A 14-year-old boy and his older brother were hired by an agent from Bihar under the pretext of getting them a job in a shoe factory in Uttar Pradesh. The agent brought with him a dozen-odd to Uttar Pradesh under the pretext of offering work to them in a factory. Only upon arrival in Muzaffarnagar, the boys were told that they would be working in a sugarcane field.

Human rights defenders Syed Mujtaba Hussian and Mirza Jahanzeb Beg have filed a case with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) regarding an 18-month-old pellet gun victim Hiba Nisar. She was with her mother inside their house at Kapran village in south Kashmir when pellets hit the infant in her right eye.

Is the Government of India becoming increasingly unenthusiastic towards the Right to Information (RTI) Act? It would seem so, if a recent RTI reply to a plea filed by Ventatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Delhi, is any guide.

 A top RSS-controlled NGO, operating from the Dr Hedgewar Bhawan, Kankaria, Ahmedabad, is one of the organizations which receives foreign funds but has failed to file its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) return, as required by the Government of India. It is one of the 1,775 NGOs across India, of which 60 are from Gujarat, which has been issues a show cause notice asking its managers as to "why appropriate action" under Sections 13 and 14 of the FCRA "may not be initiated" against it within a fortnight of the notice, which was issued on November 16. The NGO, Sewa Bharti, operates from Gujarat's RSS headquarters, and has not filed its returns, as required, electronically, for the year 2013-14, the notice, carrying the list of all the NGO "defaulters", shows.

  A recent report, prepared by researchers with the civil rights group, Agrasar, has revealed that of the 521 children from marginalized groups surveyed in Gurugram, Haryana, 80% said they are punished at school. Based on data collected from semi-urban communities in Gurugram, the report’s conclusions also take into account survey 100 parents, personal interviews with 26 children, three focus group discussions and one seasonal calendar exercise with 29 parents.

In a letter two senior environmentalists of Gujarat, Rohit Prajapati and Krishna Kant, have asked above a dozen senior Government of India and Government of Gujarat officials, to declare chemical emergency in the Vadodara district, pointing out that the Effluent Channel Project (ECP) of Vadodara, which is in force along 24 villages' prime agricultural land, known as the Vegetable Basket of Gujarat, is polluting land next to the 55.6 km long effluent channel.

  Sharply reacting to Counterview story (click  HERE ), which said, quoting Gujarat government sources, that the state's farmers will not be provided with Narmada waters this summer because the waters would diverted to Madhya Pradesh agricultural fields in view of the elections there this year, a top aide of Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani has said, "There is real shortage, and this the only reason why Gujarat farmers wouldn't be able to get waters."

A South Gujarat-based environmental NGO, Prakruti Suraksha Mandal (PSM), has raised the alarm that a large number of illegal borewells have come up in and around industrial estates of Bharuch district, sharply reducing groundwater levels and polluting the water. PSM director Salim Patel, in a letter to senior officials of the Central Groundwater Authority (CGA), Government of India, and Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), has said that at several places industrial units have been found to be illegally releasing untreated water underground. And, even after repeated complaints, GPCB has not taken any action against industrial units. Patel said, the information it received under the Right to Information (RTI) Act revealed that just 67 units of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) estate in Ankaleshwar have taken permission from the authorities for constructing borewells.  Clearly, there are many more units which have constructed borewells illegally, he asserts, ad...

Sabarmati at Vautha Nagrik Sashaktikaran Manch (NSM), a Gujarat-based civil rights organization, has called upon the state's citizens to join in a "unique yatra" along the river Sabarmati, starting in Ahmedabad and ending off the Gulf of Khambhat, where the river is supposed to merge with the sea. Pointing out that in Hindu culture, rivers are equated with Mother Goddess, NSM convener Jatin Seth says, it will be a "special event of pilgrimage", because, just like Ganga, Sarbarmati possesses "special properties." "Starting at Giaspur, one can see how industries are releasing chemicals in Sabarmati, and you get a Thumbs-Up like colour of the water, and if you drink it, you are sure to be at least affected by cancer, and this way would enable you to book your ticket in the paradise. The river has a special smell, too, emanating from a black cocktail-type colour", says Seth in a statement. A village next to Sabarmati river Insisting that this wou...

Two more persons have committed suicide in Assam, reportedly on being harassed and depressed on being declared foreigners, taking the total National Register of Citizens (NRC)-related suicides to 33, a civil rights group claimed. Samsul Hoque (46) and Abdul Jalil (35) took their lives after they found that the names of their wives did not appear in the final draft NRC, which was published on July 30. The incidents took place in Bagariguri under Sorbhog police station in Barpeta district of Assam. Samsul Hoque, who committed suicide on November 14, was a daily wage agricultural worker. His family members and neighbours residents allege that he was frustrated, as the name of his wife Maleka Khatun had not appeared in the final draft. Said Shajahan Ali Ahmed, general secretary of the NGO Association for Protection of Indian Citizenship Rights, "Due to the rude behaviour of the officials involved in the NRC process and the absence of proper counselling, Samsul Hoque was pushed or comp...

Recently-appointed chancellor, Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), Hyderabad, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, on the eve of the university’s 7th Convention, in a letter to the registrar said he was boycotting the function, because MANUU has turned into “a den of corruption and unabated cases of sexual abuse of girl student.”

  A just-released study, “The Pneumonia and Diarrhea Progress Report 2018”, prepared by the International Vaccine Access Centre (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has identified India among 15 other countries which are still far off the mark in achieving the targets of the Global Action Plan for the Prevention of Pneumonia and Diarrhea (GAPPD).

Lok Shakti Abhiyan leader Prafulla Samantara, winner of the Goldman Environmental (also known as Green Nobel) Prize in 2017, has regretted that though Sundergarh in Odisha, like other forest areas, is a fifth schedule area, where Forest Rights Act (FRA) and Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) is applicable, but these laws are being “outrightly violated to facilitate corporate loot.”

Anjali Bharadwaj A public hearing in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on the Right to Information (RTI) Act, saw participants from across the state highlight problems faced by people, as the state information commission (SIC) is not functional for the last 18 months. Co-organised by the United Forum for RTI, Andhra Pradesh, and the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI), those who heard people's testimonies included EAS Sarma, former IAS officer, Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convener, NCPRI, and B Ramakrishna Raju, national convenor, National Alliance for Peoples' Movements (NAPM). After the bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the SIC of Andhra Pradesh continued to function as the information commission for both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The commission became defunct in May 2017 after the serving informational commissioners retired. Since then, the commission has been non-functional, it was pointed out. RTI activists, meanwhile, have filed cas...

The Gyati Nirmulan Samiti (GMS), a grassroots Dalit rights organization of Gujarat, has strongly protested against the manner in which the state government has been allegedly seeking to take back cases against those belonging to non-Dalit and non-Adivasi individuals. Asserting that this is being done on a mass scale, GMS said, this is "discriminatory", and is being done to please the dominant caste people. "No cases registered against Dalits and Adivasis are being taken back", said GMS convener Sanjay Parmar in a letter submitted to KA Punj, who heads an inquiry commission the state government set up under the chairmanship of retired High Court judge KA Punj said, "This is being done purely for political reasons." The letter has also been signed by GMS co-convener Rajesh Solanki, a Dalit rights advocate. In a reported bid to placate the Patidar community, the Gujarat government last year  announced  setting up of the commission of inquiry headed under Punj...

After successfully completing two-phases, traversing through 11 states, top civil rights network National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)-sponsored Samvidhan Samman Yatra began its third phase this week from Jharkhand. Travelling through Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, it will culminate in Delhi on December 10, International Human Rights Day.

A recent Right to Information (RTI) intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian workers died in in six Gulf countries, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day.

A just-released Harvard Kennedy School study has estimated that, today in India, 71% of men use mobile phones, as against 38% of women, pointing out that India, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, are “clear outliers among countries of similar levels of development”, exhibiting “some of the world’s highest gender gaps in access to technology.”

In a disturbing revelation, Ratan Chandra Biswas, a Dalit Hindu, declared a "foreigner" by the National Register of Citizens, is lying handcuffed in Assam’s Goalpara Civil Hospital. Bringing this to light, a human rights site, Sabrang India,  reports , he has been found “battling for his life, emaciated and shivering”, pointing out, “His condition is a bitter testimony to the ghastly conditions in Assam 's six detention camps, where over 2,000 persons are estimated to be have been incarcerated.”

Kirankumar Vissa, Kavitha Kuruganti About 13 per cent of India’s 159.7 million hectares cultivable land has gone saline over the last three decades, mainly due to the use of ecologically “unsustainable” agricultural practices promoted by India’s Central and state governments and adopted by farmers. Revealing this, Kirankumar Vissa of the Rytha Swarajya Vedika, working in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, told Counterview on the sidelines of the fourth Kisan Swaraj Sammelan, which ended on Sunday at Gujarat Vidyapeeth, yet another problem India’s agriculturists are against because of the climate change is desertification. “In Anandpur district of Andhra Pradesh and Mehboobnagar district of Telengana, where we are working, we already witness a huge fertility soil loss because of salinity and desertification”, Vissa, who is national co-convener of the ASHA-Kisan Swaraj Alliance, said, insisting on the need to adopt ecologically sensitive policies as a way out of this grave situation. “A large...

India's poverty estimates using separate methods While the Indian authorities are basking in happiness over the World Bank, in a recent report, showing that India has jumped 23 places to the 77th position in ‘ease of doing business’, another Bank  report , “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle”, released last month, has found “important measurement issues” that “temper confidence” in India’s poverty estimates.

The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)-sponsored Samvidhan Bachao Andolan, on reaching Tamil Nadu, found that in Cuddalore district, chemical industries have adversely affected about 50 villages. The yatra participants, who included senior social activists Prafulla Samantara, Sandeep Pandey, Gabriele Dietrich, Arundhati Dhuru, Ashish Ranjan, and Meera Sanghamitra, were told that land acquisition for industries is carried out by SIPCOT (State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamilnadu Ltd). A major chunk of land is being acquired in the name of SIMA (South Indian Millers Association), which has acquired about 250 acres of land. However, their requirement is more than 400 acres. Local leaders said, Caddalore is already under severe pollution and it is also ranked 3rd in the Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index (CEPI), which is a study done for understanding the extent of pollution by Central Pollution Control Board. The other two top polluted industrial estates are fr...

A top Islamic site, claiming to map agenda for the 21st century, has taken strong exception to the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JIJ&K), a cadre-based religio-political organisation in J&K, likening Indian administration as “Pharaoh’s era” in Kashmir. Distinct from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, JIJ&K in a statement said: “Indian forces have devised a sinister plan of genocide of Kashmiri youth on the same pattern the Pharaoh of Egypt had once ordered to kill the male infants of Bani-Israel in Egypt.”

  In a little known development, Gujarat's Dalit face Jignesh Mevani has threatened Muslim organizations, which have claimed to have "resettled" thousands of 2002 riot victims, that he would boycott meetings called by them anywhere in India. Mevani's threat comes close on the heels of complaints by tens of riot victims that they are sought to be evicted by the very same organizations that had allowed them to settle down on their land in the aftermath of the riots.

The civil society network National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)-sponsored Dandi-to-Delhi Samvidhan Samman Yatra, currently in its second phase, reached the Amravati region, the proposed capital city of Andhra Pradesh, where it was told that the whole vision of making a capital city by chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has “devastated the agriculture in more than 29 villages in the name of development.”