Varadarajan, Vijay Vineet among top 30 world list of Covid-19 'information heroes'

Vijay Vineet, Siddharth Varadarajan

By A Representative
Two Indian journalists, Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder and editor of “The Wire”, and a reporter for the Hindi newspaper “Jansandesh Times” Vijay Vineet find their place in the list of 30 coronavirus “information heroes” across the world – journalists, whistleblowers and media outlets whose "courage, perseverance or capacity to innovate has helped to circulate reliable and vital information during the Covid-19 pandemic."
The Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a Paris-based international non-profit, which has prepared the list, notes how Varadarajan summoned for questioning by the police in response to a complaint by the chief minister of Utter Pradesh for “reporting” that the latter “attended a religious gathering that did not respect social distancing two days after the start of a nationwide lockdown.”
As for Vineet, he reported that children from a Dalit community were going hungry as a result of the lockdown and had been reduced to eating grass usually given to cattle. “Harassed by the authorities and told to publish a correction, he stuck by his story and additionally provided an analysis of the nutritional deficiencies resulting from a grass-based diet. He is facing a possible six-month jail sentences on a charge of fake news”, says RSF.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Modi’s Israel visit strengthened Pakistan’s hand in US–Iran truce: Ex-Indian diplomat

By Jag Jivan M. K. Bhadrakumar , a career diplomat with three decades of service in postings across the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey, has warned that the current truce in the US–Iran war is “fragile and ridden with contradictions.” Writing in his blog India Punchline , Bhadrakumar argues that while Pakistan has emerged as a surprising broker of dialogue, the durability of the ceasefire remains uncertain.

Search This Blog