Counterview

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.

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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?

Dr. Ponnada Srinivas*  The recent Nepal flash floods that killed thousands of pilgrims near the China-India-Bhutan border is not an isolated tragedy. The involvement of Isha Foundation and Jaggi Vasudev drew attention this time, but the 2013 Chardham floods that washed away 6,000 pilgrims—mostly Telugu-speaking—caused equally devastating pain. That most northbound pilgrims originate from South India, particularly Andhra and Tamil Nadu, raises uncomfortable questions about the economic and cultural dynamics at play.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  Insolvency is a financial condition that triggers legal processes for discharging debts that cannot be repaid. Yet the application of these laws reveals significant disparities in how different classes of debtors are treated. From the collapse of Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis to recent personal insolvency proceedings in India involving the reduction of a Rs 22,006-crore debt to Rs 6.5 crore, the global record suggests that insolvency frameworks often produce unequal outcomes depending on the debtor's resources and connections.

By A Representative   In what rights advocates are calling a defining moment for India's sex workers' movement, representatives from six states gathered at the Calcutta Press Club to launch the Yaunkarmi Adhikar Manch — a national platform led by sex workers themselves to defend their rights, dignity and freedom.

By Sunil Kumar*  A contract worker, Ranjit Gautam, died at Delhi University's South Campus on September 7, 2026. His death was not natural. The information that has come to light after the incident raises serious questions about the alleged gross negligence of the Delhi University administration.

By Bharat Dogra    When the opening ceremony of the World Nomad Games lit up the sky over Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on August 31, it marked more than the start of a sporting spectacle. For ten days, through September 6, nearly 4,000 athletes, artists, and officials from 104 countries will compete in 43 events—from traditional wrestling and horseback riding to archery—while celebrating the rich folk music and cultural heritage of nomadic communities.

By Palla Trinadha Rao*  When a small tribal hamlet in Sikkim can single-handedly hold up a hydropower project worth thousands of crores, whose job is it to say no to the company — and whose job is it to say no to the hamlet? A one-page government note quietly answered that question this week: nobody's job.

By Vikas Meshram*  For the first time since 2007, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has conducted a detailed review of India's human rights situation, and the findings that have emerged are deeply serious and thought-provoking. India had not submitted its report to this Committee for nearly two decades, which makes this review significant in more ways than one.

Counterview News   Dalit women's autobiographical writing in India is emerging as a formidable archive of political resistance, functioning less as personal memoir and more as collective testimony to centuries of caste, gender and class oppression, according to a comprehensive analysis by Professor Garima Srivastava .