A top-ranking think tank attached with one of India's foremost business houses has warned that, despite the Government of India target have ensure that 40% of the energy needs would be fulfilled by renewable sources in about a decade, this is not going to happen over the next two decades or more.

Gandhi Samadhi being removed in Badwani Even as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar, accompanied by Sardar Sarovar dam affected communities, started indefinite mass fast against the alleged Madhya Pradesh government attempt at "drowning and forcefully evicting people from Narmada Valley without complete and Just rehabilitation", her supporters gathered at Jantar Mantar in Delhi in solidarity protest.

In a surprise move, Vallabh Kathiria, who once belonged to the anti-Narendra Modi camp in the BJP during the latter's chief ministership of Gujarat, has written to the Prime Minister asking him to reject an application by the Delhi University with the Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change for “environmental release” or commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) mustard hybrid seed.

  India may be wanting to eliminate malaria by 2030, but available details suggest that not only India is far from achieving the aim, "between 2012 and 2016, there has been a 300% rise in the cases of chikungunya, dengue followed at 157% and Japanese encephalitis at 124%."

Well-known Kerala-based academic Meera Velyudhan has taken strong exception to what she calls "false communal propaganda" being spread that India's first Dalit president  KR Narayanan wasn't actually a "Hindu Dalit" but a Christian. The propaganda, according to her, is aimed at giving Ramanth Kovind, known for RSS leanings, the status of first Dalit President of India.

In what is being described by its organizers as “the largest gathering of ex-Muslims in history”, an International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression, held in London on July 22-24 was participation of delegates as “Islam's apostates, many from countries where the legal penalty for apostasy is death.”

  India may be wanting to eliminate malaria by 2030, but available details suggest that not only India is far from achieving the aim, "between 2012 and 2016, there has been a 300% rise in the cases of chikungunya, dengue followed at 157% and Japanese encephalitis at 124%."

  It was April-end 2009. As part of a journalists’ group taken to “cover” Lok Sabha elections on the polling day, we visited Vasania, known more as Shankarsinh Vaghela’s village, about 20 km north of Gujarat capital Gandhinagar. Brisk polling was on. Talking to the villagers, we were pretty impressed: While Vaghela himself was fighting from a constituency which is about 150 km away, here everyone seemed to vote Congress, the party he quit his 77th birthday, July 21. A local scribe rushed out of the polling booth and told me: “Do you know? There is no BJP polling agent in the booth! All are Vaghela men. So no vote for the BJP!” His “information” made me curious. I began inquiring from the Congress people, mostly youth, sitting a little way from the polling booth on what the reality was. One of them, whose main job was to provide slips to those going to the polling booth, told me quietly: “BJP people wouldn’t dare enter the polling booth. They dare not put up their tables outside the...

  A recent Government of India  report   has said that its skill development programmes have actually promoted “hotbed of crony capitalism”, with what were supposed to be “industry-run” centres having actually extracted “maximum benefit from public funds.”

  A just-released US State Department report has suggested that despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement to de-monetize Rs 500 and 1,000 notes in November last year, the Indian authorities have failed to achieve one of its state objectives, to curb suspicious sources of funding terrorist activities.

  A top international  report  has said that India fares “very badly, ranking 132 out of 152 countries in its commitment to reducing inequality – a very worrying situation given that the country is home to 1.2 billion people, many of whom live in extreme poverty.”

  In an important revelation, Monster India,  claiming  to the country’s “leading online career and recruitment resource with its cutting edge technology”, has said that while the supervisory gender wage gap may have dropped has last year by 8.1 percentage points (from 28.1% to 20%), at the non-supervisory level it has “grown by 5 percentage points.”

  A recent analysis in a top business site has  suggested  that the Gujarat government has messed up data on the “successes” it claims to have achieved in the high-profile Vibrant Gujarat world business meets, with the state’s own data revealing that the summits have failed to generate jobs, which has been one of the proclaimed aims.

  The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in its quarterly  survey  on expectations of manufacturers for the period April-June 2017, has said that “future investment outlook remains less optimistic”, with “74% respondents reporting that they don’t have any plans for capacity additions for the next six months.” Observers consider this as lingering impact of demonetization, effected by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2016.

Deaths of land, environment defenders in 2016  A just-released UK  report  has revealed that the number of people killed while fighting for land rights and environmental protection in India has trebled in India, from just 6 in 2015 to 16 in 2016, blaming it on “a disturbing trend" of increasing police brutality in India, wherein the Modi administration shows its determination “to stifle opposition to ‘development’ policies by any means necessary.”

Amidst  media reports  that the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) might be withdrawn from certain parts of Arunachal Pradesh and adjoining parts of Assam, reply to a Right to Information (RTI) plea has suggested that it is not North-East, but Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) which has suffered most because of human rights (HR) violations through using AFSPA.

Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mevani, Reshma Patel Tens of activists, including top Gujarat Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Reshma Patel, were detained on Wednesday for holding Azadi Kooch or Freedom March from North Gujarat town Mehsana, about 60 kilometres from Ahmedabad.

  MSH Sheikh, who heads the environmental organization, Brackish Water Research Centre (BWRC), operating from Olpad, Surat district, has found that the coastline along the Valsad district “is being hit by oil spill”, with 50 km sea shore “slowly getting the tar balls over the last several days.”

Ten days after “Not in my name” protests commenced in top Indian cities of India, Ahmedabad’s posh Satellite area saw a few hundred people – mostly activists and intellectuals – come together on Saturday to "demonstrate in solidarity" against frequent incidents of lynching across the country.

  A new Government of India survey has revealed that urban Gujarat’s “unincorporated enterprises” – those which are not registered under the Companies Act, 1956 – are poor pay masters compared to as many as 10 states. Conducted in 2015-16 by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), the survey shows that Gujarat’s hired workers earned on an average Rs 90,146 per person per annum, which is less than the national average of Rs 92,441.

  In what is being described as a bold and unprecedented move, top Gujarat Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani has publicly apologized for using choicest abuses in conservation on phone. The person on the other side, who is said to be living in Kalol, reportedly taped Mevani’s voice and floated the audio recording on a Dalit WhatsApp group and Facebook.

  In what may sound music to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Sydney-based non-profit organization, Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), has said that over the last one year “India has moved up four positions in the overall ranking from 141st to 137th” in Global Peace Index (GPI).

Cops surround Dalits at Jhansi railway station About 45 Gujarat Dalits, carrying 125 kg soap, with imprint of Gautam Budhha on it, have been offloaded at Jhanshi railway station. Travelling by Sabarmati Express, which they boarded with the soap on Saturday evening, the Dalits had planned to take the soap and deliver it to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, telling him to “clean up” his views on Dalits.

  A recent Government of India  report  has delivered stiff warning that groundwater resources in growing urban centres are likely to become “contaminated as much by residual contaminants from erstwhile agricultural activities and poor rural sanitation as by contamination from more current haphazard waste-water disposal.”