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Showing posts from April, 2019

India's 99 river water projects completed? Modi 'misled' nation, Parliament in Feb

  Wondering whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi misled Parliament and the nation on February 7, 2019, well-known environmentalist Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has said that in his reply to the debate on President of India’s address to the joint session of Parliament, the PM  said  India has done the work of "completing" 99 river water projects through expenditure of thousands of crores of rupees. Pointing out that Modi mentions the figure 99 in that 28 second interval at least four times, Thakkar says, “Interestingly, the PM claims completion of these 99 projects was a means of empowerment of the farmers.” Calling it “highly questionable”, Thakkar insists, “As the farmers feel totally slave to the operators of the irrigation projects, in whose decision making, implementation or operation, farmers have no role.” “And yet”, according to Thakkar, BJP’s  manifesto , published with PM’s letter dated April 8, 2019, contrad...

Indian industry's 40% mergers caste-based, create lower value than caste-distant deals

Suggesting that India’s business class is still not out of its feudal culture, a recent study on merger and acquisition (M&A) deals of top Indian business houses, carried out jointly by scholars of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, and Pomona College, Claremont, California, United States, has found that the “observed percentage of same-varna mergers” is 40.11%, which is at least “twice as high as” (15.47% to 20.34%) as M&A carried out with firms that do not have the same varna.

Gujarat CM queried: Where has 24.81 acre feet of water disappeared from Narmada dam?

Releasing  month-wise data  provided by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), well-known Gujarat farmers’ rights leader Sagar Rabari, in a letter to chief minister Vijay Rupani has said that, citing low rainfall, the state government has stopped providing irrigation water starting with February 15, even though there has been enough water in the Narmada dam’s reservoir.

WhatsApp misinformation: India "follows" Brazil, which elected extreme rightist

Jair Bolsonaro A Harvard University scholar has raised the alarm that "on the heels of a Brazilian electoral process that was marked by outrageous disinformation campaigns", India, where elections for the Lok Sabha are on, "may be witnessing the world’s next WhatsApp election."

During Emergency, the ruler was extolled but Opposition wasn't punched around: Scribe

Anand K Sahay A just-released book , “India: The Wrong Transition”, by a top Delhi-based scribe Anand K Sahay, has quoted “journalistic circles” to say that the Indian mainstream media – with certain “honourable exceptions” – has virtually abandoned the “practice of journalism”, and  this happened following a “sting operation” that showed that “the crème de la crème of Indian journalism were only too willing, for a suitable price, to let poisonous Hindutva propaganda prevail in their news columns.”

Disinterested in politics, Punjab's 93% women farm workers "ignorant" who is India's PM

Even as political parties are fighting a pitched battle during the Lok Sabha elections, a recent study, 'Socio-Economic Conditions and Political Participation of Rural Women Labourers in Punjab', has made the stark revelation that “a very large majority of the rural woman labourers, i.e., 95.28 per cent have no interest in politics”, even as pointing out, “They do not read, listen and watch news.”

New phenomenon? Communal violence "being taken to" Gujarat villages, small towns

The signboard calls Halwad a town of Hindu Rashtra A "fact-finding" report by a Gujarat-based minority civil rights organization, Alpsankhyak Adhikar Manch (AAM), involving 13 communal incidents in 2018, has suggested how, following the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which more than 1,000 persons, majority of them Muslims, died, the saffron brigade has allegedly changed its tactic by seeking to spread of communal hatred and violence in rural areas and smaller towns.

Bangladesh's anti-terrorism policy led to forced disappeance of 500 people: Paris report

The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in a new  report  on "enforced disappearances in Bangladesh" has said that country's government has used these "to silence members of the political opposition and dissenting voices." The report is based on 30 interviews with victims of enforced disappearances that occurred between 2012 and 2018, their family members, eyewitnesses, and information from other civil society organisations.

Modi supporters blamed for attack on journos, as India slips in press freedom index

In what may prove to be a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a time when he is seeking a second term in office from India's electorate, the latest rankings  released  by the high-profile Reporters Without Borders (RWB), based in Paris, shows that India has slipped by two points from 138 in a year to 140 out of 180 countries in World Press Freedom Index, worst since 2015.

Clean fuel? Modi's Ujjwala fails: Poor households 2.5 times "less likely" to use LPG

The Government of India's (GoI) Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in 2016 in order to promote the use of clean cooking fuel to villagers by subsidizing liquid petroleum gas (LPG) connections, and thus reduce exposure to "harmful" indoor air pollution, has mainly helped the rural elite, a recent study, titled "Persistence of solid fuel use despite increases in LPG ownership: New survey evidence from rural north India", has said.

Book on seven interconnected 'political' murders, including Haren Pandya, Justice Loya, released

A controversial  new book  in Hindi, ‘Satta ki Suli’, with an account on CBI judge BH Loya’s death case, released in Ahmedabad, has sought to cover not only the alleged murder of the judge but also a series of seven other "political murders".

Study documents 34 smart city projects forcibly displacing 17,700 people last year

A just-released  study , "Forced Evictions in India in 2018: An Unabating National Crisis", prepared by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), New Delhi, has said, it has documented forced evictions in 34 of the 100 ‘smart cities’ being developed across the country." The study, which documents evictions across India because of different types of development projects, says says, smart cities alone displaced 17,700 people.

Why are you silent on discrimination against Dalit jawans? Macwan questions Modi

Close on the heels of releasing his book in Gujarati, "Bhed Bharat", which lists 319 cases of atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis across the country over the last five years, well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan has shot an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, telling him the reasons why he does not want vote for the BJP.

Saurashtra topcop 'threatens' Dalit builder his mustache would be forcibly plucked

Atul Chavda, an Amreli-based Dalit builder from Saurashtra, has  complained  to the director-general of police, Gujarat, that a senior police official of Amreli, an ASP, has used "derogatory words" against him on April 8 in front of the Circuit House, saying, "Police have to be very alert with Dalits having mustaches. I know pretty well how to pull out your mustaches."

India "slides" in liberal democracy index after Modi came to power: EU-assisted report

Even as India goes to polls, a recent European Union-assisted Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report, claiming to provide "new ways to study the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy embracing its multiple meanings", has raised the alarm that "freedom of expression, media, and civil society are under threat", especially in "key countries, such as Brazil, India, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and the United States."

Book on how RSS "hardliners" captured BHU, other campuses, expelled top academic

In a controversial decision, in January 2016, the Banaras Hindu University’s Indian Institute of Technology (BHU-IIT) expelled well-known Gandhian academic, educationist and Magsaysay award winning social activist, Prof Sandeep Pandey, allegedly under “hardline” RSS pressure. Despite an Allahabad High Court order, to reinstate him he was not allowed in.

US Supreme Court ruling on World Bank 'unlikely' to help Kutch fisherfolk: ICIJ

A US Supreme Court majority ruling may have  stripped  the World Bank of absolute immunity enjoyed by the top lending institute, overturning a 74-year-old presumption that international financial institutions could not be sued when their development projects hurt local communities.