In a surprise move, a new report by Greenpeace India, the environmental NGO whose Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) license was controversially cancelled in December 2016, followed by an Enforcement Directorate (ED) freezing its bank accounts in October 2018, has showered praise on a scheme to solarize agriculture launched in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Gujarat.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has said that the statement given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament on Sardar Sarovar dam is “false”, pointing out, though the Sardar Sarovar Dam was meant to provide drinking and irrigation water to farmers, especially in the dry areas of Kutch, Saurashtra and Rajasthan, this is not happening.

Vishnu Pandya A little over a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticized BJP candidate from Bhopal Pragya Thakur for calling Nathuram Godse a patriot saying he would never forgive her for the remark, a top Sangh Parivar ideologue, known to close to Modi in Gujarat, has supported her, saying her statement should be seen “within a context.” Thakur won from Bhopal by more than 3.5 lakh votes defeating her nearest rival, veteran Congressman and ex-Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh.

An explicit anti-Dalit, anti-reservation FB post A recent American civil society research has found that 40% of India's casteist posts on Facebook (FB) have anti-reservation slant. Asserting that the reservation policy in India is similar to affirmative action in the United States, the research study, titled "Facebook India: Towards The Tipping Point of Violence Caste and Religious Hate Speech", says, this type of hate content on FB is mainly directed against Dalits and Adivasis.

A just-released report has asserted that India's ranking in the Global Peace Index (GPI) is 141st among 163 countries, deteriorating by four ranks in a year. Ranking 163 countries by providing a score to each, the report, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), headquartered in Sydney, Australia, has found India to be one of the least peaceful nations in the region.

Two more starvation deaths have occurred in Jharkhand recently, one in Jama (Dumka district) and one in Mahuadanr (Latehar district). In both cases, the victims were pensioners but did not receive any pension payment since January 2019. Had pensions been paid on time,  Motka Manjhi  and  Ramachandra Munda  would perhaps be alive today, says a fact-finding report by the Right to Food Campaign (RFC), Jharkhand.

Rajesh, Nanjibhai Sondharva Will the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) go in for a “thorough inquiry” into the recent  murder  of 19-year old Rajesh Sondharva a resident of Manekwada village in Rajkot district of Gujarat? As claimed by well-known right to information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission (CHRI), following his  complaint , NHRC has  decided  “register a case” in the matter.

A recent study of how social media users and non-users behaved during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections has sought to suggests that the Congress’ main development plank,  NYAY (Nyunatam Aay Yojana) scheme, promising a minimum income to poor households, announced allegedly to “wrest the post-Balakot momentum back from the BJP”, failed to achieve the desired goal, particularly among those for whom the proposed scheme was targeted.

Damaged orchards in Urni village, Himachal Pradesh A just-released report, “The Hidden Cost of Hydropower” by a Himachal Pradesh-based civil rights group, Himadhara, has warned that the market for hydropower has been “dwindling over the last few years”, as evident from "falling revenues from the hydropower sector" in the state, where “the installed capacity has risen from around 6000 MW to 10,547 MW in the last ten years”, but “the annual revenue from the sector which was around Rs 1300 crores a decade ago is at around Rs 908 crores in the last financial year.”

Top economist Arvind Subramanian has said that changes brought about by the Government of India in data sources and methodology for estimating the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011-12 “has led to a significant overestimation of growth”. While official estimates place annual average GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2016-17 at about 7 percent, the actual growth may have been 4½ percent, ranging from 3 ½ to 5 ½ percent during the period, he adds.

In a  letter  to the Government of India (GoI), made public after “failing” to get any response on the concerns expressed regarding the current updation process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) has taken serious view of the danger of disenfranchising a whopping four lakh people in Assam.

Ramchandra Guha, Vishnu Pandya Saffron ideologue-historian Vishnu Pandya, who chairs the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi, has justified his views on Nathuram Godse, that he was a patriot, and so was Gandhi, but has added, it should be seen within a context. Pandya, in a message regarding my  story  “Now, top Gujarat ‘litterateur’ close to Modi says: Godse was patriot, so was Gandhi” ( republished  in The Wire), has said, “Gandhi was born in Porbandar, just 60 km away from my hometown” to suggest how close he is to Gandhi.

A recent study on gender disparities in health-care expenditure (HCE) in India, published in “Science Direct”, one of the world's leading source for scientific, technical, and medical research, has said that though globally women live longer than men “because of the biological and behavioral advantages of being a female”, in India “life expectancy gap for females versus males is nearly zero or marginally higher” because of “gender-based discrimination in breastfeeding, food allocation, immunization, access to health-care services, and finance for treatment.”

It is now official. Super-star Akshay Kumar has not been conferred any honorary citizenship by Canadian authorities, as claimed by him ahead of the 2019 elections. In reply to a query by Roshan Shah, who is a Canadian citizen living in Waterloo, Ontario, and belongs to Ahmedabad, the country’s authorities dealing with issues related with immigration, refugees and citizenship in Canada have said that only six persons have so far been granted honorary citizenship.

Even as the United States declared it was withdrawing its “preferential trade status” accorded to India, facts suggest, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “assured” US president Donald Trump last year he would work on going soft on “very high tariffs” imposed on American products coming to India. Addressing a White House media conference on October 1, 2018, Trump had said, I had “spoken to Prime Minister Modi, and he is going to reduce them (tariffs) quite substantially.”