Three South Korean LG Chem personnel, whose passports were confiscated due to their importance in the investigation of the company’s deadly styrene gas  release , have "fled" India after getting a favourable court  judgement . Bringing this to light, the Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims ( ANROEV ), an international NGO network, said, this would "help" the company to “avoid responsibility” as has happened in other cases, including Bhopal.

  A high-profile Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) survey of civil society organizations (CSOs) has complained that government indifference despite the “felt need” to continue with the relief work to the poorer sections society amidst Covid-19 crisis was a major reason why more than 36% of CSOs were forced to stop doing the work, while another 54% said they had plans to stop it in a month’s time.

Lauding the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) 2020 of UNESCO, which highlights the need to make education a universal right for all, the Right to Education (RTE) Forum has demanded the government and policy makers in India should pay immediate attention towards this as it has become crucial at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has further exacerbated the existing inequalities in society.

Returned migrants being tested at an entry point in Uttarakhand A telephonic survey, conducted among 323 returned migrant workers in hill districts of Uttarakhand, has revealed that even though they have returned from the places they worked – mainly Mumbai, Delhi NCR, other districts of the state and Rajasthan – majority of the respondent (68%) would like go back to their destination places in the absence of employment opportunities in their native places of the state.

  A top multinational NGO, with presence in several developed and developing countries, has taken strong exception to the World Bank part-funding Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project in six Indian states – Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha – for its emphasis on information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled approaches for teacher development, student assessment and digital platform for early childhood education. 

The Working Peoples’ Charter (WPC), a civil society network claiming to represent more than 150 provincial and local organizations of informal workers, has asked workers’ organizations across the country to identify industries, establishments and enterprises, as also their geographical location, where wage workers “are not paid wages" or where wages have been "withheld.”

State sector's better performance vis-a-vis private firms (in % points)  A major study, released by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), first of its kind on “heightened uncertainty in product markets, business operations, and financing plans” of Indian firms during the Covid-19 crisis, has found that “the government-owned firms have outperformed the private counterparts.”

A new report, “Social Media & Political Behaviour” by Lokniti – Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, has revealed that the rise of social media platforms in India in the recent past “has been accompanied by a steady decline of traditional media over the years”, including newspapers and TV. According to the  report , “In 2014, 29 percent of voters had said that they read newspapers daily. In 2019, this figure declined to 18 percent in our survey. Similarly, the proportion of those watching TV news daily has declined from 46 percent in 2014 to 35 percent now.” On the other hand, the report states, “The use of social media among voters in India has grown by leaps and bounds”, pointing out, “Back in 2014, merely one of every ten voters (9%) was found to be using Facebook”, but this figure doubled “to 20 percent by 2017, and then increasing further to 32 percent during the recent 2019 Lok Sabha elections”. Similarly, the usage of WhatsApp which was 22 perc...

A study conducted by the Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation (KSCF) titled ‘Extent of child labour and prosecution of cases under Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, in India’ has revealed that the percentage of total number of victims rescued during 2016-18 is only a meagre 0.02% of the total number of child labourers in the country.

Dr Sydney Freeman Jr Speakers at a recent Indo-US  web policy talk  on Blacks in US and Dalits in India have agreed that fight against socio-economic discrimination cannot be an internal matter of a country, insisting on the need to “globalise” human rights. Jointly organised by the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) and the University of Idaho, those who participated included Dr Sydney Freeman Jr, associate professor, University of Idaho, and Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan.

A recent  study  “Free Universities Report: Putting the Academic Freedom Index Into Action”, jointly prepared by two institutes in Germany in Sweden has placed India below Pakistan in its Academic Freedom Index (AFi), stating India is among the “one-third of countries with the worst performances in 2019” with a “D” status, with an AFi score, between 0.4 and 0.2 on a scale of 1. Stating that India is one of the country which have de jure guarantees in place, while extensive violations of academic freedom occur in practice.” The report has been prepared by Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Sweden’s V-Dem Institute. On a scale of 1, while Pakistan scores 0.554 and Sri Lanka 0.506, while India scores 0.352. As a matter of comparison, United Kingdom scores 0.934, Brazil 0.466, Singapore 0.411 and Russia 0.364 (a little better than India), while Bangladesh and China a poor 0.195 and 0.101 respectively (in E status, below 0.2). The report says, the...

Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro with Modi A new report, prepared by a top Swedish institute studying liberal democracy, has observed that there has been a sharp “dive in press freedom along with increasing repression of civil society in India associated with the current Hindu-nationalist regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” The report places India among the top 10 countries that “have autocratized the most”. Other countries that have been identified for rolling towards autocracy are -- Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Serbia, Brazil, Mali, Thailand, Nicaragua and Zambia.

Janvikas activists after handing over survey report to Panchmahals officials A civil society survey of the Gujarat government’s “study from home” scheme, introduced on March 28, four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced national lockdown in view of the Covid-19 crisis, has found that a whopping 61% of the children are unable to take advantage of the weekly online material, sought to be provided by the state authorities to the parents to ensure that children are not devoid of education.

Dr Sapan Desai A top American doctor, Sapan Sharankishor Desai,  born and raised  in the “affluent” North Shore (Chicago) region of Illinois by Indian parents, at one point of time involved in NGO activity through  dedicated to “improving” the lives of the impoverished in Gujarat, is in the eyes of a major international storm following his  paper  (retracted) in a “Lancet” questioning Donald Trump-promoted drug hydroxychloroquine.

The J Point of Mahi river, where the sample was taken In letter to the Union minister for environment, forests and climate change, with copies to senior officials of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and their counterparts in Gujarat, senior environmentalists Rohit Prajapati and Krishnakant have said that it is “utterly shocking” that the Effluent Channel of Vadodara Enviro Channel Ltd (VECL) continues to release untreated wastewater.

Commenting on India’s January-March 2019 GDP growth, which "surprised sharply to the downside, printing at a 5-year low of 5.8%", JP Morgan, the American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City, has said that it has not just "dragged down full-year growth also to a five-year low of 6.8%". It underlines, "The GDP undershoot reinforces the discernable slowdown that is currently underway. Growth has largely been flying on one engine in recent years – private consumption – and that has gotten progressively exhausted." Worse, in its commentary, authored by Sajjid Z Chinoy and Toshi Jain, who are with the top MNC's Emerging Markets Asia Economic and Policy Research wing, say, even this is "buffeted by sustained rural distress and a significant tightening of financial conditions amongst the Non Bank Financial Companies (NBFC), which have largely been financing consumption." Continue the JP Morgan e...

Amitabh Kant Was the Government of India serious when it  asked  92,000 civil society organizations (CSOs) in early April to “assist” state governments and district administrations in taking care of food, shelter and other needs of migrant workers, known to have been affected by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’ sudden 21-day lockdown in order to “combat” the spread of Covid-19 virus, announced on March 24?