Sandeep Pandey with Baldev Nath Bapu at a temple 25 km from the border By Sandeep Pandey* The India-Pakistan Friendship and Peace March from Ahmedabad to Nada Bet during 19 to 29 June, 2018 concluded successfully, even though Ahmedabad Police detained the march for about 3 hours at the beginning from Gandhi Ashram and Border Security Force didn’t give permission to the march from Nadeshwari Mata Mandir to the border, a distance of 25 km.

By Our Representative The State Bank of India (SBI) -- the only bank authorised by the Government to sell Electoral Bonds (EBs) to sold to individuals or other entities to be given to political parties as a means to fund their poll activity -- has refused to divulge the identity and other details of buyers under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act).

By Venkatesh Nayak* Time and again, the Government of India has publicly said that donations to political parties made through Electoral Bonds (EBs) will increase transparency of political party funding. The Hon’ble Union Finance Minister said so in his February 2017 Budget speech while introducing the statutory mechanism for EBs (see paras # 164-165 of his speech). In January this year, he repeated this assertion in the Lok Sabha. A week later, on a Facebook post, he gave his take on how EBs would make political funding more transparent than the practice that prevailed hitherto. So far so good. The State Bank of India (SBI) — the only Bank authorised by the Government to sell EBs publicly — has refused to divulge the identity and other details of buyers under The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act). So much for the guarantee of transparency of political party funding through EBs. The RTI Intervention The Union Finance Ministry notified the Electoral Bonds Scheme on 02 January, 20

The mahant of Dev Darbar Math By Kaleem Siddiqui The India-Pakistan Friendship and Peace march, which started from Ahmedabad's Gandhi Ashram on June 19, completed about 170 kilometers till last Monday. Halting for night at in Thar in Banaskantha district, the next day the foot marchers walked around 15 km in the morning to reach Dev Darbar Jageer Math Ashram, where they were given a grand welcome by the ashram people.

Mohammad Naeem, lynched to death in a Jharkhand village in May 2017 on suspicion of child trafficking By Battini Rao* The seven-day period from June 13 to June 20, 2018 saw four Muslim men lynched at Hapur (Uttar Pradesh) and at Godda and Ramgarh in Jharkhand. The last four years of BJP rule at center have seen steep rise in the numbers communally motivated lynching, with cow protection being the most common excuse.

By Suneet Chopra* It is 43 years since the emergency was declared on June 25, 1975. I was at the Delhi Party (CPI-M) Office and got the news from a journalist friend of Kerala at about 12.30 pm that the Prime Minister had declared emergency and stopped the presses.

By Moin Qazi* Rural banking has come a long way from the days when bankers had their first brush with rural culture. Bankers are now financial anthropologists, and many of them are playing a missionary role in transforming rural societies. However, challenges continue to persist. When rural banking took its baby steps, villagers were shy of loans because they were afraid they would not be able to repay. The situation today is quite the opposite. People have a savage appetite for loans but, unlike their forebears, they have lost that pristine morality which equated default of loans with the guilt of shame. Banks are piling up mountains of sour loans and governments are brushing them off with buckets of precious public money. Rural banking has been a great hurdle race ever since the government nationalised major commercial banks and mandated them to focus their thrust on villages. India Gandhi nationalised private banks with a deposit base above Rs 50 crore in 1969 “in order to ensure fu

By Our Representative The Right to Education (RTE) Act, which came into effect in 2010, widely acclaimed as the cornerstone for "improving" the educational scenario in India, over the last eight years of its existence has seen less than 10% of Indian schools complying with its provisions to ensure universalisation of education.

Sandeep Pandey with Jashodaben By Kaleem Sidiqui In an attempt to bridge the gap between India and Pakistan, the Indo -Pak Friendship and Peace Yatra", led by Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey began on June 19 from Ahmedabad's Sabarmati Ashram, and is expected to reach Nada Bet, Indo-Pak border in Gujarat via Kalol, Nandasan , Mehsana ,Patan etc., by the end of this month.

A BJP-sponsored Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign By Our Representative Influential British journal “The Economist”, known to have been highly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance, has suggested that no amount of propaganda by him and his team can help overcome India’s social lag. Seeking policy interventions instead, it insists on privatizing every aspect of social service provided by the Government of India.

Jayprakash Narayan By Nachiketa Desai* The imposition of Emergency on the night of 25-26 June 1975, suspending the fundamental rights of the people, became instrumental in converting me, a social activist, into a journalist. I was the national convener of the Tarun Shanti Sena, a youth organization founded by Sarvodaya leader Jayprakash Narayan (JP) who headed the movement for Total Revolution. The Allahabad High Court had disqualified Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a member of the Parliament after holding her guilty of malpractices in her election campaign. JP had held a massive rally in Delhi, attended by all major non-Congress opposition parties to demand Indira Gandhi’s resignation.

By Our Representative Reproduced below is the personal experience at the Emergency, as felt by former fighter pilot of the Indian Air Force Rajiv Tyagi when he was in his teens, courtesy his FB timeline:  Today marks 43 years to the declaration of Emergency, India's darkest hour before the 2014 election of Modi...

Medha Patkar addressing the convention By Our Representative A civil society-sponsored convention, concluded ahead of the high-profile AIIB (Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank) board meet, to take place on June 25-26 in Mumbai, has sharply criticized the "China-led" international financial institution (IFI), insisting, it "rejects" AIIB claim that it "serves as a healthy and essential alternative to undemocratic IFIs such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and International Finance Corporation which are controlled by western powers."

By Gautam Thaker* Human Rights and liberties are a privilege of citizens, a distinct part of human life. Those are their birthrights and cannot be construed as if they have been conferred by the Constitution of the country. And yet governments often indulge in swooping upon such rights.

Protest against the POSCO project in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha By Rajiv Shah A recent research study has said that of the “75 cases of conflict over land use change” involving 7,28,673 hectares (ha) “officially transferred through environmental clearance process”, in as many of 70 conflicts have remained unresolved even today. The projects have been chosen out of a list of environmental clearances granted to 14,498 projects, uploaded on the Union environment ministry’s website as of October 2017.

By Our Representative Close on the heels of a series of reports on starvation deaths Jharkhand, the Right to Food Campaign (RFC) has revealed that over the past year, at least 20 persons have succumbed to starvation across the country – 12 in Jharkhand, three in Karnataka, three in Uttar Pradesh and two in Odisha. The deceased range from 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari to 67-year-old Etwariya Devi.

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".

By Pushkar Raj* The credibility of India’s top institutions has lately suffered, affecting governance and democracy in the country. Its strong indication came in the form of the impeachment motion against the chief justice of India which was rejected by the vice-president and was subsequently challenged in the highest Court.

By Our Representative Has the hype around Direct Bank Transfer (DBT), created by the Government of India, in order to provide cash subsidy in banks to the beneficiaries of Central and state schemes, beginning to fade into the oblivion? It would seem so, if a recent report, “Social Audit of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for Food Subsidy Pilot in Nagri, Ranchi, Jharkhand”, is any indication.

Chintaman Malhar's family By Asharfi Nand Prasad* Over the past ten months at least 12 persons may have succumbed to hunger in Jharkhand. Yet, instead of taking action against functionaries leading to these deaths and taking measures to improve the situation of food security, the state government has denied hunger as the cause of any of these deaths.

Loan disbursal in 2017-18 By Our Representative Contrary to the claim by India's saffron rulers, who recently said that 55% of all accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY or the Prime Minister’s Small Business Finance Scheme) belong to individuals from scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and other backward classes (OBC), a top data analysis site has revealed that it is the general category which gained the most.

By Our Representative Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "lost" yet another topnotch economist, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) with the Union finance ministry, Arvind Subramanian. Following Arvind Panagariya, who quit the Modi establishment in August 2017 reportedly over excessive bureaucratic interference, Subramanian has resigned, citing "personal" reasons.

An anti-AIIB protest By Our Representative Even as the People’s Convention on Infrastructure Financing is all to set to meet in Mumbai on June 21-22, ahead of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s (AIIB’s) annual meeting on June 25-26 in Mumbai, one of the civil society networks has said that the new bank has no mechanism to address grievances of the those threatened the massive infrastructure projects it seeks to fund in India.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The BJP has pulled out of the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) government headed by People's Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti. Speaking to the media in Delhi, the party in charge of J&K Ram Madhav said that this alliance had become untenable as the situation in the valley was worsening every day.

By Fr Cedric Prakash sj* On World Refugee Day (20 June), the global community commemorates the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees who are forced to flee their homes because of war or persecution. It is also a chilling reminder that refugees, the forcibly displaced, have no choice of their own.We also need to challenge unjust systems and political leaders, the rich and the powerful who are responsible for displacing people, for the refugees and the migrants of this world. World leaders and every single citizen must demonstrate the political will, the courage and compassion to reach out to refugees, to listen to them and to address the endemic issues, which has resulted in the greatest humanitarian crisis after World War II. Just this past week, two callous deeds have demonstrated the abysmal depths to which humans can sink. The first was the refusal by the Italian and Maltese Governments to allow the rescue ship MV ‘Aquarius’ to dock in their ports. The ship was

By Masood Peshimam* When late Dr Zakir Hussain, on become the President of India, went to pay obeisance to the Shankaracharya of Puri, it must have been a quest for acquiring more acceptance for a “Muslim” President. Whatever maybe the compulsion, it did not amount to elevating the august office of the President.

By Moin Qazi * India is home to one-fifth of the world’s population which includes a third of the world’s poor and one-eighth of the world’s elderly. Most of them spend their whole lives as informal workers and have no retirement security other than the hope that their children will care for them in their old age.

Bidar Fort, Karnataka By Our Representative A well-known commentator on current affairs is all set to create a ripple among India's policy makers as well as top scholars by pointing out that Indian history, as is being taught in our schools today, as also written in books, is "the history of the vanquished", and is "mostly a chronological scroll down of events in the Indo-Gangetic plain", treating south of Vindhyas with utter neglect.

The 2005 Indo-Pak peace march By Sandeep Pandey* In 1947 India was divided by the foreign rulers by playing a game of divide and rule to which the religious fundamentalists fell prey. India and Pakistan since then have a checkered history and uneasy relationship sometimes climaxing in wars and violent conflagrations. While the governments prefer to maintain adversarial relationship, which now sustains certain vested interests on both sides, the common people and business interests on two sides want peace.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* I have never liked the rhetorical politics of Arvind Kejriwal. In fact, the seed that they sowed in 2011 resulted in the fascist takeover of this country. Kejriwal wanted the country to become a gram panchayat at the Ramleela maidan, and decisions were taken on the voice vote. All the power elite of the upper caste suddenly turned revolutionary.

By Moin Qazi* Sanitation is the key to proper hygiene and is extremely essential for a healthy population. Till a few years back, India’s record on basic sanitation was horrific. The 2011 Census found that more Indians have access to mobile phones than to toilets. It must be said to the credit of the Modi Government that after coming to power, it got down to addressing the most fundamental problems of the people like sanitation and e-financial inclusion instead of launching grandiose but abstract programmes. Singapore was born as an independent state in 1965 but inherited vast poverty. Freedom meant little promise of a decent life. Lee Kuna Yew, the country’s founding father and the first Prime Minister, found that Indonesia’s public health system was in a pathetic state and there were frequent outbreaks of typhoid, cholera and other life-threatening diseases. Lee knew a sick nation couldn’t be productive but Singapore didn’t have the time or resource to build a robust health system

"Eyeball to eyeball" ceremony at Wagah By Our Representative Ahead of his second India-Pakistan peace march, which begins on June 19 at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, and ends at Nadeshwar Mata, Nada Bet, Gujarat, about 24 km from the border, Magsaysay Award winning social activist and Gandhian Sandeep Pandey has come up with what he calls “alternative peace ceremony” for Wagah border.

By Our Representative Ranking Gujarat No 1 in Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) for the second successive year, the Modi government's powerful policy-making body, Niti Aayog, appears to have left no stone unturned in order to "prove" how it has reached this drastic conclusion. One of the greatest "successes" it cites in this respect is --believe it or not-- Gujarat has "achieved" a 100% score in the ‘rural drinking water’ theme of the Water Index.

By Tapan Bose On May 22, 2018, Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International released a briefing note titled, “Myanmar: New evidence reveals Rohingya armed group massacred scores in Rakhine State”. It may be seen HERE . In the briefing note, Amnesty International stated, “A Rohingya armed group brandishing guns and swords is responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu women, men, and children as well as additional unlawful killings and abductions of Hindu villagers in August 2017, Amnesty International revealed today after carrying out a detailed investigation inside Myanmar’s Rakhine State.” From the statement of the Amnesty International it appears that they have gathered enough evidence to implicate the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in genocidal massacres. Apparently, the evidence against ARSA is more clear and convincing than the evidence against the armed forces of Myanmar and the Buddhist mobs. While releasi