Counterview

Rahul Gandhi with Jagdish Tytler By Firoz Bakht Ahmed* It seems that Rahul Gandhi has decided not to grow. Rahul’s displaced questions to the Narendra Modi government appears to be more as an effort to vitiate the atmosphere of patriotism. It only further helps bury the image of the already shattered Congress. Amidst trying circumstances at the India-Chinese borders, he asked where Modi was hiding.

Rahul Mukherji, Jai Prasad and Seyed Hossein Zarhani of Heidelberg University, Germany, argue in this article, published in Identities Journal, that COVID-19 management has undermined democratic governance central to the idea of India and close to the heart of founders of modern India. These values were undermined in a number of ways. First, sub-national states and politicians were not adequately consulted before the lockdown on 24 March 2020, even though Kerala’s spectacular performance was well known. Moreover, it is the states that would have to deal with issues such as health, migration and general wellbeing. The imperial and sudden lockdown impacted migrant workers from the oppressed classes and castes most severely. Second, the lockdown of 24 March need not have been sudden since opposition politicians had raised this issue in the Parliament since mid-February. Democratic values were undermined during the lockdown to the detriment of the Indian citizen.  Excerpts: ***...

By Moin Qazi* There’s the pandemic you know about all too well. It is taking a heavy toll on lives and livelihoods. Then, there’s the shadow pandemic, which is rapidly unraveling the limited but precious progress the world has made toward gender equality in the past few decades. This shadow pandemic can be seen in the rolling background of this progress with the loss of employment for women who hold the majority of insecure, informal and lower-paying jobs and the rapid increase in unpaid care work for women and girls. Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impact of COVID-19 has been exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their gender. It is time that apart from the search for a vaccine and medicines for handling the virus and its disease, we focus on strengthening institutions and mechanisms that can help in combating the shadow pandemic. Self-help groups (SHGs) are India’s most powerful conduit for incubating and empowering wo...

Supriya Sharma, Siddharth Varadarajan, Aakar Patel Counterview Desk Asking the Government of India and state governments to stop “criminalizing” free speech and protect journalism, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has said that the latest victim of media crackdown is new portal “Scroll” executive editor Supriya Sharma, wrote an eight part series on the suffering imposed by the lockdown in Varanasi, exposing the loss of livelihoods and hunger faced by the marginalized”.

Counterview Desk Taking strong exception to "virtual clearances" to eco-sensitive projects in the Western Ghats, the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) in a statement has said urged for a review of the four-lane highway, 400 KV transmission line and double tracking of the railway line through the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park in Goa. 

Counterview Desk A survey by the Centre for Equity Studies, Delhi Research Group and the Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign undertaken to address key questions of how India’s labouring classes have had to cope with the strictest lockdown the world between March 25 and May 31, has talked of “continued humanitarian crisis of joblessness, intense food insecurity and massive dislocation of workers.”

Returned migrants being tested at an entry point in Uttarakhand By Jag Jivan    A telephonic survey, conducted among 323 returned migrant workers in hill districts of Uttarakhand, has revealed that even though they have returned from the places they worked – mainly Mumbai, Delhi NCR, other districts of the state and Rajasthan – majority of the respondent (68%) would like go back to their destination places in the absence of employment opportunities in their native places of the state.