Ranking India 136th in World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), the prestigious international non-profit, non-government organization Reporters, Without Borders (RWB) has directly blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s politics for the country deteriorating its ranking by three points in a year.

  In a major exposure, a top data analysis site has  revealed  that among larger Indian states, "model" Gujarat has the least percentage of vaccinated children -- 50.4%. Basing on 2015-16 Government of India data, the analysis, carried out by Alison Saldanha, says that other richer states like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have also begun to show signs of complicity towards the health of their children.

Jagdish Patel A new estimate, arrived at by a Vadodara-based civil rights organization working on occupational health issues in Gujarat, has estimated that as many as 186 persons have died in 2016 alone in the state because of various occupational hazard diseases. Sourced on vernacular media of South Gujarat, the organization, People’s Training and Research Centre (PTRC), believes that the actual numbers should be “much higher”, as the news items published in the dailies are "based on police complaints."

  The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), operating under the International Religious Freedom  Act  of 1998, has asked the Government of India “to amend its nonsensical constitutional provision that deems Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains to be Hindus.” The  report  underlines, “These three faiths have their own distinctive founders, religious histories, and practices followed by millions of people in India and abroad.”

The Annual Report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India, for the year 2016-17 has qualified the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS), which has been working under the guidance of one of the topmost tribal rights activists, Prafulla Samantara, a “Maoist affiliate.”

At the dharna site In a development which may prove costly to the BJP-ruled Rajasthan government, the state’s gypsies or banjaras – categorized as other backward castes (OBCs) – have joined hands in the protests in front of the state assembly in Jaipur against cow vigilantism, which began on April 24.

The Gujarat state assembly may have cleared a law allowing an extremely harsh punishment entailing a maximum of life and a minimum of 10 years imprisonment for cow slaughter. However, in less than month after the Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was passed in the absence of the Opposition Congress, with the visitors’ gallery packed with saffron-clad Hindu priests, Gujarat’s Dalit organizations wonder if the law would apply to those who force cows to consume plastics along with leftover food offered to them.

Awareness of reservation policy (%) A recent “social attitudes and perceptions” survey has surprisingly revealed that though reservation system in India is prevalent in the country ever since the Constitution came into existence in 1950, a whopping 52% of 1,270 adults in Delhi and 72% of 1,473 adults in UP have not heard of the word “reservations” or “aarakshan”.

  Top tribal rights activist Prafulla Samantara has received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for committing his life in the 12-year-long battle for Odisha’s indigenous Dongria Kondh people against land acquisition sought by UK-based MNC Vedanta in Niyamgiri Hills, where it had planned massive open-pit aluminium ore mine.

  In a new notification, issued on March 14, the Government of India has decided to grant “post-facto” environmental approvals, described by senior environmental researchers, Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon, as suggesting that it is willing to “bend backwards to give a clean chit to units or operations that have been engaged in illegitimate ventures.”

  In a development which might further push the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) situation towards the brink, liberal sections of the state, torn apart because of unprecedented violence, have begun to feel threatened. The most recent example cited in this context is of a person considered as the state’s first Right to Information (RTI) activist being “harassed and threatened.”

  Maharashtra’s maverick MLA Bacchu Kadu, who was set free from South Gujarat after being detained on Thursday at inter-state borders, was again nabbed by the Gujarat police off Mahsana, as he was proceeding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hometown Vadnagar to stage his protest against the plight of Vidarbha region farmers.

  The Gujarat police have prevented Aasood Yatra, a non-political farmers’ protest rally, led by maverick independent Maharashtra MLA Bacchu Kadu of Amravati, at the inter-state border immediately after it reached Navapur village, to proceed further into Gujarat.

Aruna Roy By Our Representative The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI), whose campaign pushed India towards the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, has suggested that the recently-proposed RTI draft rules virtually proposes to allow the Government of India (GoI) to coopt the Central Information Commission (CIC), the RTI watchdog of GoI.

India loses US dollars 41.17 billion dollars, or 2.34% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as a result of corporate tax avoidance. While in quantitative terms this loss is the fourth largest in the world, next to the United States (188.8 billion dollars), China (66.8 billion dollars) and Japan (46.8 billion dollars), the loss as percentage of GDP tells a totally different story.

  Did Dr BR Ambedkar, father of the Indian Constitution and Dalit icon, hate Islam and Muslims, in the same way as he disliked Hinduism? It would seem so, if facts brought to light on his birth anniversary (April 14) by a prestigious site, which claims to “value independence and transparency”, are any indication.

In its new report , well-known US-based Pew Research Centre has said that “among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Nigeria had the highest overall levels of government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion.”

  In a move which has not surprised farmers' leaders, prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in Surat for  road show , the police detained President of Khedut Samaj South Gujarat chief Jayesh Patel (Delat). The detention took place despite the fact that the Khedut Samaj did not plan any protest programmes, nor did it seek any permission for protest.

Contesting data on poor work rate participation (WRP) among women data, as calculated by the Government of India, well-known Gujarat-based economist Indira Hirway, has said that, if calculated on the basis of latest methodology, men spend 27 per cent, while women spend 38 per cent of their time on work.

While Indian youth appear to be becoming outwardly modern in their appearance and consumption habits, their “thoughts and views reflect a troubling inclination towards intolerance and conservatism”, says a new study , carried out jointly by Delhi-based Centre for the Study in Developing Societies (CSDS) and the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).

A recent study has starkly revealed that, in the recent past, the poorer and oppressed sections of the Indian youth have refused to go out and take part in protest movements as vehemently as the youth from the middle classes have done, even as the number of participants in protests, too, has gone down.

BJP most preferred party with 20% support from youth Even as a new study has said that close to half (48%) the youths of India do not wish to identify themselves with any political party, what should be an eye-opener for the Congress is, while 20% of the Indian youths are “fond of the BJP”, exactly half, 10%, like the Congress.

Taking issue with “hardline” Ambedkarites who have been strongly critical of Gandhiji, top expert and documentary film-maker for 40 long years,  Anand Patwardhan  has revealed that India’s undisputed Dalit icon Baba Ambedkar in 1932 not only highly praised Gandhiji but called him “Mahatma”.

Inequality in urban India Government of India’s National Sample Survey (NSS) figures show that the average value of assets held by urban households falling in the top 10% income category (identified as decile 10) in urban India is Rs 1.5 crore, which is 50,034 times the average value of assets held by an average urban household in the lowest 10% category, or decile 1.

Why do poor people, especially of the rural areas, especially tribals, “procreate” more often than the rich? A clas 12 sociology textbook, produced by the Maharashtra government believes this is because they “do not have sufficient means of recreational facilities.”

  A recent book by a top-ranking Indian-American political scientist has calculated, on the basis of India’s data of general elections, that a candidate with serious criminal cases against him has 18 per cent chances of winning a general election in India, while a candidate with no cases has just six per cent chances of winning.

  Women’s activists, in a joint statement, have taken strong exception to the Allahabad High Court judgment dated March, 2017, which, they say, “uncritically legitimizes” UP’s controversial anti-Romeo squads on the basis of the state DGP’s  guidelines .

National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), the apex body of India’s Dalit rights organizations, has in a report submitted to the United Nations (UN) insisted that the country’s reservation measures “must be extended to Dalits of all faiths, especially to Dalit Christians and Muslims.”

Is the Government of India, wittingly or unwittingly, trying to jeopardize the life and security of Right to Information (RTI) activists through the  new set of Draft Rules , which have been made public for discussion? An analysis by well-known RTI activist Vankatesh Nayak says, this is exactly what would happen, with the draft rules seeking to legally allow withdrawal of RTI appeals.

  A civil society fact-finding team, which visited Vadavali village of North Gujarat where communal clashes on March 25 led to the death of one person, has claimed that it was “organized” riot with the aim of “dividing” Hindus and Muslims, blaming BJP for “strategically using violence through its various wings to create tension” with an eye on state assembly polls, due in December.