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Showing posts from May, 2019

Why nobody objected to Gautam Gambhir, Sunny Deol in t-shirt, jean?: Activists

Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan’s excitement on their first day as MPs was overshadowed by a barrage of sexism over their ‘non- sanskari’ outfits, a group of civil society activists have said in a statement. According to Aarushi Nigam, Divya Kaushik, Riya Sharma, Ruman Ganguly, and Anulekha Agarwal, both Bengali actors and first-time MPs "were certainly excited to take them on when they posted pictures from their new workplace on social media."

Mob lynching, murder of Jharkhand Adivasi: People from 3 districts protest cop "inaction"

Hundreds of people from Gumla, Latehar and Ranchi districts of Jharkhand have protested against police "inaction" against the killing of Prakash Lakda, a 50-year old Adivasi of Jurmu village of Gumla’s Dumri block. The protest took place under the banner of the Kendriya Jan Sangharsh Samiti (JSS), a civil rights organization.

721 hate crimes in 2015-18, whither Modi's 'promise' to minorities?: Amnesty

Commenting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi starting his second consecutive term, top international human rights organization Amnesty International has said that the recent crackdown by the Indian authorities – treating human rights organisations as criminal enterprises and human rights defenders as criminals – is inconsistent with the “recent promise” made by Modi to ensure that minorities should be made to live without fear.

India's two-thirds of under-5 deaths occur among newborns in first 28 days: Report

Top global NGO Save the Children’s latest report marking its 100 years of existence, “Changing Lives in Our Lifetime: Global Childhood Report 2019” has said that, while there is “much child survival progress to celebrate around the world, the job is nowhere near done”, India has scored poorly on this score. Especially focusing on deaths in early infanthood, the report, even as refusing to provide comparative figures, says, death rates of children in the first days after birth in India “have remained stubbornly high.”

Rattled Congress tells media: Don't fall for rumour mongering, speculations

Surjewala Rattled by the  report  that Congress president Rahul Gandhi criticised at least thee senior Congress leaders -- former Union minister P Chidambaram, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath and Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot -- for placing their sons above the party during the Lok Sabha polls, party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala has blamed media for falling on "conjectures, speculations, insinuations, assumptions, gossip and rumour mongering". Claiming that the Congress Working Committee (CWC) as the highest decision making body was involved merely in "exchange of ideas and take corrective action", Surjewala said, members of CWC had expressed their views in the meeting dated May 25, 2019, looking into "the reverses in the Lok Sabha elections as an opportunity for radical changes and a complete organizational overhaul, for which it authorized Rahul Gandhi." Calling such media attitude "uncalled for and unwarranted", he ask...

Adivasi professor in Jharkhand arrested for Facebook post supporting beef eating

Jeetrai Hansda, a tribal activist and professor at the Government School and College for Women, Sakchi, in Jharkhand has been arrested almost two years after he wrote a Facebook post asserting his community’s right to eat beef. Hansda's arrest is based of a complaint filed against by RSS' student wing Akhil Bharati Vidyarthi Parishad. Arrested two days after the declaration of the Lok Sabha election results, the complaint was ‘investigated’ by inspector Anil Kumar Singh of Sakchi police station, Jamshedpur, Hansda wrote that the Adivasi community in India has had a long tradition of eating beef and ceremonial cow sacrifice. He had added, it is their democratic and cultural right to consume beef. Supporting Hansda, Dasmath Hansdah, chief of the Majhi Pargana Mahal, in a letter to the vice-chancellor said that there were no inaccuracies in Hansda’s post, calling the assertions made by him a “truthful representation of the cultural and religious traditions of the Adivasi community...

Post-Balakot 9% increase in support to Modi, BJP or Amit Shah: An Ahmedabad view

Elections were over, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already won a landslide, yet the poll fever seemed to continue unabated among the middle classes of Ahmedabad. Ordinary citizens of Ahmedabad, called Amdavadis, are quite sparing when it comes to bets. They ensure that they do not splurge. One of the bets that I came across on the D-day, May 23, was to tell the most correct number of seats the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win.  The person who guessed near about the most correct number was to serve ice cream, preferably candies, to his friends. Candies served, all of them started congratulating each other over Modi’s huge win. One of them decided to shout the slogan “Bharat mata ki jay”, and others followed, amidst a lone voice, which few heard,  “Begani shaadi me Abdullah diwana” .  In a group of 20, they sat comfortably in an open space outside a middle class society, late in the evening on May 23, with smiles on their faces, seeking to analyze on what...

Eerie quiet in North Gujarat village where Dalit groom was stopped from riding horse

The Dalit meet in Lhor village As one reaches Lhor, one can sense an atmosphere of unease gripping one of the five villages where Dalit wedding processions was recently blocked by non-Dalits in this small medium-sized North Gujarat village, barely 30 kilometres off the seat of the state's political power centre, Gandhinagar. Despite punitive steps, the village remains as divided on caste lines, just it was before the incident which shot into prominence after May 6, when the bridegroom Mehul was not allowed to ride a horse in a wedding procession on the main village street.

Punjab's farmers, except big ones, earning less than what they are forced to spend: Study

Rural Punjab may be richer compared to the rest of India's rural areas, but a recent study has raised the alarm that, except for big farmers, all other categories – marginal, small, semi-medium and medium in accordance with their farmsize – are forced to spend more than what they actually earn. Titled “Levels of Living of Farmers and Agricultural Labourers in Rural Punjab”, the study insists, the result is, “Large sections of the farm households have been facing a great deal of distress and increased debt burden.”

Post-Pulwama anti-minority, Islamophobic WhatsApp messages "up" from 24% to 41%

A new research has shown that if between November 14 to February 13, 2019, as many as 23.84 percent the percentage of messages on WhatsApp groups were allegedly “anti-Muslim, Islamophobic, and deeply inflammatory with an intent to create disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred, or ill-will between Hindus and Muslims”, these sharply went up after the Pulwama attack on February 14.

Eviction threat "looms large" over Odisha tribals' 1.45 lakh forest land rights claims

A workshop organized jointly by the Mayurbhanj Adivasi Bikash Manch (MABM) and the Mayurbhaj Jala, Jungle, Jamin and Jana Adhikar Manch (MJJJJAM) on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and the Panchati Raj Extension to Scheduled Area (PESA) Act has been told that a total of 1,45,750 individual forest rights (IFR) claims out of 6,17,935 filed at the gram sabha level in Odisha have been rejected and are under "serious threat" after the February 13 Supreme Court (SC) eviction order.

No minority community midday meal scheme cook-cum-helper in Gujarat: Fact-sheet

A Government of India  fact-sheet , released late last year on the midday meal scheme across India, has brought to light that Gujarat is one of the two major states with zero minority community cook-cum-helpers. The other state is Chhattisgarh. In the country as a whole, out of a total of 25,12,111 cook-cum-helpers, 6.14% or 1,54,438 are from minority communities.

Jignesh Mevani: Why are non-Dalit social workers shy of fighting untouchability?

Martin Macwan addressing the Dalit gathering Senior Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, raking up a major controversy, has wondered why non-Dalit social workers and civil society activists, who have been working among the poorer sections of society such as maldhari cattle breeders and factory workers, environmentalists and farmer rights activists have not cared to raise the issue of untouchability in Gujarat society.

Amaravati: World Bank refusing to share public grievances on Land Pooling Scheme

A sign in Undavalli argues against the land pooling process A new  report , prepared by the advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), New Delhi, has taken strong exception to the World Bank refusing to share its independent assessment of the Land Pooling Scheme (LPS), floated by the Andhra Pradesh government in order to build the new capital.

Youth in Bhopal say they want to vote Modi, as they 'haven't heard' the secular narrative

Senior human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, known for her anti-Modi slant, has regretted that youth in Bhopal have not heard the "other narrative" on why BJP shouldn't in these elections. Talking with a group outside a sweet shop, when she asked whom do they want to win, the immediate "reply was Modi". "I spoke to them for 15 minutes. I got their attention within 2-3 minutes. They listened. I could see on their faces they had never heard another narrative", Hashmi said in a recent  Facebook post . Bhopal is witnessing a keen battle between Malegaon terror accused Sadhvi Pragya Thakur from BJP and veteran Congress stalwart Digvijay Singh. Hashmi, who is known to have campaigned against BJP, especially Modi, ever since the 2002 Gujarat riots, admitted, "I have maintained since 2002 secularism has not failed. Our reach has failed. We are too small a numger to counter RSS propaganda." Recalling that her organization, Anhad "held camps from ...

Shyamaprasad Mukherjee had "supported" Kashmir autonomy, opposed Quit India

A new book by Subhash Gatade, "Hindutva's Second Coming",  published  by Media House, has revealed that Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, considered by BJP as one of the main Hindutva ideologues, who died in 1953 under "debatable circumstances" after being arrested for opposing the special status to Kashmir, had "initially accepted" the inevitability of Article 370, which provides autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

India's 80% construction sites "unsafe", deaths 20 times higher than those in Britain

The Government of India may be seeking to project India’s construction sector as the country’s second-largest employer of the country after agriculture, providing jobs to more than 44 million people, and contributing nearly 9% to the national GDP, yet, ironically, its workforce is more unprotected than any other industrial sector of the country. Data suggest that the possibility of a fatality is five times more likely in the construction industry  than in a manufacturing industry, and the risk of a major injury is 2.5 times higher.

Gujarat potato farmers tell PepsiCo: Withdraw court cases unconditionally, compensate

Gujarat potato farmers sued by PepsiCo have rejected the top multinational corporation’s (MNC’s)  announcement  that it would withdraw cases against them under certain terms and conditions, asserting that Indian farmers’ seed freedoms are non-negotiable.

No respite from child labour as 2 lakh schools close down: National consultation on RTE told

A civil society consultation organized by the Right to Education (RTE) Forum, Campaign against Child Labour, and the Alliance for Right to Early Childhood Development in Delhi has been told that the Government of India is “not serious about” about RTE and there has been only 4% increase in RTE compliance since 2014, when BJP came to power.