Is Ahmedabad becoming increasingly conservative when it comes "allowing" womenfolk to work outside the household? It would seem so, if the latest data, released by the Government of India's top data collection centre, National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), is any indication. Apparently, the economic situation, riddled by lack of service protection and security to women, would have added to aggravating the situation for women workers in Ahmedabad.

In a new report, one of the world’s most reputed consultants, Ernst and Young (E&Y), have said that nearly 80 per cent of the senior business executives in India think bribery/ corrupt practices “happen widely in business in the country”. Compared to last year, this is up by 10 percentage points. In all, E&Y surveyed 3,800 senior management personnel across 38 countries. The report comes close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrating one year's "corruption-free" Government of India.

  A Washington-based global research organization has ranked India an average country in Environmental Democracy Index (EDI), which it has worked out on the basis national-level laws, regulations, extrapolating them with rights of transparency, participation, and justice. Ranking India 24th in the list of 70 countries it has selected for analysis, the World Resource Institute (WRI) has ranked India 28th in environmental transparency, 41st in environmental participation, and at almost at the top – second – in environmental justice.

Top British weekly “The Economist” has said it again. In a commentary marking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s one-year in office, it has said that the alleged improvements in the economy is because of “serendipity” -- because of “oil prices.” Titled “Modi’s rule: India’s one-man band”, it adds, the country has a “golden opportunity to transform itself”. But the way Modi is moving suggests the country “risks missing” the opportunity.

  A controversial study, carried out by a prominent US-based research organization, has said that “despite relative economic advantage, India’s majority Hindu population is 25 percentage points more likely to defecate in the open than the minority Muslim population.” The study quotes Manusmriti (Chapter 4 verse 151) to suggest why it may be more prevalent among Hindus, “Far from his dwelling let him remove urine and excreta”.

  Despite big talk about Gujarat being a model state of urban development, latest figures, made available at a workshop organized by Paryavaran Mitra, an Ahmedabad-based environmental NGO, has said that just about 14.67 per cent of the solid waste collected in the state’s eight municipal corporations and 159 municipalities, is processed. This puts Gujarat way behind the national average of 27.94 per cent of the solid waste being processed, with seven out of 20 selected states performing better.

  Well-informed sources in Gujarat government have told Counterview that the latest lion census enumerators could find just 22 lions in Gir National Park, the no-man’s “fully protected” territory within the Gir forest area to “preserve” the rare species. Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, while making an  announcement  of 523 lions in Gujarat, up from 411 in 2010, refused to give any breakup of the number of lions found in the National Park.

  In an alarming revelation, a high-powered Government of India committee headed by top scholar Prof Amitabh Kundu has calculated that Gujarat's 162 slums, of which 130 are notified, have the lowest tenability index than anywhere else in the country. The committee, appointed by the previous UPA government in January 2014, submitted its report recently to the Union ministry housing and urban poverty alleviation to "calculate" which are slums and slum-dwelling households could be regularized.