Subrata Dey's family By Our Representative Subrata Dey, a 39-year-old Bengali Hindu migrant, dubbed a Bangladeshi, reportedly mysteriously died in a detention camp at Goalpara in Assam. Subrata, belonging to a “lower” caste, was found dead on May 26 at the camp, where he was lodged on being declared an illegal Bangladeshi intruder by the Foreigners’ Tribunal, operating to identify Bangladeshis who entered Assam after March 14, 1971, when Bangladesh became independent of Pakistan.

Little Rann of Kutch during monsoon If Kalpasar, a dream project of converting the Gulf of Khambhat into Asia’s biggest sweet water lake by constructing a dam connecting South Gujarat and Saurashtra coasts, does not seem feasible any more, why not toy with the idea of yet another having a still bigger sweet water lake – this time in the Little Rann of Kutch? Suspicion has gone strong: Ahead of the 2019 polls, the BJP is all set to make a 4,900 sq km Rann Sarovar an electoral plank.

  By Our Representative In a sharp critique of the Indian position on the Rohingiya crisis, a recent workshop organised by the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), in collaboration with Development and Justice Initiative, India International Centre and Euro-Burma office, reached the conclusion that India has refused the recognise the ethnic group as refugees, making them ineligible for the protection under the international refugee law.

  India's top consulting firm, Crisil, backed by its international partners, Standard & Poor, has regretted that four years after taking over the reins, and despite "a plethora of facilitations and reforms", the Modi government has "not been able to decisively push the investment cycle", insisting, "Investments have become the sore point of the Indian economy."

Even as  regretting  that investment in India is failing to pick up, in its latest report on four years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, Crisil, India's leading rating agency, has lamented that things have been worse for the country's rural sector, which, it has said, "has been riddled with challenges including slower agricultural growth, poor farm price realisation, slowdown in construction activity, and sluggish rural wage growth."

  The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Mumbai-based human rights organization run by prominent social activist Teesta Setelvad, has suggested that the refusal of the Ahmedabad sessions court to grant her bail in a Rs 1.4 crore embezzlement case, is linked with her recent fight for justice in "courts and beyond", in cases ranging from those related with the 2002 Gujarat riots to the campaign to free "innocent" Dalit activists like Chandreshekhar Azad, who is in a UP jail.

India may have sharply increased the number of bank accounts following Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming to power. However, regrettably, India has the largest share of inactive accounts, too. A just-released World Bank survey, which provides this crucial detail alongside several others, says, "Account owners with an inactive account varies across economies, but it is especially high In India."

  The view has grown that Tuesday's  shooting  in Tamil Nadu, which led to the death of 11 persons, including a 17-year-old girl, was the culmination of over two decades of "blatant" disregard for the lives and well-being of the people and protecting corporate interests. The company which is in the eye of storm following the shootout, Sterlite, was allotted land in Maharashtra in 1992, but was shifted to Tamil Nadu due to massive protest by the people of Ratnagiri.

 The Government of India’s special purpose vehicles (SPVs), created for the proposed Bullet Train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, is learnt to be keeping out environmental activists, experts, farmers’ representatives and local body elected representatives from participating in crucial stakeholders’ consultations, currently being held along its 300 km route in Gujarat and Maharashtra.

 Top US-based advocacy group, with branches in several countries, including India,  Climate Scorecard , which tracks the implementation of Paris Climate Commitments of top Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emitting countries, has rated the controversial Draft Forest Policy, 2018, released by the Government of India, with a one star rank out of five because "it contains strategies for climate change mitigation which are unworkable."

Tribal women of Lilasi Kala In a shocking incident, around 30 to 40 Uttar Pradesh's police officers on Tuesday reportedly barged into tribal women's homes in Lilasi Kala village of the Sonebhadra district, which has a population of 1,160, with sticks and a revolver gun, and assaulted them, did not even sparing children as young as 10-years old. One woman was hit on the head so aggressively that she started bleeding "profusely".

  By Our Representative In what is being interpreted by Gujarat's fisherfolk organization, Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS), as it's major victory, the US Supreme Court has decided to hear a case, setting aside the plea of immunity by the World Bank group, which has funded a major ultra-mega power plant in Kutch district. According to knowledgeable sources, this will be for the first time the US Supreme Court will address the scope of international organisations’ immunity.

  Fear has gripped Bheemchhaya slumbwellers – mainly Dalits and poor – that they would become homeless after May 22, when the demolition of their 800-odd dwellings would begin, allegedly for “complying” with a 13 year old High Court order, seeking to “protect” the Mumbai's mangroves, which were mysteriously declared "reserved".

  A recent dialogue on urban rivers, held in Pune, has reached the conclusion that the much-hyped Gujarat’s Sabarmati Riverfront Project in Ahmedabad cannot be considered a model for other cities to follow, as a similar project, planned for Vadodara, the state’s cultural capital, has been “dropped” following public outcry.

India's exports as % of GDP Influential British weekly, "The Economist", has regretted that India's exports, which had reached a whopping 25% of Gross Domestic Product (GSP) in 2013, quadrupling since 1991, not far from the global average, thanks to the liberalising reforms which "helped integrate India into the global economy", this year they have reached the "lowest level in 14 years", around 17-18% of the GDP.

A farm proposed to be acquired A fact-finding committee, which visited the Polavaram Multipurpose Project-affected villages in Andhra Pradesh, has in its preliminary report said that land acquisition for the project is being carried out "without settlement of forest rights of thousands of adivasis as per the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation (LARR) Act, 2013".

  Goods and Services Tax (GST), introduced by the Government of India in July 2017, was supposed to be a measure to simplify taxation by replacing by all indirect taxes with a single tax. But a new  working paper , “Bijolia’s Harvest of Stone: Conditions of Work among Quarrying Labour in Rajasthan”, published by the Azim Premji University, has said, it has badly impacted stone mining business and, subsequently, the daily wage work in sandstone quarries.

Somnath in ruins In what appears to be one of the strongest critiques of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), the huge organization which seeks to preserve the country's historical monuments, a London School of Economics (LSE) blog has found nothing new with regard to the reported decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to appoint a committee headed by KN Dikshit, ex-Joint Director General of ASI, to "help" government rewrite "certain aspects of ancient history.”

Virtually seeking to give clean chit to the Narendra Modi government's four-year performance, a corporate-sponsored survey, claimed to have been done among over 62,000 "unique citizens" who polled over 170,000 votes, has claimed that a total of 57% citizens believe that "the Government has either met or exceeded their expectations in the last 4 years" as against 61% during the last year's survey and 64% in 2016.

 In her newly-published  book , controversial US Indologist Wendy Doniger has directly attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly creating a climate in which "mythoscience" thrives, pointing out that the government allegiance to Hindutva and its 'eternal dharma' doesn't just have "strong anti-Muslim agendas" but is coupled with "virulent repression of other versions of Hinduism and its history, particularly those that contradict the skewed construction of Hindu history proclaimed by Hindutva."

  The Gujarat government’s  recent move  to put into force Common Gujarat Development Control Regulation (GDCR) is all set to go controversial. If till now each city or urban area in the state had its own GDCR, the view has gone strong that, while normally anyone would welcome planned approach to development in the state, the state’s policy makers have chosen ad-hocism while coming up with Common GDCR.

Plastic from cow womb: Surendranagar district collector's office Gujarat's grassroots Dalit rights activist Natubhai Parmar -- who created a flutter by dumping a tractor full of dead cows in front of Surendranagar district office in 2016 following cow vigilantes beating up Dalits belonging to the Rohit community in Una on July 11, 2016 on suspicion of cow slaughter -- has stunned the state administration yet again. Now he has sent across 25 kg of plastic recovered from the womb of a cow to Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani to tell him: Plastics are the main cause of cow slaughter.

Modi, Suresh Mehta While it is well known that top business houses of Gujarat have liberally contributed to the BJP to meet its electoral expenses, putting Congress in an unenviable position, surprisingly, in 2009-10, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi ruled the state, his government, too, made a contribution, albeit small, to the saffron party!

  Facts have come to light suggesting that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, revered as "Veer" (Hero) by the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as also the tallest patriot India ever had, believed that several of India’s Hindu rulers suffered from the "suicidal" and "perverted religious idea" of showing chivalry towards Muslim women as and when they conquered Muslim rulers.

Arun Jaitley A Right to Information (RTI) reply has revealed that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had warned the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India (GoI), way back in May 2017 that the electoral bond system, introduced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in February 2017, for donations to political parties would open floodgates for dubious shell companies mushrooming across India to redirect black money into political parties' coffers.

  In its new ranking, the prestigious international non-profit, non-government organization, Reporters Without Borders (RWB), has ranked India 138th out of 180 countries it has assessed in its World Press Freedom Index (WPFI). Ranking two points lower than two years (India ranked 136th in 2017), RWB has blamed “Deadly threat from Modi’s nationalism” for India’s poor ranking.

Jay Narayan Vyas A senior Gujarat BJP leader, considered perhaps the only intellectual the state's saffron party can boast of -- one who has spoken out "competently" on developmental issues for its leaders, including Narendra Modi, on critical issues during debates at top English TV news channels -- is all set to stir up a hornet's nest. This leader has declared that the  Kalpasar project , conceptualized in early 1960s by "creating" a huge sweet water lake by damming the Gulf of Khambhat, is "not feasible."

  Even as recognizing that “India’s economy has bottomed out from the deceleration caused by one-time policy events such as demonetization and GST introduction”, and the GDP growth has “accelerated to 6.5 and 7.2 percent in Q2 and Q3 FY17/18, with private consumption remaining its main driver”, the World Bank has warned, “Growth alone will not be sufficient for employment rates to catch-up with those of comparable countries.”

Base year: 2016. Screenshot from the report In a revelation that should shake up India’s powers-that-be, “model” Gujarat, home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the slowest among Indian states in completing trial of pending cases of child sexual abuse. The Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, founded by India’s 2014 Nobel prize recipient, Kailash Satyarthi, has in a new report said, Gujarat would take anywhere between 55 and 200 plus years to complete child sex abuse trials.