Counterview

By A Representative One month ahead of his maiden visit to England, South Asian, black and minority ethnic women’s groups and feminists in scathing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi have said that he has failed to “condemn the rapists or launch an investigation into the Hindutva organisations which support them”, and his own pronouncements on violence against women have been “remarkably few”.

Modi with Merkel at Hanover in Germany: April 2015 By  A  Representative A senior expert, working with the powerful Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL)-run think-tank has said that the top Germans businessmen who had accompanied German Chancellor Angela Merkel to India early this month have outspokenly declared that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done little to “ease” business environment in India.

Laws applied in Gujarat for "illegal" detention By  A  Representative World’s powerful human rights organization Amnesty International has alleged that there is a “continuing use of administrative detention laws in India to lock up persons without charge or trial”, violating “the rights of both suspects and victims of human rights abuses.”

By Rajiv Shah The Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015,  unanimously passed  in the two-day monsoon session of the Gujarat state assembly – after Congress MLAs were suspended for creating a “ruckus” – is finally beginning to get national attention. The Bill is lying with President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, awaiting his final nod after the Gujarat governor, O.P. Kohli, sent it to Delhi for approval. According to sources, the risk-averse Kohli felt that its provisions needed “Central scrutiny”.

By  A  Representative A World Bank policy paper, approved by its chief economist Kaushik Basu, has said that India has been over-estimating its poverty levels by adopting an old methodology. The paper says that a major reason why India miscalculated is because it did not include long-term nonfood consumption items in consumer expenditure in its calculation methodology.

By Rajiv Shah  Contradicting the claims of Gujarat-based activists and the Opposition Congress, a senior Gujarat government bureaucrat has told Counterview that main purpose of controversial the Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015 “is to transfer surplus land, lying idle, within municipal corporation and municipality bodies, for public purpose”, and “not to take away land meant for Dalits, tribals and other marginalized groups, as is being made out.”

Persis Ginwalla By  A  Representative Two senior Gujarat-based activists, one of them a development professional, have alleged that the Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015 is a state government effort to “undermine” the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR), 2013, whose amendments were dropped by the Centre after their “anti-farmer” character was exposed through “nation-wide agitations”.