Data compiled by several of Gujarat's civil society organizations, who have worked for the rehabilitation of victims of 2002 communal riots, in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, died, have revealed that, as of today, as many as 3,380 displaced families -- or about 17,000 persons -- continue to live in 83 rehabilitation colonies in the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have  compared  his government's efforts to flush out black money with his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. But the ministries and departments operating under him appear to believe that reports prepared by them on black money cannot be made public because they were covered under secrecy clauses of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

  A new report, “2018 Edelman Trust Barometer”, has said that with an aggregate 13-point decline India has found itself among the six top countries that have experienced one of the highest trust losses among the 28 countries it has analyzed. The calculation is based on India’s trust-level slipping in three of the four categories analyzed – government institutions, media and NGOs.

  Ranking for the year 2017 Even as India is shown  slipping  by two points to the 81st rank among 180 countries from 79th a year earlier, the new Corruptions Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2017 has regretted that the country finds itself in the company of the Philippines and Maldives for being “among the worst regional offenders” where “journalists, activists, opposition leaders and even staff of law enforcement or watchdog agencies are threatened, and in the worst cases, even murdered.”

  Gujarat budget papers released by the state government in the assembly on Tuesday suggest that while the “developmental” expenditure for the forthcoming financial year, 2018-19, would rise by just about 2.46% over the previous year, 2017-18, the “non-developmental” expenditure, on the other hand, would grow by a whopping 20.2%.

  Officials testing biometric system for PDS A recent survey, carried out by student volunteers in the Nagri block in the outskirts of Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand, has found that a huge 97% of the sample households have opposed Direct Bank Transfer (DBT) against the subsidies they should be getting by using the public distribution (PDS) system ration shops. The survey was coordinated by well-known academic  Jean Dreze   and researcher  Nazar Khalid .

A Government of India (GoI) report, likely to create a major flutter among sociologists, women's rights activists and feminists, as also those claiming to be Dalit and tribal rights activists, has said that a whopping 24.6% scheduled caste (SC) women aged 15-49 have experienced physical violence during the 12 months preceding a survey carried out to ascertain empowerment issues they face. Suggesting that is the highest among all communities, the report reveals, 18.9% of scheduled tribe (ST) women experienced physical violence, which is the next highest, followed by other backward classes (OBCs) 21.1%. Data in the report further show that 12.8% Hindus, categorised as "Others", presumably other than SC, ST and OBC, experienced violence, which is lower compared to Muslims and Christians, both 14.9%, and Sikhs 14.4%. Just about 11.8% Buddhist or neo-Buddhist women experienced violence, and even lower percentage of Jain women (8.7%) experienced violence, says the chapter on do...

  At a time when the Government of India (GoI) has claimed that 99.4% of the country's villages have been electrified, but the GoI's powerful thinktank electrification, Niti Aayog, has pointed out that there are 304 million people who still lack access to electricity in its draft National Energy Policy (NEP),  released  in mid-2017, top US business interests have begun to see it as an opportunity.

  A Government of India (GoI) report, released recently, has found that, despite much hype around girl child education through Kanya Kalavani Mahotsav – the annual school enrolment event launched by Narendra Modi as chief minister in Gujarat way back 2004 – the “model” state’s rural girls fare worse among all 21 major Indian states in schooling.

  A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi mounted a powerful defense of globalization at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland (January 23), in a little known development, India's immigration officials deported a veteran Swiss ex-diplomat from Ahmedabad airport, allegedly without providing any reason as to why they were doing so.

  In a curious disclosure, a top Government of India (GoI) study, “Healthy States, Progressive India Report on the Ranks of States and Union Territories”, has found that, while “model” Gujarat ranks No 1 in institutional delivery of babies, in sex ratio at birth it is one of the worst – 854 girls as against 1000 boys.

  A top Indian industrial house-sponsored study has found that, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “model” city Ahmedabad, 19.4% children aged 0-59 months are stunted, which is the highest among the 10 cities studied – Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat, Pune and Jaipur.

  The latest Democracy Index 2017 report, released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (IEU), attached with the powerful British journal "The Economist", has said that "India fell ten places in the rankings, from 32nd to 42nd to place, after its score deteriorated by 0.58 points", from 7.81 a year earlier to 7.23, on a scale of 10. The IEU data show this was the lowest score since 2006, when the IEU first brought it's Democracy Index report.

  A recent report by a Berlin-based non-profit, Transparency International, has qualified India as the most corrupt country in the Asia-Pacific region. Based on interviews with 21,861 people in 16 countries of the region, the report says that while the “bribery rate” in India was highest at 69%, it was the lowest in Japan, 0.2%.