Counterview

Annup Sonii, Bezwada Wilson, Amitabh Bacchan By Rajiv Shah  Yesterday, Bezwada Wilson, a well-known Dalit rights activist who has for long been campaigning for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers, was on superstar Amitabh Bacchan’s “popular” Kaun Banega Crorepati show on Sony TV. I was a little surprised, but thought it was indeed a good opportunity for him to put across the plight of the most disadvantaged section of Dalits, Valmikis, before an audience which largely happens to be from dominant castes.  I decided to watch the show and listen to what all Wilson had to say. I also thought it was good of Bacchan to give Wilson, who heads the Safai Karmachari Andolan and is a Magsaysay awardee, an opportunity to tell Crorepati audience on issues that bog this most oppressed community. The level of ignorance that exists on the law banning manual scavenging in any form was revealed, during the show, by none other than the man who accompanied Wilson, top TV actor Annup Sonii. After Wilso

Counterview Desk  A blogging site carries an interesting article, "4 African Kings Who Ruled India That Have Been Erased From History". Two Ghana bloggers ( Koby PI and MR Eris ), apparently, are owners of the site, which calls itself “Mind Builders Fellowship", which, it says, is an organization that helps each and everyone to liberate oneself by "renewing of the mind and flashing out the unwanted elements out of the mind.” Interestingly, the bloggers are from a country which shot into prominence for India last year after several scholars from the country called Gandhiji “racist”, leading to removal of the his statue from the University of Ghana. Now, Ghana bloggers seek to suggest how India has “ignored” African kings. Reproduced below is the blog: ***  “…The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their

Chief minister Vijay Rupani in Abdasa  By Our Representative The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a well-known elite NGO monitoring political processes, especially elections, in India, has said that despite a Supreme Court order, political parties, including BJP and Congress, fighting eight by-elections in Gujarat, scheduled for November 3, have chosen candidates with criminal cases.

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  It is more than three weeks now: On the night of October 8, 2020, the 83-year-old Jesuit Fr Stan Swamy was taken into custody by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) from his residence in Ranchi to an undisclosed destination. According to his colleagues, the NIA did not serve a warrant on Fr. Stan and that their behaviour was absolutely arrogant and rude.

By Our Representative A rapid telephonic survey of the Human Rights Commissions, Women’s Commissions, Child Rights Commissions, Minorities Commissions and Lokayuktas at state as well as Central level has suggested that a large number of them have not functioned during the Covid-19 pandemic, even though it is their job to “intervene and uphold the fundamental rights of the stranded workers and provide them with basic amenities.”

Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis: Sept 25 to Oct 25, 2020  Counterview Desk The India Civil Watch International, a multinational organization claiming to be committed to uphold democratic rights in India, even as condemning the horrific case of the rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh (UP) by four dominant caste men, has said that the “brutality” exposes “the Indian police” in the aftermath of the incident.

By Rajiv Shah  Keshubhai Patel, former chief minister of Gujarat, has passed away at the ripe old age of 92. Known to be an opponent (I would call him bete noire in my stories for the Times of India) of Narendra Modi, I am reproducing below a blog on him, “Simply Keshubhai”, I wrote way on June 30, 2012 for the TOI blogging site around the time he was about to dissociate his decades old association with BJP and form Gujarat Parivartan Party, which didn’t last after the December 2012 Gujarat state assembly polls.  Always critical of Modi, going so far as to call political atmosphere of Gujarat under him “mini-emergency”, Keshubhai withdrew from active politics thereafter, “accepting” Modi’s leadership. His activity ever since was confined to remaining chairman of the Somnath Temple Trust. I am tempted to reproduce the blog in lieu of a tribute to the grand old man. Read on: ***  He was addressed as “dinosaur” by late Congress chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhury, but Gujarat government of

Shabnam Hashmi By Our Representative To mark one month of the “alleged gang rape and brutalization by upper caste men” of a young Dalit woman from Hathras, a Delhi-based human rights organization Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy) led by senior activist Shabnam Hashmi, has held a nationwide campaign, #IfWeDoNotRise, on October 29 to give “voice to the cumulative outrage of citizens” against such incidents across India.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* A young aspiring Nikita Tomar was murdered by Tauseef, who happened to be stalking her since here college days, as both studied in the same institution in Faridabad, a North Indian town. Nikita, it is reported, had turned down Tauseef’s proposal in the past. The young man could not take the rejection and killed her.

By Our Representative Even as Adani Australia, subsidiary of India’s powerful industrial group, Adanis, welcomed the Minerals Council of Australia’s economic report from the Commodity Insights, which projects that thermal coal imports to the Asia Pacific region rising by 275 million tonnes through to 2030, climate protesters stepped up #StopAdani campaign, including online, in different parts of the world against insurance companies insuring the Adani coal project in Australia.

By Rajiv Shah A US think-tank study has said that even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi still enjoys considerable support among Indian diaspora in the country – 48% of Indian Americans approve of Modi’s performance, 32 percent disapprove, while 20% have “no opinion” – the man often dubbed as American Modi, Donald Trump, is unlikely to get more than 22% of their votes in the November 3 US polls, with his rival, Joseph Biden, likely to get 72% of the votes.

By Our Representative In a major revelation, top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan has said that between 75 and 80 per cent girls, who come to study at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), founded by Macwan about two decades ago off Ahmedabad to offer alternative training options to manual scavenging and other caste based occupations, have experienced sexual violence or harassment.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* India is facing its worst crisis in its recent history. The Hindutva forces shaped by RSS and politically led by BJP are accelerating the crisis to undo liberal constitutional democracy in India. The political opposition is withering everyday with the help of media, puppet police, investigative agencies and judiciary.

By Rajiv Shah  A top Gujarat government insider phoned me up the other day, reminding me of a story we carried in Counterview early this year regarding how a Gujarat government public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals (GSFC), “transferred” Rs 250 crore to a Canadian firm Karnalyte for a potash mining project in Canada, but the project never took off, hence whole money has “gone waste.”  Written by by AK Luke, a retired IAS bureaucrat and a former MD of GSFC, referring to my article, this insider phoned me up to inform me that the Counterview story was copy-pasted in a little-known site called Kractivism. On looking up, I found, indeed, Luke’s story had been copy-pasted, but the site, run by a rights activist, did not have the courtesy to acknowledge the original source. Be that as it may, the state insider wondered why such a big news, involving Rs 250 crore “scam” had skipped top newspapers in Gujarat, forget about India. He said, normally, when such

By Pankti Jog* If a reply received under the Right to Information (RTI) Act is to be believed, a whopping 3.96 lakh ration cards have been deleted from the National Food Security Act (NFSA) benefit in Gujarat. This comes to over 15 lakh people, all of them belonging to tribal and backwards areas. They have been thrown out of the subsided ration cover despite the current Covid situation.

By Anand K Sahay* Media and facile opinion polls appear to have overlooked two somewhat related perspectives with regard to the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections when the first votes will be cast on coming Wednesday. They have partly relied on the 2015 polling data on caste arithmetic as if this was the sacred “gayatri mantra” itself, besides strongly hinting that the presumed Modi magic could safely take the ruling alliance home.

Counterview Desk As many as 134 citizens, mainly from Gujarat, condemning the closure of “Kashmir Times” office in Srinagar, have said that entire effort is to silence freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and teach its editor Anuradha Bhasin a lesson for opposing “repressive measures” of the Government of India following the abrogation of Article 370.

Shukleshwar Mahadev temple in Anaval village By Rajiv Shah The other day, I was informally talking with a younger friend on caste situation in Gujarat. In order to explain how caste has taken shape, he told me his own example. “I am supposed to be Anavil Brahmin”, as he said this, I wondered where these Brahmins are placed in the Brahmin caste hierarchy, which is known to be pretty rigid, and has many sub-castes.  This friend – whom I don’t want to name in order not to embarrass him (I know he does not believe in casteism in either traditional sense of the term) – said, “Well, I don’t think they are among the top of the caste ladder.” Then, he went to explain to be me the myth that is prevailing about the origin of the Anavils. Pointing out that all Anavil Brahmins belong to a village called Anaval in the Mahuva taluka of Surat district of South Gujarat, he said, “We were all said to tribals. According to this story, when Lord Ram reached Gujarat after he was wandering around in forest

By Dr Prem Singh*  In the new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), there has been a quantum leap towards neo-colonization of Indian education via privatization to further corporatization of education. There is a crucial need to understand this new dimension of the NEP. Significantly, under the NEP, foreign universities and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been allowed entry in the realm of higher education.

By Our Representative Education activists and civil society organizations (CSOs) across Odisha have opposed the state government’s move to close schools with low student strength as it will increase dropouts among children, especially in the tribal and backward regions of the state, where children mostly depend on government schools for their education. Due to the government's move, around 14,339 primary and upper primary schools in the state will face imminent closure.

Family members of the victim  Counterview Desk A fact-finding team of the All-India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch comprising of Utkarsha Tomar, Kusum Lata, Cand Asha, has alleged that the family of Neetu, a member of the Other Backward Caste (OBC), who was found dead on October 4 at a residence in Model Town, Delhi, was treated treated in the same way as the family of the Hathras gangrape victim.

Abuzar with Shabnam Hashmi By Our Representative In a shocking incident, a social activist, Mohd Abuzar, woke up to find on September 13, 2020 that his Facebook account had been suspended. He came to know of this after he received numerous calls from friends and relatives, who, wanting to communicate with him, received a strange message that he had died, asking them to pay their tributes Abuzar.

Janet Rice, David Shoebrodge, Lee Rhiannon  Counterview Desk A roundtable organised by Australian Greens, which is the third biggest political group in the country, held to discuss human rights situation in India at the New South Wales Parliament in Sydney has insisted that parliamentarians, human rights activists and lawyers should play a more active role “standing up for human rights not just in their own places but also in India.”

Counterview Desk  A report , based on an evidence-based study by a multinational NGO, Global March Against Child, which headquarters in the Hague, providing an overview of child labour with a gender lens in sugarcane harvesting in India, has said that large number of children are pushed into hazardous child labour due to structural poverty among harvesters, most of whom are from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes.

Wall writing to propagate nutritional value of dal  By Our Representative An Odisha civil society report has revealed that despite the fact that the state government has been offering 1 kg of dal (pulses) per month to each family as a "covid elevation measure", 63% of the families families surveyed said the dal lasted between one and five days, while 27% of families consumed dal between six and 10 days.

By NS Venkataraman*  With the Covid-19 pandemic causing severe setbacks to the national economy and upsetting the Government of India’s proactive and forward looking programmes, and the Government of India seeking to retrieve the economy and restore it on the way forward, there is the need to boost consumption in the country.

Klaus Schwab  By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* The pandemic has shaken up the neoliberalism as an economic project of capitalism. The economic architecture of neoliberalism based on austerity, liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation has failed to provide basic dignity of life in terms of basic health, education, home and food security.

Counterview Desk A women's delegation met the DCP Dwarka, Delhi, on October 22 Santosh Kumar Meena Meena, telling him how in a relatively well-to-do area sexual harassment of women has become a common, even as handing over a memorandum which mentions recent instances of the “unacceptable” incidents.

Stan Swamy By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* It is good to see Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren speaking so powerfully against the arrest of Father Stan Swamy. Many other voices are also speaking up against his arrest. The 83 year old Stan has been working in Jharkhand for years and runs a centre at Bagaicha, a place for the Adivasis in Jharkhand, particularly those who have been victim of police violence and whose rights have been violated.

A Kashmiri diaspora protest in US By Our Representative  The Kashmiri diaspora representatives in US have stepped of their campaign for internationalising the Kashmir issue, with one of its youth delegates, addressing an informal debate at the UN, organised by the Office of the United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy of Youth, criticising India for adopting a policy of “obfuscation and deceit” towards Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

A Dalit artist's painting on caste atrocities  By Our Representative The Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDNet), claiming to be a coalition of over 1,000 Dalit human rights defenders across India, has collaborated with Public Bolti, a citizen journalism  and advocacy platform, to run a social media campaign #LockdownCasteAtrocities on DHRDNet’s official social media handles on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , Linktree and Youtube .

Lance Naik Mohd Naseer, martyred on Line of Control Counterview Desk As many as 91 former civil servants have, in an open letter, sought investigation into what they call “malicious campaign of calumny” against soldiers of the Muslim faith in the Indian armed forces, stating “the assaults against the dignity of our Muslim citizens, as indeed physical assaults, are becoming commonplace.”

By Rajiv Shah  I was greatly amused the other day when I found a Facebook friend, Rajiv Tyagi, a former Indian Air Force squadron, sharing a post which quotes historian DN Jha to say that “beef-eating habits of ancient Hindus, Buddhists and even early Jains.” This, the post said, finds reflected in the book titled “Holy Cow – Beef in Indian Dietary Conditions.”  I know, several historians have earlier said that ancient Hindus and Buddhists would eat beef. But Jains? I got interested in it, and sent a message to Tyagi, wondering if I could be turn this into a news for Counterview. He said, yet I could, but he had taken his post from somewhere else, probably an interview, and he didn’t have the exact URL. Hence, I decided to search the web to find out whether this was true. The article quoting Jha was first published in the “Outlook” magazine, way back in 2001. While “Outlook” has kept the article “locked” – which you can readd only if you offer a subscription rate – it has been republ

Counterview Desk Well-known civil rights organization, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, has regretted that the Government of India-announced stimulus package “has chosen to, once again, ignore the plight of the most vulnerable population which has been hardest hit by the sudden lockdown – the rural and urban workers of the country” – even as distributing festival vouchers to a select few.

By Our Representative Opposition leaders, including Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Kechury, CPI general secretary D Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and NCP MLA Supriya Sulehave have joined top human rights activists, lawyers and academics to denounce the arrest of Stan Swamy and other activists in the Bhima Koregaon case, even as calling for the repeal of the “draconian” Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

By Rajiv Shah  I felt terribly awed, and somewhat strange, when I received an email from the “Hindustan Times Media Group, India”, one of India’s top corporate media houses, owned by  offering Counterview , a nonentity, run on a voluntary basis, and edited by me, offering what was called “content subscription business.”  The email, by the Group’s “Content Alliances manager”, elated me somewhat – that a top media house has approached Counterview , suggesting, they seem to be closely observing what all is being published in Countervew , which essentially deals mainly with current affairs stories. Addressed to me as “Dear Rajiv/Editor”, and greeting me on behalf of the powerful media house, the email from the person who sent it to me said, he wanted to “check” if we are “looking to subscribe to more Indian content” for “our website, print and magazine.” It underlined, “We can licence you our digital content. We have content from all genres – Politics, Entertainment, Business, Health and L

By Our Representative  One of India’s topmost economists has estimated that India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decline was around 50%, and not 23%, as claimed by the Government of India’s top data body, National Statistical Organization (NSO). Prof Arun Kumar, who is Malcolm S Adiseshiah chair professor, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, said this was delivering a web policy speech, organised by the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), New Delhi.

Saffron-clad supporters of Thakur accused entering village By Our Representative  A fact-finding report , prepared after its recent visit to Hathras, has said that ever since the gruesome grangrape incident in Uttar Pradesh on September 14, the victim’s family has had to fight its “battle amidst feudal-casteist environs and politics” in which it is being forced to operate. Worse, hurdles were created for those who seeking to give a supporting hand the family. The victim (identified by the team as Dasya), died in a Delhi hospital a fortnight later.

Fr Stan Swamy, Amnesty office in Bengaluru, now closed Counterview Desk Objecting to the use of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) against Amnesty International, forcing the top NGO to close its office in India, and the arrest human rights activists, especially 83-year-old Fr Stan Swamy, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has asked the Government of India to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and NGOs, and their ability to carry out their crucial work on behalf the groups they represent.

By Our Representative A recent survey, carried out by the Centre for Labour Research and Action (CLRA), a civil rights organization, of cottonseed plots in Danta taluka of Banaskantha district has claimed that tribal children continue to be employed in large numbers for cross pollination work in cottonseed production in Gujarat. While some of the children belong to the farmer households, other children are hired for wages as the pollination work is labour intensive.

Counterview Desk A statement signed by nearly 12,000 women’s rights activists and organizations across India, “Sex Workers have Human Rights too”, has taken strong exception to by a letter by Sunitha Krishnan and her organisation, Prajwala, to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which seeks to reduce sex workers to hapless victims of violence and not citizens entitled to rights.

By Vikash Narain Rai* After the #BlackLifeMatters movement seriously tested the credibility of police across America, the Houston police chief Art Acevado talked of ending “lawful but awful” policing. No comparison, but in India, a citizens’ committee comprising former top judges and bureaucrats is now set to inquire into the role of the state machinery and media in handling the February 2020 Delhi violence, which followed protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), “as the investigation by the Delhi Police has evoked extensive critical commentary in recent times.”

Model of Sita going into Mother Earth, Sitamarhi By Kabita Ghosh, Arup Mitra* There is a strong view that western feminism made the world aware of gender equality and talked about women empowerment openly. Some of the Indian women writers dealing with gender issues contested this view through their writings and held that western feminism may have influenced the feminist movement in India, giving it a concrete shape, but to say that it made India fight for equality is rather an exaggeration.

By Moin Qazi* Human civilisation has always believed that there is something primal about the need for privacy, for secrecy, for personal space. This has, in the world of some judicial authorities, taken to mean “the right to be let alone”-- that is, the right to privacy. They believe “privacy is the beginning of all freedom”.

By Rajiv Shah  In a previous blog I had said that India’s poor ranking in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) suggests failure of percolation theory of economist Arvind Panagariya, professor at the Columbia University, who served in the Niti Aayog after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 but resigned reportedly because of high bureaucratic interference. I am no economist, yet the fact is, the percolation theory has been put to test time again across the world.  While there is little doubt that percolation theory – which suggests higher GDP would automatically lead to reduced poverty – has been disputed by many an economist, especially those on the left-of-the-centre, it has also been questioned by top international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, not once but several times over. But there has been yet another extreme which I had noticed way back in 1970s as a student – especially some die-hard “Marxists” of the CPI-M type. I

By Rajiv Shah  Following the news that India ranks 94th among 107 nations in Global Hunger Index (GHI), I got interested in the study , a joint exercise by institutes in Ireland and Germany (Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe). Scanning through the report, I found that it does not take into account the serious situation arising in India (or for that matter in other countries) because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It admits, “While the 2020 GHI does not yet reflect the impacts of Covid-19, it shows that the situation is already worrying in many contexts and is likely to worsen in the years to come.” Indeed, India requires special scrutiny as lakhs, perhaps crores (Government of India has no data), migrated from top metropolitan cities to their respective towns and villages out of sheer desperation because of the unplanned lockdown, which led to major issues vis-a-vis food security, one of the three major dimensions (inadequate food supply leading to undernourishment) analysed while worki

By Rajiv Shah A new book, “India’s Scheduled Areas”, has gone a long way to suggest that the contradictions between two diametrically opposite views during the “intensive discussions and debates” at the Constituent Assembly on what policy to adopt towards India’s tribal areas – whether to see them as regions with distinct identity or now – continues to this day.