Counterview

Counterview News   For nearly a decade, the database at Land Conflict Watch has carried a certain bleakness. It is a cold, hard accounting of the costs of resource extraction, the toll “development” takes on the most vulnerable, and the ugly consequences of unchecked private consumption. Within this grim arithmetic of over 1,095 mapped land conflicts, one statistic stands out: nearly 80% of these disputes occur over common lands . 

By Umashree Akham*  Why is it easier to feel sorry for a Dalit man than to sit with one who is simply, unapologetically angry? Ten years after Una, that question still cuts. Sorrow is easy to sit with—it asks nothing of us. Anger is not.

By Vikas Meshram*  What unfolded since June–July in the dense forest belt of Baihar and Birsa talukas in Balaghat district, eastern Madhya Pradesh, is not merely a story of an infectious disease outbreak. It is a stark illustration of how India’s health system continues to struggle to reach the “last mile” at the grassroots—and of the persistent neglect faced by Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs).

By Martin Macwan*  Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was facing a severe financial crunch and used to buy old books from a scrap shop. Once, the scrap vendor demanded an exorbitant price. Babasaheb realized the price hike was due to his suit and trousers, so he canceled the purchase. After reaching England, he wrote a letter to a friend: "Go to that particular shop and buy the book. Seeing me in a suit and trousers that day, the vendor had asked for more money."

By Rohit Pathak*  " Dalits enable the purity of the upper caste society, and become impure in the process." This short quote from Sharan Kumar Limbale 's Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature says a great deal about the marginalised other—a term closely associated with Dalit identity . A subaltern group of minorities whose primary task involves cooking, cleaning, serving and existing for a dominant group, they function within the binaries of pure/impure, dominant/subordinate, and upper-caste/lower-caste.

By A Representative   Ahmedabad-based NGO Samerth Charitable Trust has reported significant progress in water security, livelihood enhancement, disability inclusion and community-led development across Gujarat eand Chhattisgarh during 2025-26, marking what the organisation describes as “33 Years at the Edge of Possibility.” 

By Sudhansu R. Das   Hyderabad was once a city that effortlessly blended natural beauty, cultural depth and urban charm. Its lakes shimmered like mirrors to the sky, its ancient rock formations stood like timeless sculptures, and its forests and hills wrapped the city in a pleasant climate. Villages around the city produced fresh food; artisans kept handicraft traditions alive; flora and fauna thrived. Good roads, heritage sites and mouthwatering local dishes completed the picture of a city that felt—quite genuinely—like a paradise on earth. Today, that paradise is under strain.

By Ravi Ranjan*    Poverty is conventionally quantified through income thresholds, living standard metrics, and consumption statistics, yet creative literature reveals dimensions of deprivation that statistics cannot encapsulate. It reflects not merely a deficiency of goods, but how individuals experience time, endure physical toil, inhabit their bodies, defer gratification, and find meaning within severe material limits. In his critical exploration of Hari Bhatnagar’s short story "Sevri Rotis and Burnt Potatoes," Ravi Ranjan proposes an "aesthetics of poverty" that avoids romanticization or decorative celebration. Drawing upon Karl Marx’s materialist critique of labor and production alongside Raymond Williams’s cultural materialism, Ranjan demonstrates how cultural practices, bodily states, and domestic routines are inextricably tied to material social structures. Bhatnagar constructs poverty not as an isolated economic event, but as an pervasive organi...

Counterview News  The latest update to Equality Now's flagship Words & Deeds report reveals that women's and girls' rights globally are facing a "strategic and coordinated rollback," with hard-won legal protections being weakened or deliberately undermined, though the report stresses this backlash is neither inevitable nor irreversible .

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

By A Representative   Senior activists and former political prisoners, talking with mediapersons in Dakhi, have  drawn attention to conditions inside Indian jails, even as demanding the immediate release of documentary filmmaker Vishal Singh on medical grounds, citing his deteriorating health. The press conference was held under the banner of the civil rights network,  Campaign Against State Repression (CASR).

By A Representative   Top farmers' group, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), has issued a strong warning to the Union Government against the proposed release of two gene‑edited rice varieties—DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1—arguing that the move threatens India’s seed sovereignty, farmers’ rights and the country’s long‑standing rice biodiversity. In a press statement dated 18 September 2026, the farmers’ coalition said it “strongly opposes the release of any patented seed technologies and of unsafe gene‑edited rice varieties,” and demanded that the government halt all steps toward seed multiplication and distribution before the process becomes “irreversible.”

By Bharat Dogra    A growing coalition of scientists, academics, farmers' organizations, and concerned citizens is urgently urging the Indian government to halt the planned release of two gene-edited rice varieties, citing serious risks to health, the environment, food sovereignty, and cultural heritage. This crucial intervention is not just about stopping a hazardous technology; it is about reclaiming a forgotten, sustainable path for Indian agriculture—one championed decades ago by India’s preeminent rice scientist, Dr. R.H. Richharia. The Gene-Editing Controversy and its Hidden Risks The current controversy centers on two rice varieties: Kamala (DRR Dhan 100) and Pusa DST Rice, both developed using SDN-1 and SDN-2 gene-editing technologies. Reports indicate that seed multiplication for Pusa DST Rice is already underway ahead of the winter sowing season, with a scheduled Rabi 2026 release.  The Coalition for a GM-Free India, supported by nearly 320 professor...

By Kumar Krishnan*  There are moments when the best way to assess the present is to look back at the political lives of those who inhabited a very different public culture. Jageshwar Mandal, who died on September 9, 1988, belonged to that generation. His life raises a question that contemporary Indian politics rarely asks with sufficient seriousness: What is politics for?

By Vijay Prashad   The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponisation of finance and technology have exposed the fundamentally unequal character of the imperialist-dominated international order. Against this background, the continued expansion of BRICS reflects the desire of developing countries for greater strategic autonomy and a more democratic system of global governance. At the same time, the summit demonstrated that BRICS+ remains a heterogeneous grouping whose members differ substantially in their political alignments and economic interests.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  The world stands at a critical juncture. Imperialist wars are expanding under the leadership of a hegemonic United States, and capitalism—mired in what I believe is a terminal crisis—has exhausted its capacity to offer alternatives. It has deployed every strategy at its disposal to divert and divide ordinary people. Together, imperialism and capitalism have produced a climate crisis that threatens the very existence of human beings and the planet we inhabit. In such a moment, a united left movement is not merely desirable; it is the only force capable of upholding humanity.

By Harsh Thakor*  Eighteen-year-old Amber-Rose Berry of Pringle Bay, near Cape Town, has made history as the youngest South African woman ever to swim the iconic English Channel . Coincidentally and ironically, her swim was completed exactly 100 years after Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the Channel in 1926, and during South Africa's Women's Month , 70 years after the historic women's march against the Pass Laws , which gave August its name. She follows in the footsteps of another record-breaking South African, Otto Thaning , who became the oldest person, at 73, to complete the swim in 2014. His record still stands.

Counterview News   Persistent caste discrimination , the marginalisation of Dalits , concerns over the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples , and the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities are among the issues flagged by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in its latest observations on India.

By A Representative   A student organisation has alleged that the University of Madras cancelled the admission of one of its members in retaliation for his involvement in campus-related activism, calling it "casteist vendetta." According to a statement issued by the Revolutionary Students–Youth Front (RSYF), the student, who had completed an M.A. in Public Administration at the university, had enrolled in the M.A. Indian Philosophy programme for the 2026–2028 academic year and had been attending classes for two months.

By A Representative   A group of 77 former civil servants has raised concerns over what it describes as the steady weakening of statutory safeguards for India’s forests, wildlife and environment. In an open letter dated September 17, the Constitutional Conduct Group, comprising former members of the All India and Central Services, said large-scale diversion of forestland for development projects was causing increasing ecological risks. The group said it was non-partisan and committed to impartiality, neutrality and the Constitution of India.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  India’s “vegetarian” supremacism is increasingly turning into an absurd competition among its “devotees,” each seeking “international” recognition for their “great” culture and “diversity.” Over the last decade, we have seen how these so-called “cultural warriors” are paraded in various Western capitals whenever Narendra Modi visits.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  There is no doubt that AI is transforming different spheres of life and society, influencing every sector of the economy, politics, culture, individual life, infrastructure, and industrial growth. AI-led ICT is shaping governance, policy, and decision-making debates unlike any other period in history. Yet the AI race has not produced the efficiency it promised; it has not accelerated productivity as claimed; it has not generated the profits it claimed it would. Investors are not making money.

By Dae-Han Song  The Lee Administration leaked the possibility of deploying Korean forces to the Strait of Hormuz on 03 September. The backlash was immediate from Korean civil society that opposes any type of support for Trump’s war of aggression. Furthermore, recent polls reveal that even 55 percent of Lee’s supporters oppose the dispatching of forces. And while the Lee administration has publicly backtracked, stating that nothing has been decided, it is, nonetheless, quietly undergoing the process of deployment : more than simply an assessment of the security conditions on the Strait of Hormuz, the Lee administration sent a team to check key military bases and ports that could be used at the United Arab Emirates.

By Donald Ramotar   Latin America and the Caribbean countries are being re-colonised. This time it is not by Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France and Portugal, but by the United States.

By Stephanie Weatherbee Brito, Vijay Prashad   Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is innocent. This is a statement of law and fact, since Maduro has not been convicted of any crime. He has pleaded not guilty to every charge brought against him, and the accusations made by the United States remain precisely that: accusations. Under the presumption of innocence – recognised in the United States Constitution and in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – the burden rests entirely upon the prosecution to prove guilt. It is not Maduro who must prove his innocence, but it is the United States government that must prove his guilt.

By Prabir Purkayastha  On 4th September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another. It aims to correct the view of the world shaped by the widely used world map based on the Mercator Projection, created by Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer.

By Rajiv Shah The other day, I was talking with a non-resident Indian (NRI) in a middle-level city off the eastern coast of the United States. The tête-à-tête took place as we were returning from a religious ceremony at a well-established Hindu temple, where several hundred NRIs had participated, many of them actively.

Counterview News   The advocacy group Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi) has rejected as inadequate and evasive the response it received from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to its August demand for a ban on junk food advertising , saying the government's reply sidesteps every substantive demand raised by the country's leading doctors and public health experts.

By Martin Macwan*  The combined populations of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—account for 41–42% of the world’s total population. With South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Indonesia joining, the group now represents 49.5% of the global population. Originally conceived by an economist at a New York investment bank rather than by political leaders, the member states remain economically aligned rather than fully “united.”

By Ram Puniyani*  In contemporary India, we are witnessing many mechanisms of political propaganda that seek to influence social thinking. Food habits have increasingly become one of the components of divisive politics. The idea that Muslims are more violent because they consume non-vegetarian food is one such narrative. The politics surrounding the “Holy Cow” and beef consumption has also entered this discourse. We have witnessed the phenomenon of lynching in India, in which Muslims and Dalits have been among the major victims.

Counterview News   A comprehensive new study from the Capgemini Research Institute paints a troubling picture of corporate climate readiness, revealing that while executives increasingly recognize climate change as a material business threat, most organizations lack the fundamental capabilities to measure, manage, and adapt to its impacts.

Counterview News   The Earth is approaching a series of irreversible environmental thresholds that threaten the stability of life on the planet, but a landmark new study argues that the same systems science that predicts catastrophe also offers a blueprint for rapid, self-propelling recovery. 

By Deepanwita Gita Niyogi*  Amidst the catastrophe, Alton C Byers has arrived in Nepal for a six-week visit, driven by his profound love for mountains, especially the mystic Himalayas and its resilient people. Back in 2013, following over 40 years of working in mountain ranges all over the world, Byers decided to focus his career in the Himalayan ecosystem after experiencing a deep sense of belonging during field research.

By Sandeep Pandey  Devi Kashyap was a 33-year-old home cook. She used to cook food at people's homes in a middle-class locality, Indira Nagar, in Lucknow to earn her living. She was living separately from her husband with her 13-year-old son Abhishek, a Class VII student.

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  The incident involving Abhijit Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, being surrounded and confronted by social media influencers in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, has become the subject of a major debate on the internet. There are two sharply contrasting views among social media users and the general public over whether the influencers’ conduct was justified.

By Rosamma Thomas*  Kerala's newly reconstituted State Planning Board has come under fire from social activists and academics, who allege its appointments are dominated by a single caste group and fail to reflect the state's social diversity. In an email to Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, prominent members of Kerala society said they had hoped the Congress government would champion inclusion — hopes they say have now been "belied" by the board's composition.

By Atul Chandra  At the BRICS Business Forum in Bharat Mandapam, Russian President Vladimir Putin read out the numbers. The eleven members of this grouping now produce more than 40 percent of the world’s output. The G7 produces 29. Over the last five years, BRICS countries generated more than half of all global growth . The G7 managed 18 percent. Narendra Modi, speaking at the same event, added that the bloc is home to half of humanity and a quarter of world trade.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  The development of AI—from the Turing Test to systems such as OpenAI's GPT-5, Anthropic's Opus 4.6, Microsoft's MAI-1 (Thinking 1), Alibaba's Qwen, and Google's Gemma—has expanded the use of multi-agent teams and workflows for solving complex problems. These developments occur within a market structure in which AI companies seek rents and operate within a platform-capitalist system. 

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   For years, the idea that artificial intelligence could one day threaten humanity sounded like science fiction. Today, it is being discussed by the very people building the technology. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Elon Musk have all warned about the dangers of increasingly powerful AI. The debate has become even more unsettling as AI systems move beyond answering questions and generating images towards acting autonomously, writing and executing code, browsing the internet, operating software and coordinating with other AI systems.

By Bharat Dogra  Recent warnings—some accompanied by high‑profile resignations—from AI industry insiders have sharply intensified global concern about existential risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence . Several insiders now estimate a non‑trivial probability—around 10 percent—of AI leading to the near‑end of humanity, a claim that has understandably set alarm bells ringing. Earlier scientific warnings lacked detail and urgency; this new wave comes from those working directly inside leading AI labs, lending it unusual credibility.

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

Counterview News   A new academic study has drawn fresh attention to Sankalp Bhoomi, a modest memorial site in Vadodara's Sayaji Baug, arguing that the spot where B.R. Ambedkar spent five difficult hours in 1917 has quietly grown into one of Gujarat's most significant sites of Dalit political and cultural assertion.

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

By A.V. Yadappanavar*  Recruitment delays, subject-specific shortages, multigrade classrooms and administrative burdens continue to undermine the quality of school education. *** India has made significant progress in expanding access to schooling and increasing the size of its teaching workforce. Yet a troubling paradox persists: there are more teachers than before, but many schools still struggle to secure the right teachers for the right subjects and locations.

By Dr. P.K. Gupta*  Andhbhakti literally means blind devotion. In present-day Hindi it is often used, sometimes pejoratively, for uncritical loyalty to a religious teacher, political leader, party or ideology. The term should be used with care. Deep devotion is not necessarily blind, and unquestioning obedience is not unique to Hinduism or India. It becomes dangerous when loyalty silences evidence, conscience, reasoning and accountability. Modernity challenges this submission wherever it requires denial of factual claims that cannot withstand reasoned examination.

By Syed Ali Mujtaba  Filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia recently argued that the rising tide of Islamophobia in Indian society has made its way into Hindi cinema. Speaking at the Editors Guild of India’s Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on September 4, 2026, Dhulia said filmmakers are part of the same society in which anti-Muslim propaganda has grown like a cancerous growth. The changing political and social environment, he suggested, has inevitably influenced the stories being told on screen.

By Ravi Ranjan*  Raghuvir Sahay's brief poem "Your Laughter" -- Āpkī Haṃsī -- transforms an apparently casual conversational gesture into a profound diagnosis of democratic decline. The poem's speaker listens as an interlocutor observes that the poor are exploited, democracy faces its final hour, corruption is universal, and helplessness pervades society—yet each grim pronouncement is followed by the same refrain: "you said and laughed."

Counterview News   A scathing independent citizens' inquiry has concluded that the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada river, one of India's most ambitious multipurpose dams, has systematically violated the legal and human rights of tens of thousands of displaced families while overstating its economic benefits and understating its ecological costs.

By Bhim Singh Rawat   There is little doubt that growing encroachment on Delhi’s Yamuna floodplain, or khadar, has created the risk of turning natural flooding into a disaster. Because the floodplain has not been properly demarcated, the O-Zone, which covers the Yamuna khadar, is not being effectively implemented.

By Dirgha Datar   An Indian Institute of Technology is commonly imagined as a symbol of modernity, merit and knowledge. Yet a recent controversy at IIT Mandi has brought an older question into this supposedly modern space: who gets to decide what is considered normal, legitimate and respectable knowledge about caste?