In a surprise move, a new report by Greenpeace India, the environmental NGO whose Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) license was controversially  cancelled  in December 2016, followed by an Enforcement Directorate (ED)  freezing  its bank accounts in October 2018, has showered praise on a scheme to solarize agriculture launched in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Gujarat.

Anti-Dalit, anti-reservation FB post A recent American civil society research has found that 40% of India's casteist posts on Facebook (FB) have anti-reservation slant. Asserting that the reservation policy in India is similar to affirmative action in the United States, the research study, titled "Facebook India: Towards The Tipping Point of Violence Caste and Religious Hate Speech", says, this type of hate content on FB is mainly directed against Dalits and Adivasis.

A just-released  report  has asserted that India's ranking in the Global Peace Index (GPI) is 141st among 163 countries, deteriorating by four ranks in a year. Ranking 163 countries by providing a score to each, the report, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), headquartered in Sydney, Australia, has found India to be one of the least peaceful nations in the region.

  A recent study of how social media users and non-users behaved during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections has sought to suggests that the Congress’ main development plank,  NYAY  (Nyunatam Aay Yojana) scheme, promising a minimum income to poor households, announced allegedly to “wrest the post-Balakot momentum back from the BJP”, failed to achieve the desired goal, particularly among those for whom the proposed scheme was targeted.

  Top economist Arvind Subramanian has said that changes brought about by the Government of India in data sources and methodology for estimating the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011-12 “has led to a significant overestimation of growth”. While official estimates place annual average GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2016-17 at about 7 percent, the actual growth may have been 4½ percent, ranging from 3 ½ to 5 ½ percent during the period, he adds.

  In a  letter  to the Government of India (GoI), made public after “failing” to get any response on the concerns expressed regarding the current updation process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) has taken serious view of the danger of disenfranchising a whopping four lakh people in Assam.

  A recent study on gender disparities in health-care expenditure (HCE) in India, published in “Science Direct”, one of the world's leading source for scientific, technical, and medical research, has said that though globally women live longer than men “because of the biological and behavioral advantages of being a female”, in India “life expectancy gap for females versus males is nearly zero or marginally higher” because of “gender-based discrimination in breastfeeding, food allocation, immunization, access to health-care services, and finance for treatment.”

  Even as the United States declared it was withdrawing its “preferential trade status” accorded to India, facts suggest, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “assured” US president Donald Trump last year he would work on going soft on “very high tariffs” imposed on American products coming to India. Addressing a White House  media conference  on October 1, 2018, Trump had said, I had “spoken to Prime Minister Modi, and he is going to reduce them (tariffs) quite substantially.”

  Commenting on India’s January-March 2019 GDP growth, which "surprised sharply to the downside, printing at a 5-year low of 5.8%", JP Morgan, the American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City, has said that it has not just "dragged down full-year growth also to a five-year low of 6.8%". It underlines, "The GDP undershoot reinforces the discernable slowdown that is currently underway. Growth has largely been flying on one engine in recent years – private consumption – and that has gotten progressively exhausted." Worse, in its commentary, authored by Sajjid Z Chinoy and Toshi Jain, who are with the top MNC's Emerging Markets Asia Economic and Policy Research wing, say, even this is "buffeted by sustained rural distress and a significant tightening of financial conditions amongst the Non Bank Financial Companies (NBFC), which have largely been financing consumption." Continue the JP Morgan...