Counterview

Counterview News  A progressive and potentially fatal lung disease is tearing through the global workforce involved in stone cutting and polishing, sparking international bans and mounting lawsuits in the United States. Yet, while American politicians debate corporate liability, the crisis remains a deadly, underreported reality for millions in India, particularly among agate and ceramic workers.

Counterview News   Official quick estimates say SME-heavy sectors drove growth in tier 2 and 3 cities, but the figures remain unverified amid wide apprehensions over the reliability of Government of India data — and a one-month festive-season bump cannot be generalised as a durable industrial recovery. 

Counterview News   A group of 18 water experts, environmentalists, researchers and civil society representatives has urged the Central and Delhi governments to prioritise rejuvenation of the Yamuna and protection of its floodplain instead of pushing a Sabarmati-style riverfront development project along the 52-km stretch of the river in the capital. In a representation  published by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), the signatories warned that replicating the Ahmedabad model in Delhi would be “scientifically inappropriate” and could “threaten the river’s ecological integrity, compromise flood safety and weaken floodplain protection”.

Counterview News   India’s recent employment data presents a seemingly triumphant narrative: rural women’s labour force participation has nearly doubled, soaring from 24.6% in 2017-18 to 47.6% in 2023-24, marking one of the sharpest increases globally. However, a deeper analysis by global civil rights group Oxfam, coupled with warnings from financial accountability experts, reveals that this statistical surge is not a hallmark of women’s economic empowerment. Instead, it is a distress signal pointing to shrinking opportunities, falling wages, and a dismantled rural safety net.

Counterview News  A panel of three international legal experts has concluded there is a "reasonable basis to believe that international crimes may have been committed against Muslims in both states" of Assam and Uttar Pradesh . The report, published in March 2026, is the second from the group and covers July 2022 to January 2026.

Counterview News  Centre for Financial Accountability exposes the “plastic paradox” and calls for an end to climate finance for incineration, urging a shift to genuine zero-waste systems *** A damning new report by the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) and the National Alliance for Climate and Ecological Justice (NACEJ) has exposed the severe climate cost of waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration in India. Titled “The Climate Cost of Burning Waste,” the study reveals that Delhi’s WTE plants produce electricity that is significantly more carbon-intensive than coal, challenging the government’s classification of these facilities as "renewable" energy sources.

Counterview News   The People's Commission on Public Sector and Public Services has demanded that the Centre immediately stop the sale of IDBI Bank to Fairfax, a Canadian company. In a detailed statement titled "Stop selling the golden goose to foreigners – Stop IDBI sale to Fairfax", the Commission said the deal is opaque, legally questionable and against the Constitution's Directive Principles.

Counterview News   Four years after world governments pledged to align global financial flows with nature conservation goals, a comprehensive new assessment reveals that major financial jurisdictions have largely failed to translate these commitments into binding rules. As a result, banks and investors remain largely free to finance deforestation and ecosystem destruction .

Counterview News   Sister comp anies  Filmsupply and Musicbed have released their 2026 Commercial Filmmaking Trend Report, a comprehensive forecast arguing that "the future of commercial filmmaking is intentional and human." Filmsupply is a premium footage licensing agency, representing award-winning filmmakers, providing authentic, cinematic stock footage for use in films, TV, and advertising, while Musicbed is a music licensing platform for filmmakers, brands, and agencies. T he films analysed are confined to North America and Europe. 

Counterview News   Just days before the sacred Dhvajarohan (flag hoisting) ceremony marking the commencement of Nashik's Simhastha Kumbh Mela , environmental activists and civil society groups have raised urgent alarms over severe industrial chemical contamination in Nashik’s water systems. They have accused state authorities of "institutional opacity" regarding the presence of Hexavalent Chromium [Cr(VI)]—a Group 1 human carcinogen —in local groundwater and river networks feeding the Godavari , with contamination levels recorded at over 1,000 times the permissible limit.

Counterview News    A new report reveals that the modern workplace has fallen into a "workaround economy," where employees are increasingly bypassing official company software to piece together their own tech stacks, driven by fragmented systems and mounting cognitive overload. According to the study conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of AI productivity platform Superhuman, 75% of professionals now operate outside of fully approved tool stacks, relying on a mix of company-provided and personally selected applications to get their jobs done. The survey of 1,505 professionals highlights a growing crisis in enterprise technology: while workers remain optimistic about their tools, the friction of moving work across disconnected systems is forcing them into unofficial, often insecure, habits.

Counterview News  The global race for artificial intelligence dominance is not just about computing power or capital; it is fundamentally about human capability. According to the newly released Global Skills Report 2026 by Coursera and Udemy , a stark "readiness disconnect" is threatening to derail global AI investments, with the report revealing that 88% of leaders believe their planned AI investments will fail without greater investment in human skills training.

Counterview News   In the latest episode of the podcast Unmute , hosts Gagan Sethi and Minar Pimple convened a profound conversation with two veteran development practitioners to dissect a persistent tension within civil society: the perceived divide between service delivery and the struggle for rights. The episode, titled "Beyond Service Delivery: Civil Society, Rights, and the Politics of Social Change," featured Apoorva Oza , a development practitioner with decades of experience in rural development and institution-building, and Professor Dipa Sinha , a development economist known for her work on food, nutrition, gender, and social policy.

Counterview News   The world’s largest banks and investors are continuing to finance companies responsible for tropical deforestation, ecosystem destruction, and human rights abuses, according to a major new report released by the Forests & Finance coalition. The findings highlight a stark accountability gap in the global financial sector, even as international governments prepare to review critical biodiversity goals.

Counterview News   As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded their Annual Meetings in Bangkok this week, civil society groups and policy experts outside the official proceedings released two critical documents challenging the institutions' legacy and prescriptions for Asia, calling for a fundamental overhaul of the global financial architecture.

Counterview News   A new report released this month by human rights organization Equality Now and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage highlights critical advancements and ongoing challenges in global legal frameworks aimed at eradicating child marriage.

Counterview News   A groundbreaking new meta-analysis published in the journal Family Medicine and Community Health has provided some of the most comprehensive evidence to date linking the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to a wide array of chronic diseases and premature death. The study , led by Dr. Xiao Liu and colleagues from institutions including Sun Yat-sen University and Duke-NUS Medical School, analyzed data from 51 prospective cohort studies involving nearly 8.82 million adults across 51 different cohorts.

Counterview News   A randomized controlled trial published in the journal Nature Metabolism has found that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) trigger metabolic and neural responses distinct from minimally processed foods—even when the two meals are nutritionally identical. The study provides direct experimental evidence that food processing itself influences health through mechanisms beyond calories and macronutrients alone.

Counterview News Findings from 540+ data leaders and practitioners across 65+ countries show trusted data, business context and governance are lagging behind enterprise AI adoption *** As enterprises race to move artificial intelligence from experimentation into daily operations, the data foundation holding these systems up is emerging as the critical weak link, according to the latest Modern Data Report: 5 Emerging Trends in Enterprise Data & AI , released by The Modern Data Company .

Counterview News   A new dataset released by the  German environmental and human rights organisation,  Urgewald, has  shown that Indian banks cut their coal financing by 19%, from $3.5 billion in 2022 to $2.8 billion in 2025, even as cautioning that the fall is unlikely to be lasting, because very few Indian banks have adopted coal restrictions.