Annup Sonii, Bezwada Wilson, Amitabh Bacchan 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 Wilson gave deta...

  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.”

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 official...

  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.

  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.

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 “exposures”...

Shukleshwar Mahadev temple in Anaval village 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 forests during h...

  Abuzar with Shabnam Hashmi 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.

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 republished in “...

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 Li...

  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.

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 don’t know...

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 working out GHI, the...

Sanjay Gandhi Yesterday, I did a story , based on an official communique of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, on a book launched by it on bonded labour, authored by a retired IAS bureaucrat, Lakshmidhar Mishra.  At the virtual book launch ceremony, Justice PC Pant, who happened to be Supreme Court judge between 2014 and 2017, and currently is National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) member, linked bonded labour with population explosion, going so far as to say that, to abolish bonded labour you need a population policy as adopted in 1975-76 during the Emergency. I don’t know if the illustrious Nobel laureate, Satyarthi, present on the occasion, was also shocked or reacted to it. I, as a college pass-out in Delhi, had witnessed how population control was being implemented during the Emergency days under the eagle eyes of Sanjay Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi. All know what happened then: In the name of two-child norm, forced sterilisation became a norm. Family planning becam...

  A senior National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) official, Justice PC Pant, wants the population control policy initiated by Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency days to return in order to end bonded labour. Speaking on the occasion of a virtual book release function, Justice Pant, who is member NHRC, and was Supreme Court judge between 2014 and 2017, recalled, “During 1975-76 under the 20-point programme there was not only emphasis on abolition of bonded labour but also population control.”

Scanning through a “Quint” article recently, I got somewhat curious. The headline was enough attract me: “Will Nitish Kumar ‘Legitimise’ BJP in Bihar Like Chimanbhai Did?” Authored by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, it said, as Bihar prepares for India’s first elections in the post-Covid-19 era (is it?), it was necessary to examine “a few slices of history”. Thus, it refers to how, between the summer of 1989 and the autumn of 1990, the BJP cozied up to Patel, propped him up as Gujarat chief minister, “and thereafter, pulled the rug from beneath his feet.”  Banking heavily on an interview Mukhopadhyay had with Narendra Modi, the article suggests that Modi played a crucial role in the whole political game being being played out during those crucial days, leading to a situation where his (Modi’s) stock within BJP having “shot up”. While Patel “secured support from the Congress”, what was clear was: BJP and Modi were “the ascendant forces.” A decade later, Modi became Gujarat chief minister. W...

A couple of days back, I felt very strange: Two of the top online sites of India, one of the “Times of India” (TOI) – for which I worked for two decades before I retired in 2013 – and other of Daily News and Analysis, better known as DNA, carried a story which said, the Kapil Sharma TV show-fame "Bhuri aka Sumona Chakravarti is 'numb' and 'hollow' after losing pet dog Rooney.”  Here I don’t want to comment on the Kapil Sharma show itself, already one of the most popular for its comedy (one may agree or disagree with the quality of humour), or the actor, Sumona. What shocks me is even the death of a pet dog belonging to an actor attracts “journalists”. While TOI carried a video , DNA did a write-up . And if journalists may do the story, what were the editors doing? Did they order them to prepare a write-up? After all every story at least in TOI is thoroughly scanned before it is published. I am just quoting the DNA story, which is a writeup. it said how Sumona had “...

VRS Cowlagi This is continuation of my previous blog on the role of IAS babus in the Government of India. At the end of the blog, I had said that it would be more pertinent to point towards how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been toying with the idea of undermining IAS, replacing with what he may consider as professionals. I don’t know the degree to which he has been successful, but from available indications, he does not appear to have seen any major breakthrough in breaking the powerful IAS grip on the administration. Let me recall, he first toyed with the idea of replacing IAS with professionals when he was chief minister of Gujarat. During my stint in Gandhinagar, lasting from late 1997 to dearly 2013, I did several stories on this, but I have preserved one of them, which I did in 2006 – it is headlined “Professionals to edge out babus?”; it points towards how the state government under him was planning to outsource activities in all departments for more “effective” results. In...

Jay Narayan Vyas, former BJP minister in Gujarat, is right now writing long profiles of some of the well-known names who he thinks have contributed immensely to society and polity. Currently no more in good books of the BJP leadership, Vyas has been even critical of several of Modi policies, including the three recent agricultural Acts – something he has been justifying by stating that even Subramaniam Swamy, a Rajya Sabha MP, has been doing so, which is his – and Swamy’s – “right.” At least this what I have found him stating on Gujarati TV channels as also on Facebook.  Be that as it may, one of the profiles which Vyas recently wrote  on, and which appeared as a two-series article on his Facebook timeline , was that of Arvind Buch, who headed the trade union founded by Mahatma Gandhi, Majur Mahajan. I got interested in it because I recall meeting him in 1981 during my visit to Ahmedabad. At that I was with the semi-Left “Link” weekly in Delhi. In Ahmedabad, I decided to ...

Modi with IAS officials during his Gujarat days Recently, I was forwarded an article , published in “The Print” which, making the appointment of PD Vaghela, a 1986-batch Gujarat cadre IAS official, as chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as the peg, to suggest that, six years on, the Modi government in Delhi “is in the grip of IAS, IPS, IRS officers from Gujarat”. I don’t know much about IPS and IRS officials, but as for IAS bureaucrats, including Vaghela, with whom I used to interact during stint in Gandhinagar, suggests the article appears to have gone largely overboard.  The article suggests that Vaghela, who is allegedly “a trusted hand of PM Modi, is known to have played a crucial role in the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017, and also served as the commissioner of commercial tax in his home state.” He replaces RS Sharma, “who enjoyed a five-year tenure, and Nripendra Misra, who went on to become the Prime Minister’s closest and most t...

Nachiketa playing mouth organ Living in Covid times in Ahmedabad has made me curious as to how the health establishment, which is under the joint control of the municipal corporation and the Gujarat government, is managing the pandemic. As I don’t go out much or meet people, the information that I get is from individuals who have had Covid treatment. One such person is Nachiketa Desai, a veteran journalist who also happens to be grandson of Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai.  Nachiketa is a pretty well known name, especially among Gujarat activists and journalists. He, apparently, contracted the disease following a visit to a hospital for some treatment. On a second visit, the doctor told him that he perhaps had contracted Covid, as he had fever and was coughing. After waiting for a couple of days, both he and his wife got themselves tested in a private lab, and they found on the next day that they had tested positive. “As the labs have to obligatorily inform the municipal a...

Manisha, Dalit Valmiki girl, whose body was forcibly cremated I was talking to a senior Gujarat cadre IAS official the other day. He had just phoned up to find out how things were, and slowly went ahead and started discussing Hathras – the gangrape of a teenaged Dalit girl, who died a fortnight later in hospital. What he told me was interesting: That there was considerable flutter on an IAS WhatsApp group, in which he also happened to be a member, around the horrendous event.  “Most of those who have been commenting are quite critical of the Uttar Pradesh government”, he informed me as I got curious. He particularly identified a few retired Dalit IAS officials who, according him, appeared to be “quite worked up.” From whatever I learned from the conversation, which lasted for nearly 20 minutes, was, Dalit IAS officials, were, however, not alone in pointing out how anti-Dalit casteism has become the mainstay of politics now. Others, especially from those among the retired, too, join...

  As I was scanning through Sabrang India, a  website  run by well-known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, I came across a post pointing towards how, on the Gandhi Jayanti day, #नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद (#Nathram_Godse_Zindabad) was trending on Twitter. I don’t know if it was among the top trends of the day, but what is interesting is, while some of the those who were posting anti-Gandhi tweets praising Gandhi’s murderer, others called Gandhi racist and casteist, still others blaming him for India's partition.  Thus, a Facebook friend, who has been showing extreme sensitivity towards caste violence  shared  a story of what an Indian American Dalit writer Sujatha Gidla, speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival said on January 29, 2018 -- that Gandhi was a “casteist and racist”, that he wanted to “preserve the caste system and paid lip service to Dalit upliftment for political gain.” Gilda added, “Gandhi only wished to ‘prettify’ the caste system, and ab...