Govt of India ministry uses Canadian, US road pix to show how nice Indian highways built under Modi are: Alt News

By Our Representative
In a second major exposure, well-known fact-check site, Alt News, has found that the Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways, Government of India, has used two photographs from Canada and US to showcase how good India's roads are. Alt News did this on checking a Tweet by Khalid Hussain (@khalidmfp) who said that the ministry website used the photograph of Gardiner Expressway, Toronto, Canada, "fooling 1.3 billion Indians".
Using internet tools, Alt News, run by Pratik Sinha, a Gujarat-based human rights campaigner, who also happens to be a software engineering, said, as the picture shared by the Twitter user seemed to be of the "same road as seen from the similar background" but was "not identical to the picture used on the ministry website", it was verified using "street view feature of Google Maps", and found that the allegation was true.

"Yes, it is indeed the Gardiner expressway that the Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways has used on the website", Alt News said, adding, a YouTube video of Gardiner expressway further confirmed that "the imagery used by the Transport Ministry website is actually from Toronto Canada."
Not stopping here, Alt News looked at more photographs of the ministry website, and it found that another photograph is had used "is of Kyle Canyon Road in Nevada, US. The photograph was taken by Nicola on June 23, 2011, which he posted on his Flickr account."

Nicola, says altnews.in, has described the image as, “State Route 157 (SR 157), also known as Kyle Canyon Road, is a state highway in Clark County, Nevada. The highway connects the Las Vegas area to the recreational areas of Mount Charleston in the Spring Mountains.”
Commented Alt News: ministry website is "designed, developed and hosted by National Informatics Center (NIC). A Government of India institution, NIC prides itself as the 'prime builder' of e-governance applications. Is it too much to ask them not to use images from other countries as representative of India?"

Four months ago, Alt News created a major flutter around how the Union Ministry Home Affairs (MHA) annual report used the picture of Spain-Morocco border to show Indian border floodlighting.
"Spain and Morocco have a sea between them but there are Spanish conclaves on the north coast of Africa that have a fenced and floodlit border with Morocco. The picture was taken in 2006 by a Spanish photographer, Javier Moyano", it said.
According to Alt News, "As per MHA, floodlighting of the border started in 2003. The MHA annual report of 2013-14 states that 'the entire stretch of the Indo-Pakistan border has been completed except for a small part of pending work in the Gujarat sector of Indo-Pak border'. While the India-Pakistan border was nearly fully floodlit in 2013, only 1763 km out of the sanctioned 2840 km (62%) of the India-Bangladesh border was floodlit at the end of 2013."

Alt News further said, "Out of the 647 km floodlit in the three years by Modi Sarkar, around 45 km was on the India -Pakistan border and the balance was on the India-Bangladesh border. Around 496 km of the sanctioned length of India-Bangladesh border still remains to be floodlit."
It added, The fact that floodlighting of the India-Pakistan border was nearly complete even by 2011 can also be seen from the ... photograph of the border by NASA. Around 1,861 km of the border had already been floodlit when the picture was taken."

Comments

Nobel laureates join international figures, seek release of Bhima Koregaon accused activists

Nobel laureates Olga Tokarczuk, Wole Soyinka Counterview Desk As many as 57 top international personalities, including Nobel laureates, academics, human rights defenders, lawyers cultural personalities, and members of Parliament of European countries, have urged the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India to ensure immediate release of human rights defenders in India “into safe conditions”.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Buddhist shrines massively destroyed by Brahmanical rulers in "pre-Islamic" era: Historian DN Jha's survey

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Top ex-Gujarat babu tells Modi: Not yoga but solar system is our biggest source of energy

By Rajiv Shah An email alert to Counterview from a top ex-IAS bureaucrat, termed as Gujarat’s turnaround man for revamping loss-making state public sector undertakings (PSUs), has sought to take a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark on the Yoga day – that the ancient Indian exercise provides an “infinite solutions” within ourselves, offering “the biggest source of energy in the universe.”

Hunger, lack of food security behind India's 'slip' in UN's sustainable development rank

By Dr Gian Singh* According to a report released by the United Nations on June 6, 2021, India's ranking of achieving Sustainable Development based on the 17 Social Development Goals (SDGs) set by the 193 countries in the 2003 agenda, which was 115th last year, has slipped to 117th position this year. India ranks not only the lowest among the BRICS countries -- Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa but also below the four South Asian countries -- Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

Collapse of healthcare system? Why 90% of Covid patients treated at home survived

By Bobby Ramakant, Sandeep Pandey* Well known Hindustani classical singer Padma Vibhu shan Channulal Mishra, chosen as one of the proposers of Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha elections, lost his wife and elder daughter to Covid in private hospitals in Varanasi. Younger daughter has accused Medwin Hospital of charging Rs 1.5 lakh for treatement of her sister and not being able to explain the cause of death. Pandit Channulal Mishra has asked for a probe into his daughter’s death from the Chief Minister. The family has also asked for the CCTV footage of the ward where deceased daughter was admitted for a week.

Rooted in mistrust? Covid-19’s march into rural India is a very different ball game

By Sudhir Katiyar* As the Covid-19 virus penetrates rural India, the rural communities are responding very differently from their urban counterparts who rushed to the hospitals. The rural communities are avoiding the public health facilities and any mention of the disease. The note argues that this supposedly irrational response is based on a deep-seated mistrust of the state by the rural communities. It can not be resolved with routine Information, Education and Communication (IEC) measures suggested in the Government of India SOP for tackling Covid-19 in rural areas.

Courageous, in-depth attempt to confirm common spiritual values of Christ, Buddha

By RB Sreekumar, IPS* All religions, both theistic and atheistic designed conceptual and practical architecture, for holistic and comprehensive elevation and enlightenment of humanity. PK Vijayan, in his novel “Nirvana of Jesus Christ” (Notion Press, 2020) through creative imagination portrayed personality evolution of the two progenitors of God-centric and sagaciously logical major religions – Jesus Christ of Christianity and Gautama Buddha of Buddhism.

Why hasn't Govt of India responded to US critique of freedom of religion under Modi?

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ* About two weeks ago, on May 12, 2021, the US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken released in Washington the ‘2020 International Religious Freedom Report.’ This official annual report of the US Government details the status of religious freedom in nearly 200 foreign countries and territories and describes US actions to support religious freedom worldwide. Mandated by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, this report highlights the fact that ‘religious freedom is both a core American value and a universal human right’.

Covid fear? Cremation rituals gone upside down, Dalits asked to do Brahminical rituals

By Abhay Jain, Sandeep Pandey* As Covid consumes human life in a very conspicuous way we are confronted with additional problem of disposing of human corpses. Cremation grounds are lit with continuous pyres, graveyards are running out of land and now Ganga has become a mass grave potentially polluting its water.

Counterview

Search This Blog