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.

  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...

  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).

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.”

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.

  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.