Hannan Mollah By  A  Representative A Left parties-civil society organizations delegation led by CPI-M politbureau member Hannan Mollah, general secretary of the All-India Kisan Sabha, has told President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee that there is a “brazen attempt” on the part of the Government of Madhya Pradesh to “forcibly evict” thousands of Narmada dam oustees from their villages under the pretext of the Supreme Court order dated February 8, 2017.

By Fr Cedric Prakash sj* On May 28th 2017 German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election rally very strongly stated that Germany and Europe could no longer rely on the US under the leadership of President Donald Trump. The next day, her spokesperson reiterated that Chancellor Merkel was right in confronting President Trump during his visit to Europe last week, over the need to tackle climate change. In their meetings with him, the G7 leaders urged Tump not to pull US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change which emphasises the need and importance of cutting down carbon dioxide emissions. The US (under President Obama) together with 194 countries is a signatory to this path-breaking agreement. Scientists and other experts are convinced that the implementation of this agreement is critical if the planet is to have any chance of tackling catastrophic climate change, which is having disastrous effects in so many parts of the globe. Trump has consistently pooh-poohed this ‘agreement’ r...

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Government of India (GoI) signed a peace accord (Naga Accord) with the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-IM (NSCN-IM) in August 2015 in the presence of the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India. A press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) called it a “framework agreement” and hinted at releasing the details and the execution plan soon after (2nd attachment). Given the concerns raised by several quarters about continued confidentiality of the contents of the Naga Accord, more than a month later, I filed an RTI application with the PMO seeking the following information under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act): “Apropos of the news release dated 03/08/2015 caused to be published by your public authority on the website of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) relating to the signing of the “framework agreement”, between the Government of India and the representatives of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), I would like to obta...

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk By  A  Representative In a surprise move, Australian state Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has declared that she is not going to provide concessional loan support to fund the infrastructure for the powerful Indian group Adani’s $16.5 billion Carmichael coalmine in the Galilee basin. Earlier reports said the state government had “agreed” to provide the loan.

At the underground water tank By Darshini Mahadevia, Renu Desai, Shachi Sanghvi, Suchita Vyas* In the mid-2000s, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) moved away from in-situ slum upgrading under its Slum Networking Project (SNP) to two inter-related interventions: large-scale slum displacement for urban beautification / infrastructure projects and construction of public housing under Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) to resettle the displaced households. The BSUP sites, constructed under the Government of India’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), comprise of four-storey buildings with infrastructures for running water, a toilet and bath, drainage, and electricity in each house, and electricity in the building corridors. At the site-level, there are paved streets, common open spaces, street lights, drainage, and physical structures for social amenities like anganwadis (government-sponsored child-care and maternal-care centres for children in the 0-6 ag...

Participants at the mm&P meet By  A  Representative A high-level meeting of India’s top advocacy group, mines, minerals and People (mm&P), has decided to represent to President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to implement the concept of "intergenerational equity” to make sure that the next generations are equal shareholders of the natural resources.

A farmers' rally off Ahmedabad led by Sagar Rabari By  A  Representative Have the farmers around Ahmedabad city realized that their nod to the Gujarat government proposal to turn their agricultural land into urban hotspots was a major mistake? It would seem so, if meetings held by Sagar Rabari of the Khedut Samaj-Gujarat (KSG) with the farmers of two of the villagers situated about 20 km from the city are any indication.

By Sagar Rabari* In 2009, the Government of Gujarat, through a notification, had brought 68 villages (43 villages of Kalol and 25 from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar talukas) with a total area of 625 sq km (62,500 hectares) into the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) boundary. In the beginning the farmers were happy with this since they expected many basic amenities to be made available to them. After eight years, and the situation remaining as it was, the farmers have today realised that it is nothing but another ploy by the government to appropriate their land in the name of ‘development’. While on the one hand their situation has not changed for better, on the other, the merger into AUDA and consequent mutation of their new tenure land into old tenure has brought about a sharp appreciation in the value of their land due to increased jantri rates. The farmers with a large amount of new tenure land have thus had to endure a major financial blow. Panchayati raj institutions have b...

Map 1 By Darshini Mahadevia, Renu Desai, Shachi Sanghvi, Suchita Vyas, Vaishali Parmar* Urban beautification and infrastructure projects in Ahmedabad such as the Sabarmati riverfront project, the Kankaria lakefront project and road-widening projects, including for the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), have displaced thousands of poor households since the mid-2000s. Many have been resettled in public housing built by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) under the Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) programme of the Central Government’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Almost half of this BSUP housing is built at seven adjacent sites in Vatwa. (Map 1). AMC allotted flats at three of these sites between 2010-2014. The constrained mobility and stressed livelihoods created by displacement and resettlement to sites like Vatwa is a form of structural violence inherent in the development paradigm adopted in Ahmedabad over the past decade. Four dimensions of urb...

Counterview Desk A representation made by four Dalit activists from Gujarat -- Ramesh Babariya, Arvind Khuman, Kishor Dhakhada and Mukesh Vanza -- to the President of India: We undersigned, concerned citizens of Gujarat and India, after visiting Saharanpur, demand to immediately dismiss Mr. Adityanath Yogi’s government in Uttar Pradesh in the wake of complete breakdown of law and order enforcement machinery in the state.

By Rahul Yadav* People displaced due to the Narmada Dam in Gujarat, including farmers, labourers, and potters, took out a bullock carts rally on May 25 in Badwani, Madhya Pradesh, joined by fishmen and women, to protest against the absence of rehabilitation sites, on one hand, and massive corruption in compensation offered to the oustees, on the other.

By Sadhan Mukherjee* Delhi is not just a just a city or the capital of India; it is history itself. Who rules Delhi is important, not only in terms of today but for posterity as well. This is so as there is a conscious attempt to eliminate the past and forget its history. No other existing city anywhere in the world is as old as Delhi. The Pandavas set up their capital here; then called Indraprastha. As the story is narrated in Mahabharata, it dates back to a period of around 3000 BCE. The inner-family war not only ended the Pandava and Kaurava dynasties but also destroyed Indraprastha as well as Hastinapur and the regimes. A more modern Delhi became a citadel of Hindu kings who established their rule in 50 BCE in North India. Delhi was named after Mauryan king Dhillu. Much of Delhi’s ancient history is shrouded in myths and legends, not supported by any evidence except that Delhi today represents continuity and change. Many dynasties have ruled from here: the Nandas, the Mauryas (who ...

By A Representative A new report by an Indian-American coalition based in Washington, Alliance for Justice & Accountability, has raised the alarm that that over the last three years of the BJP rule in India, “the ‘upper’ castes’ animosity towards the Dalits and Adivasis” has sharply “extended to Muslims and Christians, who are today India’s second and third largest religious minorities respectively”.

Counterview Desk Advocate Syed Mujtaba Hussian’s letter to the Governor and the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, urging them to constitute police complaint authorities at district and state levels, as directed by the Supreme Court, and as established in various states: You are already, I believe, aware of the facts of the matter, which are in public domain, about the cases regarding acts of serious misconduct by policemen/officers of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) Police, such as death in police custody, grievous hurt caused by police, rape or attempt to rape, illegal detention, extortion, land/house grabbing or any serious abuse of authority. Referring to this, the honourable Supreme Court has directed different states to establish police complaints authorities, saying: “There shall be a Police Complaints Authority at the district level to look into complaints against police officers of and up to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. Similarly, there should be anoth...

By  A  Representative A whopping 1.85 lakh plus people have signed a petition floated by well-known columnist-activist Sucheta Dalal of the Moneylife Foundation asking Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Urjit Patel to intervene in what it calls “unfair treatment that bank customers suffer in the form of frequent, arbitrary and one-sided increase in banking charges.”

By  A  Representative The Madhya Pradesh government is all set to evict around 15,000 families by July-end in the Narmada Valley, even as Gujarat government is readying itself to close down the 30-odd gates on the Narmada dam in order to take the water level in the dam’s reservoir from the present 121.92 metres to 138.64 metres.

By A Representative Top advocacy group, the Right to Food Campaign (RTFC), has expressed its “deep disappointment” over what it has called “truncated Maternity Benefits Programme (MBP) approved by the Union Cabinet recently, wondering why it is restricted to the first birth and institutional births alone.

Queensland premier with chairman Gautam Adani By  A  Representative In a major boon to India’s powerful industrial group, the Adanis have been offered a $320 million “royalties holiday” in their prestigious coalmining project in Australia. The offer, reports Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), requires the Adanis to pay “just $2 million a year in royalties once the $21 billion project starts operating.”

An NBA protest in Madhya Pradesh By  A  Representative In an email alert to Counterview, top anti-dam leader of the  Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) Medha Patkar has raised the alarm that “after almost 32 years of struggle, lakhs of people in the Narmada valley to be affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat, are being threatened with brutal eviction.”

Varsha Dongre By  A  Representative The Chhattisgarh government may have suspended Varsha Dongre, a Dalit police officer, for a Facebook post for seeking an end to custodial torture of adivasi women, but on August 26, 2016 the state High Court had praised her “persistence and tenacity” for “a long drawn out battle” which brought to surface “irregularities, acts of corruption, nepotism, favouritism etc.”

Yakub Rasool, Bilkis Bano, RK Shah By  A  Representative Will the Gujarat government, accepting state responsibility, provide “reparation” to one of the worst victims of gang rape, Bilkis Bano, during the 2002 Gujarat riots? Addressing media in Ahmedabad, Bilkis’ husband, Yakub Rasool, declared, he would “wait” to see how the state responds to the recent High Court verdict, and if there is none, Bilkis and he would be forced to approach the Supreme Court.

Adanis' Mundra power plant, controversial in Australia By  A  Representative In what is being described as a new “new hurdle”, the proposed Adani coalmine in the Queensland state of in Australia failed to get the crucial Australian Parliamentary nod, essential for financial closure for one of the biggest coalmining projects in the world. The government lost the Senate vote 35-33, meaning the legislation won't pass until the Senate returns in mid-June.

By  A  Representative In an unusual show of anti-BJP unity, representatives from Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, and Communist parties shared a civil society platform in Lucknow, where nearly celebrations took place began on May 10 to mark the 160th anniversary of India’s first war of Independence, 1857. They had gathered for a “national convention for safeguarding the Constitution”.

Vijay Rupani By  A  Representative Khedut Samaj Gujarat (KSG), the upcoming non-political farmers’ organization, has threatened state chief minister Vijay Rupani that if the work for providing Narmada waters via minor canal No 4B of the Dholera region south of Ahmedabad fails to begin within a week, its farmers would begin a major protest dharna in Gandhinagar, the state capital.

By  A  Representative Is it advantage Adani Group, one of India’s largest, in Australia? It would seem so, if latest reports coming in from Melbourne, Australia are an indication. Amidst opposition to the concessional loan "offered" to the Adani group for building infrastructure, trade unions appear to divided on the crucial issue.