A People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Karnataka, report “Criminalizing the Practice of Faith”, seeking to trace “hate crimes” on Christians in Karnataka between January and November this year, allegedly by Hindutva groups, has said that the “bogey” of conversion is being used by the current BJP rulers in the State in order to “target the Constitutional right to practice, profess and propagate religion, as recognized under Article 25.”

Afghanistan, Mexico, Pakistan and India are the "most dangerous" countries for media work this year, the Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said in its annual report. Since January 1, as many as 76 media workers have been killed in 28 countries around the world. Afghanistan leads with 12 assassinations, ahead of Mexico where 10 journalists were killed. Among the most dangerous countries are Pakistan (7), India (6), Yemen (4), Democratic Republic of Congo (3) and the Philippines (3 killed).

  An Odisha NGO report “Bridging the Gap: Reimagining School Education in a Post-Covid Scenario” has said that nearly two-thirds of children (63.3 %) could not get required support from their family members to deal with their emotional, social and learning support during the pandemic, when the schools were closed. This happened even as 91.09% of the children reported they did not have access to smartphone, making their learning “difficult and stressful.”

The fact finding team talking to victim's kin A Madurai-based NGO’s fact-finding team on a recent incident involving the death of two Tamil Nadu labourers, who allegedly died after being taken in custody by the Andhra Pradesh forest officials, has said that, belonging to the scheduled tribal (ST) Malayalee community, they were part of several tribals from various villages of Sitheri Panchayat, Harur Taluk, Dharmapuri District, being taken to Andhra Pradesh on November 21, 2021 to work as wage workers. 

Several US-based Indian diaspora civil rights groups have submitted a policy memo to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the US Department of State asking the department to “recognize and elevate” the importance of fighting caste discrimination internationally as part of the country’s foreign policy thrust.

The civil rights group, Indian Community Activists Network (ICAN), commenting on the “barbaric” police  action  on the night of December 3 against the people of Dhinkia village, Jagatsinghpur district, Odisha, has said that the attack took place on people who were “peacefully protesting against the proposed project of JSW Utkal Steel Limited by forcefully acquiring their land.”

  The real freedom fighting brigade Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut may have her own reasons to say that India acquired real freedom in May 2014, when Narendra Modi came to occupy India’s seat of power.  There was little to be amused by what she said, for, as many commentators have variously pointed out, her viewpoint was surely based on her little or no knowledge of the history of the Indian freedom movement. I wasn’t surprised, as most of the Bollywood “stars” are devoid of any sense of history; they appear to be more guided by their own circumstances when utter something. But what amused me was a Facebook post with a screenshot of a Guardian editorial dated May 18, 2014, which said virtually the same thing as Ranaut -- except that it didn’t call India achieving independence as “bheek” (alms) in 1947. I decided to search for a link – and I found it:  here  it is! The Facebook post which I have referred to expressed surprise over the Guardian editorial, stating, it’s...

A civil rights group Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) survey of temporary sewer workers working under contract in many areas of Delhi has found that contractors pay wages to the sewer worker only for four months, even though their tender is for six months. Worse, the contractors deduct 25-35% from the wages before giving these to the workers.

  Unilever, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Company emerge as the top international brands contributing to plastic pollution in India. Seven of the top 10 international brands --mostly fast-moving consumer goods – polluting India have consistently featured in the world's top 10 plastic polluters list based on the Break Free From Plastic's (BFFP) annual   Brand Audit report.

Children, despite being less affected by coronavirus, are bearing a disproportionate burden of the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic and it is not just affecting their physical health but also their mental wellbeing. The prolonged school closure and movement restriction caused fear, anxiety, stress and social bearings among children.

Dangerously high levels of mercury, a heavy metal and neurotoxin, were found in imported skin whitening creams being sold in Indian markets, Toxics Link, a well-known environmental research and advocacy non-profit, has said in its latest report “Dark truth of skin whitening creams: Presence of Mercury in skin whitening creams”.

An anti-Taliban protest in Afghanistan Bollywood poet Jawed Akhtar has surely triggered Hornet’s nest. By suggesting that some of RSS-BJP-Sangh Parivar’s ways are similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he has angered all those have adorned wear the saffron safa, including the Shiv Sena. While the saffron “anger” has been reported well across the media, every effort is also being made to minutely examine every movement, every step of the Taliban. One of them indeed amused me. The Hindustan Times  reported  on last Wednesday that the Taliban had “introduced” several 'conditions' to restrict protest in Afghanistan, which, the story predicts, will “raise eyebrows around the world.” In its latest diktat, the Taliban said permission “needs to be taken from the ministry of justice before any protest is organised.” While seeking the permission, the organisers would need to reveal the “purpose, slogans, place, time and all 'other' details of the protest” so that the authorities ...

Reacting to the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD)  response  to the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) tracker claim that, though five months to go, 90% of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) budget has been used up, even as this financial year 34% budget has been reduced, the top advocacy group has said, “Lack of funds has a direct bearing on delays in wage payments.”

  As Indian schools rush towards starting their “business as usual”, a top education rights advocacy group, National Coalition on Education Emergency (NCEE), has regretted that “State governments are reopening schools as if nothing serious occurred”. According to NCEE, India has suffered one of the longest school closures in the world for close to 18 months, with a whopping 265 million students having “not been to school.”

The rural jobs advocacy group, People's Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), has taken strong exception to the Government of India reducing the total budget for implementing schemes under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the FY 2021-22, which “is 34% less than the budget for the previous year, even though the effects of Covid-19 have not abated.”

A new report by non-profit LibTech India, which comprises of engineers, activists and social scientists as its members, has objected to what inordinate delay in wage payments in the rural jobs scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to the rural workers belonging to the non-scheduled caste (SC) and non-scheduled tribe (ST) categories.

Neighbours pouring water to "purify" street to the hotel Even as the Gujarat High Court has adjourned to November 17 the hearing in a dispute between the owners of a new hotel in Anand and their neighbour, a prominent oncologist, over alleged illegal construction, the advocacy group National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (NCHRO) has taken strong exception to the case pertaining to Hotel Blue Ivy -- co-owned by Hindu and Muslim partners – taking a communal turn.

Several well-known South Asian  activists and public figures  of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Maldives have expressed “deep distress” by the spate of violence and killings in Bangladesh on the occasion of Durga Puja and Vijayadashami. “Attacks on minorities are a sign of injustice and a matter of shame for any society and bring a bad name to the Government”, they said in a joint statement.

By Our Representative  Marking the 16th anniversary of the implementation of the top transparency law Right to Information (RTI) Act, the civil rights organisation, the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) has said in a comprehensive report on the functioning of the information commissions across India that while three out of 29 information commissions (ICs) – in Jharkhand, Tripura and Meghalaya – are “completely defunct” as no new commissioners have been appointed upon the incumbents demitting office, three other commissions, Nagaland, Manipur and Telangana, are headless.

A high profile report prepared by the influential  American Bar Association  (ABA)  Center for Human Rights , taking note of the fact that “in the 70-year history of the Indian Republic, only six Dalit judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court”, has taken strong exception to what it calls “lack of representation of Dalits” in the legal profession and the judiciary.

In a major show of strength across India, feminists, people's movements, students, trade unionists, farm workers, fisher people, members of Adivasi, Dalit and Muslim communities, civil liberty activists, journalists, and academics joined events across India, expressed their solidarity with Gulfisha Fatima, arrested on April 9, 2020.

A Hindu Jagaran Manch campaign against love jihad A report prepared by a social activists’ fact finding team on the 'claimed first love jihad case' of Gujarat, registered in Vadodara, the state’s cultural capital, two days after (June 17) the Gujarat’s Freedom of Religion Act (June 15) came into force, has claimed that the Dalit girl, who got married to a Muslim boy “may have been a victim of domestic violence but she was not a victim of forced marriage.”

  In a surprise admission, the Ahmedabad Municipal Commission (AMC) has said that “ill-treated or untreated or partly treated” industrial waste from “improperly working” effluent treatment plants (ETPs) is being “discharged into Sabarmati directly”. It added in an affidavit filed in the Gujarat High Court (HC) that “completely untreated industrial discharge” is also being “illegally discharged into the sewerage network” designed for household sewage.

  A non-profit group consisting of engineers, social workers, and social scientists – calling themselves “liberation technology” enthusiasts – has regretted for the Central government is taking 26 days on an average to complete wage transfers to Andhra Pradesh workers employed under the rural jobs scheme of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

Situated in Surendranagar district of Gujarat, Thangadh, known as the ceramic hub of India, also characterises by its industrial units refusing to pay minimum wages or providing necessary health facilities eligible under the law. In all, about 20,000 workers are employed in Thangarh and nearby towns in in about 225 ceramic units manufacturing sanitary ware and other ceramic items.

Marking 15 years since the Supreme Court of India laid down seven directives on police reforms in its judgment in Prakash Singh and Others vs. Union of India and Others, 2006, well-known advocacy group Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) has regretted that “Not a single State, nor the Union Territories, is fully compliant with the directives taken together.”

  Former Gujarat topcop RB Sreekumar, an IPS officer of the 1971 batch, has alleged that the Gujarat government gave “totally false information” on the floor of the State Assembly regarding the  appeal  he made to the Gujarat governor for the “initiation of departmental action against those responsible for culpable negligence in maintenance of public order and investigation of genocidal crimes” during the 2002 riots.

  A new survey report prepared by the NGO Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group on the challenges faced by waste pickers in managing solid waste in Delhi, “Space for Waste - 2021”, has regretted that currently, there is no provision of workspace for waste workers, hence they carry out their work of segregation, repairing, and composting at different locations.

The National Council of Women Leaders (NCWL), a civil rights group, has compiled what it has called “landmark cases of caste-based sexual violence” between 1985 and 2020 to mark the first anniversary of the notorious Hathras gangrape case, which led to the death of a young Dalit woman in September 2020.

 In a scathing critique of the 2002 communal riots inquiry commission report, released by the Gujarat government in December 2019 five years after it was submitted, the State’s former topcop RB Sreekumar has said that it “unequivocally” and “meticulously” takes care “to refrain from probing and taking cognizance of any deviant action of omission and commission by the State administration, particularly those operating in the criminal justice system, who facilitated extensive mass violence and enabled brigands to perpetrate anti-minority crimes.”

An anti-Taliban protest in Afghanistan Bollywood poet Jawed Akhtar has surely triggered Hornet’s nest. By suggesting that some of RSS-BJP-Sangh Parivar’s ways are similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he has angered all those have adorned wear the saffron safa, including the Shiv Sena. While the saffron “anger” has been reported well across the media, every effort is also being made to minutely examine every movement, every step of the Taliban. One of them indeed amused me.

  A civil society report based on interviews and focused group discussions with 95 workers – majority of them in the 18-35 age group – employed in large-sized processing factories situated in Narol, a garment and textile industry hub in the south-eastern periphery of Ahmedabad, has said most of the workers (96%) are contractually or casually engaged on verbal terms without any written agreements, with many of them being paid cash daily or on piece-rate.

  In a controversial move, which runs contrary to the current Modi government policy, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which falls under the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a new report has asked the Government of India (GoI) to ensure that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015 – called anti-atrocities Act – should be applied to not just those Dalits which are supposed to part of Hindu religion.

Najib with Gorbachev The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan has taken me down the memory lane to my Soviet days, when I was special correspondent of the daily “Patriot” and the weekly “Link”, both semi-Left papers, in Moscow. I landed in the Soviet capital on January 23, 1986. Mikhail Gorbachev was already in command of the Soviet Communist Party after the 27th Congress – the first major event which I covered in Moscow. Already words like perestroika and glasnost were in the air, with ideas floating around that these would be applied to the foreign policy as well. A year passed by, and I got an invitation from the Soviet information department to visit Afghanistan. I was keen, as I had already found that Gorbachev wanted Soviet troops, stationed there since 1979, to withdraw. He seemed confident that under the new Afghan regime under Najib (who later renamed himself as Najibullah), the country would implement what was called a “national reconciliation” plan by “uniting” opposing forc...

  A recent report, “India’s Unequal Healthcare Story”, based on 768 respondents from households in seven states, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala, Bihar and Odisha, has regretted that while all sections faced “a hoard of issues during hospitalization for Covid-19”, the experiences during hospitalization “varied across income groups.”

  By Our Representative  The Right to Education (RTE) Forum, a civil rights group, has shared its concerns on existing educational scenario with Members of Parliament (MPs), telling them about the need to take a decision to send children back to school with adequate protection, even as underlining how education and social protection of children have been severely compromised in the current scenario.

A new Covid survey report, published by well-known human rights organisation Anhad, has said that 84.7 per cent of 2,243 respondents said it was necessary for all religious places to be closed down during the second wave of Covid-19. In sharp contrast, only 49.5 per cent supported the lockdown, with 37.5 per cent saying they were “unhappy” with it, insisting, it created problems instead of presenting a solution, 36.7 percent reported loss of earning and 32.5 percent said their freedom to move was curtailed.

  A new report on a Government of India scheme meant for housing to the poor, floated in May 2020 following the massive migrants crisis that gripped the country, has said that 39% of the 93,295 units in the 52 existing projects for providing cheap rental housing, surveyed in India’s 11 cities, are vacant. Called Affordable Rental Housing Complex (ARHC) scheme, meant to provide “formal, affordable and well-located housing to urban poor and migrant workers’ communities”, it was announced as part of the Rs 20 lakh crore Atmanirbhar Bharat relief package by the Modi government.

  This is sort of rejoinder to my previous  story . I was a little surprised on receiving a phone call from a former government official, who retired in 2015, Bipin Bhatt, whom I have known as one of the more socially conscious senior babus of Gujarat. A non-IAS bureaucrat, I first interacted him during my Gandhinagar days, when I used to cover Gujarat Sachivalaya for the Times of India. At that time he was Gujarat’s rural labour commissioner, a post which he occupied between 2004 and 2007. Thereafter I have been in touch with him. Bhatt phoned me up objecting to the story (“Debt bondage, forced labour, sexual abuse in Gujarat's Bt cottonseed farms: Dutch study”) based on a  study  published by a Dutch NGO, Arisa, with the active help of the Ahmedabad-based labour rights group Centre for Labour Research and Action (CLRA), which has carried out considerable work among migrant workers, especially those who are from Gujarat’s eastern tribal belt. Apparently, Bhatt ...

A just-released study, sponsored by a Netherlands-based non-profit,  Arisa , “Seeds of Oppression Wage sharecropping in Bt cottonseed production in Gujarat, India”, has said that a new form of bondage, or forced labour, exists in North India’s Bt cottonseed farms, in which bhagiyas, or wage sharecroppers, are employed against advances and are then often required to work for years together “without regular payment of wages.”

A memorandum submitted to the Gujarat government by various fisherfolk associations of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat under the leadership of Ahmedabad NGO Centre for Social Justice's senior activist Arvind Khuman, who is based in Amreli, has suggested that the relief package offered to the fishermen affected by the Tauktae cyclone is not only inadequate, it is also gender insensitive.

  As would generally happen, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s  tweet  – that not only was he “absolutely delighted” with the news of UNESCO tag to Dholavira, but he “ first visited ” the site during his “student days and was mesmerised by the place” – is being doubted by his detractors. None of the two tweets, strangely, even recalls once that it’s a Harappan site in Gujarat.

  Will the new report by well-known elite NGO Toxics Link create a ripple in the powerful corridors of Delhi? Titled “Quantitative analysis of microplastics along River Ganga”, forwarded to Counterview, doesn’t just say that Ganga is the second most polluted river in the world, next only to Yangtze (China). It goes ahead to do a comparison of microplastics pollution in three cities shows Varanasi – the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – is more polluted compared to Kanpur and Haridwar.

  Even as Uttar Pradesh goes ahead with its decision to introduce a bill to control its population denying government jobs, subsidies and the right to contest local elections to anyone who has more than two children, top demographer Prof Amatabh Kundu, who is senior fellow at the World Resource Institute in India, has warned, “Forced implementation of the two-child norm would increase the number of abortions of girls.”

A senior chartered accountant, whom I have known intimately (I am not naming him, as I don’t have his permission), has forwarded me an Indian Express (IE) story (July 18), “Ashwini Vaishnaw: The man in the chair”, which, he says, “contradicts” the blog (July 17), "Will Vaishnaw, close to Modi since Vajpayee days, ever be turnaround man for Railways?" I had written a day earlier and forwarded it to many of my friends. Written after taking extensive talks the reporters Liz Mathew and Aishwarya Mohanty appear to have had with BJP insiders and government officials (of course, all anonymous), I read through the IE story and sought a reaction from a former government official, who had also seen my blog and was happy about whatever I had written, doubting Vaishnaw would be a big success. The ex-government official, whom I forwarded the story, told me, while IE piece was surely presented a “positive side of Vaishnaw”, and that the new Railways-cut-IT minister is indeed a “very brig...