. In separate replies to a right to information (RTI) plea by Mujahid Nafees, they have said, pre-primary schools do not come under their purview, hence the question of providing information on them “does not arise.”

In a notice it has sent to the Chhattisgarh government, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has said, during its on-the-spot investigation, it has found 16 women prima facie victims of rape, sexual and physical assault by state police personnel.

 Following Swati Chaturvedi’s  book  “I Am a Troll”, which created unprecedented flutter for pointing out how the social media cell of BJP would spread hatred, yet another ex-BJP volunteer has declared how the cell worked for continuously  spreading online “hate directed at minorities, some journalists, and anyone else who has opposing views”.

Tribals evicted from the reserve area Bringing to light what they termed as “illegal relocation” of five tribal villages of Similipal Tiger Reserve by the Mayurbhanj district administration and the Forest Department, Odisha, two civil rights organizations, Similipal Surakhya Manch, Mayurbhanj and the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), have said that plans are now underway to relocate more villages from what is called the “buffer zone” of the tiger reserve.

  A top Gujarat government water resources official, who has been aide to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has warned that Gujarat’s Narmada-based canal network has been “reduced to be vulnerable”, underlining it does not even have the “buffer for 15 days” for supplying water, making its “closures for maintenance” almost an impossible task.

  The Government of India's (GoI's) allocation of Rs 7,348 crore over the next three financial years as universal maternity entitlement has been termed as a “fraction of what is actually required”, even assuming the only two births are covered under the Maternity Benefit Programme (MBP), announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his new year speech.

 In a sharp critique of the Government of India thinking, continuing since the UPA days, that rural women are “vulnerable to sexual assault” when they defecate in the open, a recent study carried has said that such a view only distracts policy makers “from the real social divisions, based on caste, that prevent the adoption of affordable latrines”.

  Protests have broken out in Delhi's Kathputli Colony, the world's biggest settlement of street performers, following threat of forcible eviction to 3,500 families, mainly puppeteers. Belonging to Rajasthan, Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, they have been living here for around five decades, They are being told that they would be shifted for two years to a “transit camp.”

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim of “new” maternity benefit scheme of Rs 6,000 to be transferred directly to the beneficiary is “misleading”. Announced on December 31, 2016, it is meant for pregnant women, who undergo institutional delivery and vaccinate their children.

A file noting A fresh study on the implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2006, has said that the collective backlog in the disposal of appeals and complaints in 16 information commissions (ICs), for which data was available, was alarming as 1,87,974 cases were pending on December 31, 2015.

Vijay, a 55-year-old casual worker who seeks work every day standing at one of the 50-odd labour markets or chowktis in Jaipur, says, a few days after the demonetization announcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, he was thrown out of out of the small room he lived in with his wife as he failed to pay his rent.