Counterview

Counterview Desk India’s top land rights network, Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (BAA), even as taking strong exception to President Ramnath Kovind giving his accent to the three bills passed in Parliament, has regretted that he didn’t care to pay need to the “irregularities” brought to notice by members of Parliament as also the manner in which the deputy chairman conducting the business in the Rajya Sabha allowed the bills to be passed without voting.

BJP MP from Hathras Rajvir Diler By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* In Gujarat, a young Dalit activist lawyer Devji Maheshwari, belonging to the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMSCEF) was killed in Surat, allegedly by a goon who was warning him against his Facebook posts not to speak up against Brahmanism. Facts have come to light suggesting there are other issues also which led to the murder, mostly related to land disputes, many a time ignored by activists.

By NS Venkataraman* In the pre-Independent days and for a few decades after independence, ministers, leading men in public life used to acknowledge letters from the public, particularly those with valid criticism or suggestions. This practice, unfortunately, now seems to have gone away.

By Our Representative Several civil society organizations, while felicitating the Shaheen Bagh movement and Bilkis Dadi – whom they called “a global symbol of peaceful resistance” – have demanded that the Delhi Police should immediately stop “maliciously targeting” all equal citizenship protestors, most of whom were women, for the Delhi riots of February 2020.

Gujarati Sahitya Parishad building in Ahmedabad  By Rajiv Shah I was surprised over what they say in the US, a “tempest in a teapot”: Counterview published an article by Dankesh Oza, a Gujarat government official who took voluntary retirement about a decade ago, stating that two “oldies” (both octogenarians) were fighting Gujarat Sahitya Parishad polls, which has over 3,000 life-time members as voters. He appeared to support a relatively younger, though retired, person who was a key government official “looking after” Gujarati literature.  The three are in fray for the post of Parishad presidentship. With members spread all over Gujarat, nay India and the world (especially US), the polling takes place via postal ballot sent via speedpost, the results would be out some time in late October. As I am no expert in Gujarati literature, my decision on what to publish Oza’s piece in Counterview depended on the campaign for and against each of the three candidates on social media, particularl

Prakash N Shah: Writer-activist By Natubhai Parmar* Some of those who once served the Gujarat government in senior positions have suddenly become very active. They are seeking to influence the Gujarati literary atmosphere by taking an unusually keen interest in the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad elections, which are currently taking place via postal ballots.

By Our Representative If you are a doting as well as a discerning parent with a baby or toddler this is for you! A new study, ‘What’s in the Diaper: Presence of Phthalates in Baby Diapers’ released by Delhi-based advocacy organisation, Toxics Link, has sought to raise concern over toxic phthalates which it says have been found in disposable baby nappies that are available in the Indian market.

By Our Representative At a time when online education remains a dream for school students in rural areas due to lack of digital resources, a migrant returnee of Uparpita village of Khariar block in Nuapada district has stepped up to teach low performing children in his village during the school closure, an effort that is lauded by parents and communities in his locality.

Prakash N Shah, Harikrushna Pathak, Harshad Trivedi By Dankesh Oza* The 115-year-old Gujarati Sahitya Parishad is in election mode. More than 3,000 life members of the Parishad are set to elect its 52nd president and 40 plus central working committee (CWC) members, which in turn will elect its executive and two vice presidents, six secretaries and a treasurer for the coming three years (from 2021 to 2023).

By Gauhar Raza* The Delhi Police, which operates directly under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has been creating a narrative about the North-East Delhi violence (February 2020), which can very well qualify for a fictional novel, on the one hand, and on the other, an eye opener for all justice loving people of India to understand how state agencies under an authoritarian rule can manufacture facts to target all voices of dissent.

By Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai* The theme put forth by Ambassador Volkan Bozkir, the President of the United Nations General Assembly to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the UN, was, “The future we want, the United Nations we need; reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism”. 

By Rajiv Shah  A few days back, India’s home minister Amit Shah, currently “recuperating at his residence” (to quote a former Gujarat official, currently in Delhi) after contracted novel coronavirus, once again raised controversy by pitching for Hindi as the only language that “can do the work of uniting the country”, because it is the “most spoken language”. He did this a year after he made a similar statement on Hindi Diwas, which falls on September 16.  Usually I don’t care for what politicians say about Hindi, as I think they usually talk from a commonsensical perspective, without taking into account any facts before them. They are more concerned with consolidating their constituency – in the case of Amit Shah it happens to be the Hindu majority in what is often described as Hindi mainland. A somewhat similar effort was made, I recall, way back in 1960s, when an attempt was made by north Indian politicians to impose Hindi, even Sansktritise it, setting off a reaction in the south,

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* SP Balasubrahmanyam (June 4, 1946-September 25, 2020), popularly SPB, who has the world record of singing more than 40,000 songs in 16 different languages of India, represented the idea of India, which is currently under attack. The film industry in Mumbai has been in Hindustani, and not Hindi. Bollywood was built mostly by those whose mother tongue was neither Hindi nor the city’s original mother tongue, Marathi, or what is often called Bambaiya Hindi.

By Atul, Sandeep Pandey* Arun Ferreira is a civil rights activist and human rights lawyer. He has been behind bars since June 6, 2018, when he was arrested in connection to the Bhima Koregaon event held earlier that year. Like many other activists, he was slapped with Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, sedition and other anti-terror related offenses allegedly for inciting the ensuing violence that police claimed was calculated to disturb public peace.

Counterview Desk Stating that the three farm bills passed in Parliament are “against farmers and food security for all”, and urging the President of India not endorse them, the civil rights organization Right to Food Campaign has said that they seek to reduce the state’s role in procurement of foodgrains, even as opening up markets for corporate interests without any protective regulation.

By Salman Khurshid* The protests at Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Millia Islamia, not to mention the protests inspired by them across the country against the CAA-NRC-NPR, were a remarkable break from the past and a repudiation of stereo- types. Virtually leaderless masses of students and women took to the streets to register their presence and participation in Indian democracy.

By Rajiv Shah  As farmers’ agitation gripped the country on September 25, a retired IAS bureaucrat, whom I have known for nearly two decades, phoned me us to get a feel of what I felt would be its impact. I said, I don’t know, as it is too early to assess, but I wondered whether the fact that it shook the entire country would mean that tables have begun turning against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  This bureaucrat, who has been a keen watcher of the Indian political scene and has been in direct touch with those in the top positions of power, said, “Indeed, this is what many of the bureaucrats across India have begun to discuss... After all, we in the administration have always had access to know what the mood of the political masters is...” This bureaucrat, who has mostly served in Gujarat, suggested that the agricultural bills, passed in Parliament, show that Modi was ill-advised, or “to be more precise, there is nobody left around whom to whom he would listen.” The bureaucrat agreed

By Vidya Bushan Rawat* The revolutionary ideals of Shaheed Bhagat Singh have become more than relevant in today's time. It is beyond the imaginations of many how a man who just lived 23 years of his life had so much of idealism. In his prime time, he spent his life in jails under difficult circumstances.

Counterview Desk Friends and family members of Sudha Bharadwaj, a top undertrial human rights activist who is in jail for her alleged involvement in the controversial Bhima-Koregaon case, have said that they are “disappointed” that the Supreme Court has not granted any relief to her on medical grounds.

By Rit Nanda* “The reason for the special distinction that we find in Bengal is that many great men were born there during the last century. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was the greatest among them all. He was not an ocean of learning alone; he was an ocean of compassion, of generosity, as well as of many other virtues. He was a Hindu and a Brahmin too. But to him a Brahmin, a Sudra Hindu and a Muslim were all alike”. – Mahatma Gandhi in ‘ Indian Opinion ’, 1905

By Our Representative The Gujarat High Court has issued notice to the state government regarding alleged refusal to appoint Class-III lokrakshak unarmed police constables, armed police constables and jail sepais in pursuant of advertisement by the Lokrakshak Bharti Board dated August 15, 2018 taking into account the meritorious criterion.

Recently, there was some controversy (storm in a teacup?) around a photograph. A photo went viral on the social media following an unemployed youth demonstration in Lucknow, picked up by several Facebook and Twitter enthusiasts, including journalist Rohini Singh, who claimed in a tweet it was a clear case of sexual harassment of a female demonstrator at the hands of a UP cop.  I couldn’t find the tweet, which I believe she must have deleted following a UP police “ clarification ” that, “since the crowd was huge, it was difficult to distinguish between the genders on the basis of their attire”, hence, by mistake, “the female protestor was taken away by the police personnel, after mistaking her for a man.” It added, “Even the female protestor has acknowledged the misunderstanding caused over the attire.” A video simultaneously went viral where the female protestor is seen stating that she was indeed a protester near Gate No 1 of Lucknow University, but the cops mistook her “for a boy” du

By Balwant Singh Mehta, Arjun Kumar* The novel coronavirus pandemic and recession has destroyed the jobs of millions of people across the world at staggering levels. Due to lockdown and social-distancing, many self-employed, casual workers and regular workers were unable to work, and many has to lose their jobs and source of livelihoods.

May 2017: Turkish President Erdoğan with Prime Minister Modi in Delhi By Our Representative Even as India rejected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s comments that the Kashmir dispute is a “burning issue” for the stability of South Asia, saying they were tantamount to “gross interference” in the country’s internal affairs, a Washington, DC-based Kashmiri diaspora group has said that the Turkish leader’s statement for “multilateral dialogue” is “consistent” with the stance taken by “the President of the United Nations General Assembly.”

By Dibyendu Chaudhuri* Agriculture employs 42% of the total work force whereas it contributes only 16% to the country’s GDP. The average annual growth rate in agriculture has remained static to 2.9% since the last six years. This means that the post-green revolution conventional agriculture has reached its peak. Responsiveness of soil fertility to fertiliser application, an indicator of stagnancy in agriculture, shows declining trend since 1970. The worst sufferer has been the small and marginal farmers who constitute 86% of total farmers.

Counterview Desk A letter written from the prison at a time when the media predicted imminent arrest of CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechuri, which was later denied by the Delhi Police, has caused considerable consternation -- as it accuses the Kerala government under the Left-democratic dispensation of being as vindictive towards activists as the BJP rulers at the Centre.

A rally felicitating new state BJP chief CR Patil By Rajiv Shah  This was scary: A very close friend, near and dear to me, phoned me and told me that he was in “frantic search” of a hospital bed for a relative in Ahmedabad, but to his utter surprise there is a “long queue” everywhere. The reason for the search, he said, was a relative from a neighbouring state had rung him up to inquire whether one could come over to Ahmedabad to get post-Covid treatment, as hospitals were “full” in the city where this relative lived.  “I inquired in all top Ahmedabad private hospitals taking in Covid patients, including Apollo, Zydus, CIMS, elsewhere. They took my contact number and told me that all beds were full, and there was a long waiting list, hence they couldn’t give a date”, this friend, who happens to move around in Ahmedabad’s established business circles, told me. “This made me approach an influential journalist I know who could talk over with hospital managements”, my friend noted, adding,

By Our Representative In a scary scenario, a Right to Education (RTE) Forum programme has been told that, post-pandemic, “the number of out of school children may increase manifold”, with more than “25 per cent of them may never return to school.” Ambarish Rai, national convener, RTE Forum, said, girls are likely suffer the most. 

By Shamsul Islam* The process of Hindutva takeover of the democratic-secular Indian polity got huge push with Narendra Modi, a seasoned RSS ideologue, becoming PM of India in 2014. His commitment to the cause of the Hindutva politics and hatred for the Indian democratic-secular polity has been unambiguous. While ruling the State of Gujarat as the chief minister in 2013 he had declared himself to be a Hindu nationalist.

By Rajiv Shah  An interesting story  in The Wire” on how the Sangh Parivar had “organized” the 1995 Ganesha milk miracle and why the plan flopped” a quarter of a century ago took my memory down the lane back to September 21, 1995, the day I began seeing long queues in Ahmedabad with people trying to “feed” Ganesha idols with milk in small and big temples, mysteriously wondering how the Lord was “drinking away” all the milk they were feeding. The queues must have continued for at least a week.  I didn’t stand in any of the queues, but surely I found that many of my relatives, inimical in standing in queues, buying up Ganesha idols from the market telling me how they were “surprised” by the mysterious disappearance of the milk. While I don’t want to endorse or deny whether it was a Sangh Parivar plot, or if it flopped, what I surely remember how the then chief minister of Gujarat, Keshubhai Patel, went on to endorse the “miracle”. He said, “Haa… Bhagwan Ganesh doodh pive chche” (of cours

By Rohit Prajapati* The current Central and state governments in India, along with the machineries at their disposal, have been and are still unable to answer and address the concerns raised, with facts, figures, and constitutional provisions, regarding the Statue of Unity (SoU) Project in Gujarat.

By Aviral Anand* It is heartening to see that farmers in several states have risen up against some of the new farming changes being proposed by the government. Almost surreptitiously and slyly, the government had introduced various changes by means of these farm bills. Most of the proposed changes have to do with some form of an increased stake of private players in the farm sector.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* Narendra Damodardas Modi is a consummated practitioner of politics of Hindutva politics, which is wedded to hate. He does not spare a moment to capture the headlines with his diversionary tactics, which makes him as one of the sharpest managers of media and prime master of propaganda. 

By Our Representative The global civil society alliance, CIVICUS, in its new report: “Punished for speaking up: The ongoing use of restrictive laws to silence dissent in India”, has taken strong exception to the judicial harassment of activists, targeting of journalists and crackdown on protesters, even as pointing towards how rights violations have continued during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term, including during the pandemic. 

By Anand K Sahay* Recently, on August 22, a little over 12 months after the Modi regime wreaked the constitutional havoc by embarking on a dangerous and destabilizing course by tearing up the delicate arrangement free India entered into with the Maharaja Hari Singh on the morrow of Independence, Kashmir’s major political parties came together to announce a riposte. 

By Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai* Mohammad Zafrullah Khan, Pakistani foreign minister and delegate to the United Nations, had made it clear on January 16, 1948 during the 228th meeting of the Security Council that Gilgat-Baltistan is the part of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Here is the part of his eloquent speech:

By Pragya Ranjan* In April Dr David Nabarro, a WHO special envoy on Covid, singled out India’s coronavirus response for praise, saying ‘Indians know how to do it’, after the country decisively locked down the entire country to prevent the disease from spreading. What we see in India today tells a very different story. 

Hafijul, one of the victims By Our Representative Kirity Roy, secretary of the West Bengal-based human rights organisation Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), in a letter to the chairman, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has regretted that at a time when the whole world was observing the international day of the victims of enforced disappearance on August 30, seven incidents of “enforced disappearance” occurred along the Indo-Bangladesh border. 

By Rajiv Shah  A few days back I wrote a blog, giving the example of Facebook ads, on how advertisement could go to some length in deterring crucial news stories which may embarrass those in power – whether in the corporate or the political world. I had cited example of my experience as a “Times of India” man, first in Ahmedabad and then in Gandhinagar, on how this happens.  There appears some reaction to my blog, with some on social media particularly seeking to highlight the fact that ads do play a certain role in "blocking" certain types of news, as it would happen during biennial Vibrant Gujarat summits, involving top Indian businessmen. However, I just tried putting facts as these occurred to me, without seeking to comment on whether the corporate-owned media – which the “Times of India” was and is – blocks free expression, too. Let me put it things straight: Corporate media is owned by businessmen, who consider newspapers as a means to earn profit. This is as much true

Counterview Desk An Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), Delhi, conducted a survey among 4,500 women respodnetns in rural areas of 20 Indian states during the month of July and August 2020 has found that the Covid-19 pandemic has had huge impact on women’s lives, work, livelihoods, and entitlements.

By Our Representative The Gujarat High Court has decided to adjudicate upon a contempt application by Paalabhai Raambhai Ambalia, president of the farmers’ wing of the Gujarat Congress, following his allegation of  custodial torture at the hands of Jaydeepsinh Sarvaiya, DCP Rajkot district, and police inspector Hitesh Gadhvi, Rajkot Police Commissioner’s office.

By Our Representative Justice AP Shah, former chief justice of the Delhi and Madras High Courts, has regretted that the start of the Supreme Court’s decline “coincided with the coming to power of the BJP-led NDA government in 2014”, adding, “Every institution, mechanism or tool that is designed to hold the executive accountable is being systematically destroyed.”

Counterview Desk Even as the Delhi police is investigating into the Delhi riots, three human rights organizations, Karwan-e-Mohabbat, Anhad and Muslim Women’s Forum, have release an exhaustive review of the controversial book authored by Hindutva protagonists, “Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story”, whose PDF version they say has gone viral after the publishers, Bloomberg, withdrew it, though it is available on a top online store .  

By Moin Qazi*    Public banks have played a historically stellar role in financial inclusion and the development of the underserved sector. These banks have been the backbone of the government’s socio-economic agenda. State-owned banks in developing countries have to shoulder the main burden of the government’s development policies -- from rural lending to infrastructure development. 

By Rajiv Shah  I was a little amused on reading Bhaskar Sur, a virulent Facebook commentator on Left, noting that “Bengali Marxists” have always hated Dr BR Ambedkar. A rather longish post, running into more than 1,000 words, While Sur observes that, to the “upper caste Marxists”, the “towering Dalit intellectual and lifelong fighter for social justice” was “a stooge of the British trying to divide the proletariat and the nationalist movement at the behest of his masters”.  This view, he says, was also taken by “Subhas Bose in the Congress and Shyamaprasad Mukherjee in the extreme rightist Hindu Mahasabha”, adding, “The Left were also vehemently against reservation in jobs for Dalits and tribals achieved through hard struggle by Ambedkar and the other leaders of the depressed classes.” In fact, “Marxists saw them not as entitlements but sops and a part of the imperialist conspiracy to drive a wedge through the working class movement.” Calling Brahminical Left “an extremely regressive