By A Representative The tenth biennial conference of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), an apex body of several grassroots organisations and NGOs spread all over the country, has called for “united action” in the face of “neoliberal onslaughts”. Held against the backdrop of continued political advance of the Narendra Modi-led BJP, which is seeking to amend “positive features” of the new land acquisition Act, water down environmental and forest rights laws and the rural jobs scheme, participants at the NAPM meeting said it is the “need of the hour” to come “together to challenge the neoliberal communal onslaught.”

By Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah We activists of Gujarat oppose and condemn the construction of ‘Statue of Unity’; because it will be a statue that will divide and remove the tribal people form their land, forest and livelihood. It is a structure that will be 182 meters (392 feet) tall of Sardar Patel planned near the Sardar Sarovar Dam by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The statue will be placed directly facing the Sardar Sarovar dam at a distance of 3.2 km at the Sadhu Bet. Surprisingly and shockingly, the Government of Gujarat has allocated Rs 500 crore in the 2014-15 budget and the Government of India also has allocated Rs 200 crore in the 2014-2015 budget for the Statue of Unity project by presuming that project does not requires environment clearance from the concerned authorities. More recently, the Government of Gujarat issued a work order of Rs. 2,979 crore to Larsen and Toubro for the construction of the Statue of Unity. The Government of Gujarat website states, “A monument, tha...

By A Representative Thirty-eight prominent citizens have asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withhold the decision to raise the height of the Narmada dam further by erecting 17 metres high gates, to the full reservoir level, i.e. 138.68 meters, saying this will affect “44 additional village communities and one whole township”, and stretching up to “214 km long area in the Narmada basin.” Asking him to do this in the name of “a new democratic initiative, respect law, democracy, human values and human rights”, the letter warned, in case the height is raised, “45,000 families will be displaced.”

By A Representative Sharply criticizing “successive Indian governments” for failing to prosecute those most responsible for killings and other abuses during the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, influential human rights body, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has asked the Narendra Modi government should “enact a law against communal violence that would hold public officials accountable for complicity and dereliction of duty.” Saying that independent civil society inquiries have found “complicity” by both police and leaders of the Congress, HRW underlined, “Three decades later, only 30 people, mostly low-ranking Congress supporters, have been convicted for the attacks that resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries.”

Click on the image to watch full interview on YouTube  By A Representative India’s main Left party, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M), may have noted that in the new dispensation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the neglect of India’s poor has intensified, as seen in the “targeted attack” on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), implemented by the previous Congress-led government. This is being "effected" by putting "a cut on the budgetary outlays", it says. However, the party does not think this is reason enough to drop its earlier stance of maintaining equi-distance between the Congress and Modi-led BJP, which snatched power by decimating the Congress in the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Nivedita Menon By A Representative Noted feminist and political scientist Nivedita Menon has said that far-right Hindutva groups, caught on the back foot by the humiliating backfire in their fantastical Meerut claims of ‘gangrape and forcible conversion’, have arrived at a new formula: That the anxiety over ‘Love Jihad’ has also been expressed by the Church in Kerala and the Akal Takht, hence “there must be some fire generating all the smoke.” Menon adds, the votaries of the new formula – who include feminist-turned-pro-Narendra Modi campaigner Madhu Kishwar -- claim that as the dangers from Love Jihad are real, quoting investigations by police and court directions.

By A Representative Controversy has broken out among India's right to information (RTI) activists over the latest order of the Government of India's Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), released on October 20, 2014, which allows all ministries and departments to "facilitate uploading of RTI applications and appeals" on their respective websites, even as providing links of replies through a URL. Suggesting that it was being implemented by the DoPT on a pilot basis, and has proved successful, the order says, however, that the "RTI applications and appeals received and their responses relating to the personal information of an individual may not be disclosed if they do not serve any public purpose."

By A Representative In an usual message titled “Feast of Deepavali 2014“ from Vatican City, which is the seat of power of the Roman Catholic Church, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has expressed dismay over “the negative effects of globalization” which are starting to “impact on religious communities throughout the world.” In its greetings message to the “Hindu friends”, the message says, “Globalization has contributed to the fragmentation of society and to an increase in relativism and syncretism in religious matters, as well as bringing about a privatization of religion.”

By A Representative A public gathering at Dumka, Jharkhand, saw senior activists campaigning against indiscriminate permissions to coalminers without taking into account people’s livelihood needs demanding withdrawal of all cases against protesters in all coalmining projects, especially those coal blocks whose licenses were cancelled by the Supreme Court on August 25, 2014. “Cases should be immediately withdrawn and all the injured and killed by police repression and firing should be appropriately compensated”, a statement issued at the end of the meet demanded.

Mariam Namazie, Iranian campaigner By A Representative A two-day International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights held in London on October 11-12, 2014, has bracketed Hindutva, with particular reference to “Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in India”, as one of the many important far-right groups across the globe who are “using religion for political supremacy”. Likely to raise many an eyebrow, especially in India, where the RSS has direct support from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the conference said, “This rise (or far-right) is a direct consequence of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism and the social policies of communalism and cultural relativism.”

NBA-led rally in Bhopal By A Representative The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), which led a well-attended rally of Narmada dam oustees of Madhya Pradesh in Bhopal, has triggered a hornet’s nest: In a letter submitted to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan demanding justice to outees of the Narmada dam, the NBA has sought his intervention to implement the crucial section 24 of the new land acquisition Act – Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 – which says that any acquired land, if lying idle for five years, will be returned to the original owner.

Sanjay Sudhir By A Representative In what may be interpreted as a clear indication that diplomatic missions in abroad are starting to bow to the saffron heat, the Australian high commission in Canberra is all set to allow the Hindu Council Australia to hold public receptions for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, visiting the country for the two-day G-20 summit starting on November 15. Already, an Indian diaspora-run site has reported that unhappiness has gripped diaspora over the Indian high commission in Canberra and Sydney consul-general Sanjay Sudhir’s “decision” to get Hindu Council Australia to organize community reception for Modi.

By A Representative Well-known British weekly “The Economist” has qualified India’s decision to cancel the biggest-ever India-Africa summit, which was to take place in December in Delhi, as “clumsy”. It said, this will now be a “thorny task” for India’s foreign policymakers to recoup the lost ground. While the cancellation of the summit was because of the fears of the deadly disease, Ebola, prevalent in three small West African countries, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the weekly insisted, “Trying to isolate Africa will not help prevent a pandemic.”

Prakash being conferred French award for contribution in human rights By A Representative In an unusual development, senior Gujarat-based human rights activist Father Cedric Prakash’s office was burgled on the night between October 7 and 8, 2014, and those who broke in took with them only his desktop personal computer, a hard disk, the keyboard with all connections meticulously cut. In a statement, Prakash said, “The intruders seemed to have moved around in several places of the office (some footprints evidence this) but were careful not to have disturbed /upset anything else.”

The report By Jitendra Rathod*  “A Road Map for Zero Waste Ahmedabad City – A Visionary Document to Guide Ahmedabad towards Becoming a Resource Efficient and Zero Waste City by 2031”, a recently released official document , is an evidence of the casteist mindset of the Ahmedabad Municipal Commission (AMC) administration. The document has been financed and commissioned jointly by the AMC and the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD). The document addresses several concerns of waste and waste management – except the safety and better health of the sweepers! The title page of the document is sufficient to prove the casteist mindset of the AMC administration. The document claims to be “visionary”, but the sweepers will continue to collect the garbage, dust, filth of the city by unclean way. The title page itself has photographs of sweepers without any safety devices – and no eyebrow has been raised on this. Landfill sites and handling of garbage have been shown to b...

Medha Patkar others protest World Bank move By A Representative The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that the World Bank Group's proposed policy on environmental safeguards, currently being discussed in Washington DC, is "a setback" from its previous rights-based approach, insisting, "Development cannot succeed if it harms communities." In a statement, HRW has said, "Indigenous peoples’ recommendations to strengthen World Bank standards and bring them into line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have fallen on deaf ears", adding, instead the World Bank has pledged on a ‘no-dilution’ of existing policies."

Ashiyanabano: Hit by cops By A Representative A report submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Vadodara-based senior activists of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has squarely blamed the cops for acting in a high-handed manner during the communal violence, which took place when the Navratri celebrations were on in Gujarat in September. Basing themselves on interaction with people of several localities, the fact-finding team said the attacks were by the “police and not by any community”. Quoting individuals, the PUCL said, “There was no trouble in the Yakutpura area", yet the "police entered in Minar Masjid falia, Patel falia-1 and Patel falia-2 and suddenly started breaking vehicles.”

By A Representative The Campaign for Electoral Reforms in India (CERI), a network of NGOs working on electoral reforms and related issues, has put forward the demand which has been in air for quite for decades now. It wants proportionate electoral system (PES) to be implemented as the main cornerstone of electoral reforms in India. In Delhi, the event was organised at Mandi House, where activists formed a human chain. A CERI statement claimed, it had been “campaigning with this demand for the last seven years”, adding, “A similar human chain putting forward the demand was also formed in six other cities of India.”

By A Representative The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has strongly condemned “arbitrary and illegal” detention of civil liberties activists and human rights defenders in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on October 9, 2014 when they were trying to hold a press conference at the Civil Library, Vishakhapatnam, to announce a meeting on October 12 to protest against Operation Green Hunt. “The hostile and intimidatory action of the police was supported at the highest level in the state government”, said PUCL, adding, this was clear “when the Vizag police arrested five other human rights activists who had gone to the Camp Office of DIG, Vishakhapatnam Range, to bring to his notice the illegal arrests of their colleagues.”

By A Representative Agreeing that it was impossible to work out a common strategy for farmers and pastoralists to fight for land rights, participants at a meeting of the International Land Coalition (ILC), a global alliance of civil society organizations, stressed on seeking “viable local solutions” to “rampant” privatization of land taking place in different countries of Asia in the name of setting up developmental projects. The meeting was held in a North Gujarat village in Bechraji taluka, Gopnaad, where land prices have zoomed by three to four times following the top car manufacturers, Maruti-Suzuki’s decision to set up shop about 25 kilometres away.

By A Representative In an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several top intellectuals and activists have strongly objected to the efforts to dilute the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), saying he should immediate intervene in the matter and the stop the move. Pointing towards several disturbing “impending moves” towards diluting MGNRGS, they said, any such effort would undermine the “support” being extended to the rural poor. In fact, according to them, any such dilution would mean setback “to crores of vulnerable rural families”.

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Ministry of Home Affairs has stubbornly refused to disclose the criteria for marking official records ‘Top Secret’, ‘Secret’ and ‘Confidential’. I demanded publication of the secretive Manual of Departmental Security Instructions (MoDSI) which contain the classification criteria and procedures under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) a few years ago and failed in my efforts. That rankles, as the Central Information Commission refused to order its disclosure, despite hearing strong arguments based on legal concepts and international practices in support of disclosure. However, the Department of Defence Production (DDP) of the Ministry of Defence has laid down the criteria for and procedure for classifying records as ‘Top Secret’, ‘Secret’ and ‘Confidential’ in a manual publicised in June this year for – believe it or not – private sector companies and firms that obtain licenses for producing defence-related commodities. One can access the Security Manua...

Villagers protest against proposed N-power plant By Krishnakant, Rohit Prajapati, Swati Desai* The summary record of the 17th Meeting of the Expert Appraisal Committee (Nuclear), held to examine nuclear projects attracting Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, held on May 6, 2014 is now available. Our perusal suggests that it ignores some major points about the violation of the basic procedural norms while conducting the Environmental Public Hearing (EPH) on March 5, 2013 for the proposed 6,000 MW Mithi Virdi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) to be built by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). We have earlier also stated that the EPH was illegal as it was held on the basis of an incomplete EIA report and had also serious anomalies; further, serious anomalies happened even during and after the EPH was held. The minutes of the EPH are not in the standard format as they are usually prepared. Instead, they read like a news report, with the proceedings summarized...

By Rohit Prajapati* Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2, 2014 and in his message on his website, he says, “A clean India is the best tribute we can pay to Bapu when we celebrate his 150th birth anniversary in 2019. […] Today, I appeal to everyone, particularly political and religious leadership, mayors, sarpanchs and captains of industry to plan and wholeheartedly engage in the task of cleaning your homes, work places, villages, cities and surroundings.” I want to remind Modi that earlier as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he had launched similar campaign Nirmal Gujarat – 2007′ and made tall claims during that campaign. But reality is best seen in Ahmedabad at illegal solid waste dumping site at Gyaspur-Pirana – a waste mountain near Sabarmati River adjacent to the main road. Modi should know the basic facts as revealed in the ‘Report of the Task Force on Waste to Energy’ dated 12 May 2014 by the Planning Commission of India. This report states...

 Greenpeace protest in Mahan jungles By A Representative The day on which Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Delhi from his five day tumultuous tour of New York and Washington and a claimed successful dialogue with US president Barrack Obama, the New York Times (NYT) has, in a sharply worded editorial titled India’s “Environment at Risk”, authored by its powerful editorial board collective, has declared that the Government of India’s (GoI’s) effort towards “gutting environmental protection laws and demonizing citizen groups that raise legitimate concerns are no way to move the nation forward.”

By Venkatesh Nayak* In June 2011, the Government of India insulated the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) from the ordinary obligation of transparency, applicable to other public authorities, by notifying it as an ‘exempt organisation’ under Section 24 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act). Information furnished by security and intelligence organisations to the Government of India is exempt from disclosure under this provision. These agencies have a duty to only furnish information about allegations of human rights violation or allegations of corruption when people make a formal request. In fact, information about allegations of human rights violation is to be disclosed only with the approval of the Central Information Commission (CIC). NATGRID, along with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was the most recent entrant to the list of organisations placed under the exempt list. Interestingly, on September 22, 2014, the Mini...

By A Representative In a move that has raised the eyebrows of human rights activists, Government of India has extended the labeling of the districts of Tirap, Changlag and Longding in Arunachal Pradesh as 'disturbed areas' under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) for a further period of six months with effect from October 1, 2014. The Ministry of Home Affairs notification dated September 20, 2014 claims that the law and order situation in these districts has been “reviewed” and “violent activities of insurgents” were to have “remained unchanged.” AFSPA has long been regarded as “draconian”, as it does not protect citizens from “atrocities” by security forces.