Modi coming out of the Godhra train: Feb 27, 2002 Twenty years on, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-hand Amit Shah, appear to “firmly” in the saddle, ruling the country, mystery still surrounds as to what might have happened on February 27-28, 2002, the day Godhra train burned leading to death of 58 kar sevaks, followed with one of worst anti-minority riots in Gujarat, spread over around three months, in which at least a thousand people are confirmed dead and as many are said to be “missing.” While Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, and the circles around him called the Godhra train burning an act of Pak-sponsored terrorism on February 27 itself, there is still no official confirmation as to what might have caused it, though several theories still prevail what may have happened -- ranging from an  act of arson  committed by a Muslim mob of 1,000 to 2,000 people (Commission of Inquiry), violent reaction by the local Muslim Ghanchi community  provoked...

Two years into the pandemic, 66% of the respondents to a representative survey have said that their income decreased as compared to pre-pandemic period, and just about 34% reported that their households' cereal consumption in the month preceding the survey was sufficient. In all the survey covered 6,697 respondents from 14 states, 4,881 rural and 1,816 urban. The survey, referred to as Hunger Watch-II, carried out by the advocacy group Right to Food Campaign in association with the Centre for Equity Studies, was conducted in December 2021-January 2022. The Hunger Watch-I survey was done following the national lockdown in 2020. About 31% of the Hunger Watch-II surveyed households were STs, 25% were SCs, 19% belonged to the general category, 15% OBCs and 6% were Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). About 64% identified themselves as Hindus, 18% as Muslims. Further, 71% of the respondents were women, 41% were non-agricultural casual labourers, 19% were agricul...

Economic, legal, diplomatic and civil society experts – including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and former Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank – have urged the United States Supreme Court to go back to the case  Budha Ismail Jam, et al v. IFC  , ( Tata Mundra case ) concerning immunity from the suit for the World Bank Group and foreign nations. They said, the immunity decision in the US Supreme Court has broad and dangerous consequences in an amicus brief supporting the Earth Rights International. EarthRights represented fishing and farming communities, organised under the Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS) in Kutch, Gujarat, in the case against the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), over its role in funding a coal-fired power plant that allegedly destroyed local people’s livelihoods. They urged the court: “The collective experience of amici in many countries teaches that the IFC must be ...

  Access of prisoners to courts fell by 65%, and to hospitals by 24%, according to the Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2020, the latest official statistics on the state of India’s prisons and their inmates, published in December 2021, an analysis of the PSI data by  The India Justice Report  (IJR), released recently, has said. Brought out by a collective of organisations -- Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS–Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives, and supported by Tata Trusts, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the Tree of Life Foundation, IJR, which, since 2019, has been reporting on justice delivery in India, said, prisoners’ visits to courts came down nearly a third, from about 44.5 lakhs in 2019 to 15.5 lakhs in 2020. Impacted too was inmates’ access to health services, with the number of visits, made by prisoners for medical attendance, declining from 4.77 lakh in 2019 to 3.63 lakh visits in 202...

India's premier civil society network, National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), "saluting" Muslim women for showing courage by resisting the "apartheid" attitude of the Hindu supremacist attempts to deprive them of access to education, has insisted that the state must "uphold" the

  By Our Representative  The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES), seeking to provide ways to examine the amount of slack in the economy by polling a panel of business leaders of around 1,100 companies, has said that the cost perceptions data is “yet to indicate any significant reduction of cost pressures.” Pointing that while there is “further decline in the number of firms perceiving very high cost increase (over 10%)”, nevertheless, around 27% of the firms “are still reporting more than 10% cost increase”, results of the survey state, adding, “Also, the number of firms perceiving significant cost increase (over 6%) has remained high around 57% during last two rounds of the survey.” Claiming to be a unique survey, as it goes straight to businesses -- the price setters -- rather than to consumers or households, to understand their expectations of the price level changes, providing an indirect assessment of overall demand con...

In a quick analysis, three civil society organizations, Dr Ambedkar Cooperative Federation, National Alliance of People’s Movements and Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch have claimed that the Union budget's shortfall for Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan (SCP) is the highest since 2014-15 -- a whopping Rs 421,754 crore.