Medha Patkar with Ranya and Rajubai By Medha Patkar* When I decided to spend Diwali days with the adivasis, our saathis of last 34 years struggle, in the hilly villages of Maharashtra, I knew what the scenario would be. In Manibeli, Chimalkhedi, Bamani and Mukhdi, houses after houses and fields had been submerged… lost partially or fully into the oblivion! Yet when I reached, crossing a number of police checks by boat from the Sardar Sarovar dam site, I got a shiver, witnessing the huge ocean that the mother river, Narmada, had turned into. It was demonic, indeed.

By Anand K Sahay* In an extraordinary display of deployment -- amidst nationalistic fervour -- not seen since the militancy of the early 1990s, the country’s armed forces are spread across the towns and villages of the Kashmir valley, guns at the ready. Men of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, doing duty alongside them in urban areas, no longer carry a weapon.

By Shaktisinh Gohil* Come October 31, and we have functions to mark events relating to two great personalities who have played very important role in the making of India. They are Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Indira Gandhi. Like many other friends in public life, I also have to attend functions involving these two leaders at some places as speaker, while at some as guest.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* This last day of October reminds us the brutal assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her own security guards who were supposed to protect her. Since June 1984, when Indira Gandhi ordered Operation Bluestar at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikh feelings were tremendously hurt, but there was no attempt to assuage the feelings.

By Mohan Guruswamy* Exactly a year ago, Narendra Modi inaugurated the giant Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel statue facing the Narmada Dam. It is 3.2 km away from the dam on a river island called Sadhu Bet near Rajpipla in Gujarat. Standing almost six hundred feet tall, it is the world's tallest statue.

Orai Dalit children with earthen lamps By  A  Representative In a unique celebration of Diwali this year, school dropout children from Dalit and other backward class communities of the rural areas of Orai taluka of Jalaun district in Uttar Pradesh went around to schools, colleges, government offices and police departments, offering to staff and officials diyas (earthen lamps) they had made with their own hands.

Detained activists By A Representative Several Gujarat human rights and tribal activists have been detained in Gujarat ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaching the Kevadia Colony on Thursday, October 31, to celebrate one year of the Statue of Unity off Sardar Sarovar dam. The state officialdom acted similarly a year ago, too, when Modi reached the Kevadia Colony to inaugurated the 182-metres statue, tallest in the world. October 31 is Sardar Patel's birthday.

By Moin Qazi* As you read these lines, 1.6 billion Muslims across the world, from Morocco to Jakarta, will be paying homage to Prophet Muhammad ahead of the Prophet’s birthday, which falls on 9-10 November 2019. This day, 1,430 years ago, Prophet Muhammad delivered the historic Last Sermon (khutabat al-wida) on the parched terrain of Mount of Mercy (Jabal ar-Rahmah) in the Uranah valley of Mount Arafat, 20 kilometres east of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It was precisely on the ninth day of Dhu al-Hijjah (12th and last month of the Islamic year -6 March 632) in the tenth year of hijrah (migration from Mecca to Medina) that the Prophet addressed 1,44,000 pilgrims. The sermon, though seemingly addressed to a Muslim gathering, had a universal message. It consists of summarized exhortations based on some core teachings of the Qur’an and sunnah (Prophetic practices). It captures the ethos of Islam and provides a great lens to view the religion through. Some of his advices have become the f...

By Anand K Sahay* The gun trigger that took the first life in Kashmir was squeezed on August 6, just one day after constitutional violence had been done to J&K state- and it wasn’t the militants. In the Ilahi Bagh-Soura area of Srinagar’s old city, locally called the “downtown”, Asrar Khan, a 14-year old pupil of the well-regarded Kashmir Harvard School, near his home, was shot in the head from a pellet gun.

By T Navajyoti* Francois Gautier, an India-based senior French journalist, believes Hinduism is “the only religion” today that accepts and respects all the other religions, and though Hindus are descendants an ancient civilization in human history, there are many western journalists and correspondents who are “still biased” against Hindustan.

By Sandeep Pandey and Meera Sanghamitra* The Nagas claim that their leader Phizo never signed any instrument of accession with India like the other 562 princely states and Nagaland or Nagalim, as they prefer to call their land, was never part of India either with consent or by conquest. Nagas are proud of their unique history in which they have never been subject to any foreign rule.

By Anand K Sahay* Says a 30-year old, a minor government functionary in Baramulla, in an uncomplicated, way, “Aap apne Pakistan ka gussa Kashmir par nikal rahe hain!” (You are taking it out on us in Kashmir because you are angry with Pakistan!)

By Anand K Sahay* My recent trip to Kashmir has revealed a picture that can only fill one with gloom and dread. Grave political uncertainty and psychological disarray at the level of ordinary people is the standout impression.

By Maju Varghese In the last week, we saw two indices, which were released globally. One on hunger and another on Ease of Doing Business. India slipped from 95th position to 102nd position out of 117 countries in Global Hunger Index, while the country gained another 14 points in Ease of Doing Business jumping from 77th position last year to 63rd position this year among 190 countries. India improved its ranks by 79 position from 2014.

By Rajiv Shah  A high level conference in Chicago has seen a strong appeal to the Government of India to promote safer technology among stone cutters in India and better occupational health standards in India’s jewellery business by developing better inspection standards. The appeal came after a senior Gujarat-based health rights activist, Jagdish Patel, made a presentation on the state of agate stone cutting industry in Khambhat in Gujarat and Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Counterview Desk Representatives of trade unions and workers organisations of all sectors (including formal, informal, self-employed and home based workers), who met in Delhi on October 23-34, 2019 in order to analyse the Code on Social Security 2019, published at Ministry of Labour and Employment, has taken strong exception to the Government of India seeking to exclude the unorganized sector, insisting, what is actually needed is a right to social security Act.

Bilkis Bano By RK Misra* Seventeen years after the incident and six months after the apex court ordered relief for the victim, the BJP government in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat figured in a callous disregard for compliance. Successive BJP governments in Gujarat have dragged their feet, particularly in matters relating to the minority community, even when the highest court of the land has unequivocally ruled it’s mind.

Counterview Desk The Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), a civil society network campaigning against alleged efforts of the Government of India to dilute the Right to Information (RTI) Act, has said that the new RTI rules, which follow the Act’s amendments about three months ago, have reduced India’s Information Commissions into ‘caged parrots’.

By  A  Representative In a sharp rejoinder to “Western businesspeople”, who are said to be still inclined to “defend” Prime Minister Narendra Modi by claiming that Modi may be “bad for democracy his pro-business philosophy is good for the economy”, the powerful British periodical “The Economist” has declared, “But that argument no longer washes. India’s economy is incompetently managed and doing badly.”

For the powers-that be, surely, it is but natural to consider this a proud moment: That the World Bank’s new “Ease of Doing Business” report has shown India jumping 14 points; and that India is one of the two countries across the globe out of 190 economies analysed among the 10 top “improvers” which have shown climbed so sharply – the other country being the tiny Djibouti in the huge African continent. Further, if the report is to be believed, out of total of 11 business regulatory reforms in the past two editions of Doing Business, India made 14 sizeable improvements during 2017-18, while Djibouti improved on 11 counts; and overall, it was important that two economies with “the largest populations, China and India, demonstrated impressive reform agendas.” So far so good. But after reading through the report today, I decided to read another report, also by the World Bank, which I had meticulously downloaded and kept in my computer for a closer perusal on some other day, at leisure. The...

By  A  Representative The Supreme Court has refused to accept the report of the Sardar Sarovar Reservoir Regulation Committee dated October 14, 2019, submitted by the Union of India and the Narmada Control Authority (NCA). 

Max Mueller's Manusmriti By Shamsul Islam* The current vociferous campaign for awarding Savarkar Bharat Ratna by Savarkarites claims that this Hindutva 'Veer' was a ‘rationalist Hindu’ a leader who ‘ended the practice of Untouchability’, propagated ‘scientific temper’ and died as an atheist. They also persist in saying that his “outlook was absolutely modern and scientific and secular”.

By Venkatesh Nayak* The process of manufacturing post facto approval for the momentous changes that the Central Government made to the status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in August 2019, with Parliament’s nod, is in full swing. Apart from the chest-thumping at the recent election rallies in Maharashtra and Haryana and the latest round of military operations launched across the northwestern border , educational institutions are being pressed to organise debates on this issue. A common theme that pervades all these attempts to legitimise recent actions over J&K is the blame game targetting other political parties that governed the Centre and J&K for all that went wrong until August 2019. Arguably, the favourite whipping boy of critics of the Kashmir policy is Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who was the Prime Minister at the time of J&K’s accession to the Indian Union in October, 1947. An oft-repeated charge against Pt. Nehru was that he did not show enough courage to beat back th...

By Mohan Guruswamy* Just a few years ago the breaching of data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed a number of Indians and Indian-owned entities were shovelling their money away from Indian tax officials into Panama based shell companies. One of those discovered doing this was India's favourite brand ambassador, Amitabh Bachchan, despite not being a posterboy for good citizenship. Panama: No questions asked.

By  A  Representative Did Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru contemplate a strike to “save” Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in 1947? It would seem so if one is to believe senior Right to Information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak, who made an application to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), popularly Teen Murti Library, to gain access to J&K files of 1947 to 1949 to find out what the truth was.

Counterview Desk The Wangan & Jagalingou (W&J) Council, claiming to represent the indigenous people of the Queensland, where the powerful Indian industrial house Adani has begun to implement a $16 billion project, has complained that claiming the "First Nations land owners" are being "banned" from their own country.

By  A  Representative A civil rights network, the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI), in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has sought his immediate intervention on the Centre’s "failure" to prescribe rules regarding the salary, tenure and terms of service of information commissioners, after the enactment of the Right to Information Amendment Act, 2019.

By  A  Representative  The Gujarat government has already acquired 1,100 acres out of 1,700 acres of the tribal land of six villages – Navagam, Limdi, Gora, Vagadia, Kevadia and Mithi – for developing tourism next to the 182-metre high Statue of Unity, the world's tallest, putting at risk the livelihood option of their 8,000 residents, and is all set to acquire rest of the land, representatives of the villagers have alleged in Ahmedabad.

Counterview Desk The civil society organization, Jharkhand Janadhikar Manch (JMM), even as condemning the attachment of well-known social activist Fr Stan Swamy’s belongings by the Jharkhand police on October 21, has said that the harassment is part of the state government’s growing attempts to stifle dissent and intimidate those fighting for justice.

Savarkar By Shamsul Islam* The Hindu Mahasabha under the presidentship of VD Savarkar aligned with the British masters to crush the Quit India Movement in 1942. The Responsive Cooperation with the British was not only a theoretical commitment. It soon got concretized in ganging up of the Hindu Mahasabha with the Muslim League.

Kamlesh Tiwari By Masood Peshimam* It has become so easy to blame Muslims for any wrong in the country. Attuned to this scenario the needle of suspicion was immediately turned to Muslims for the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari, who was an appellant on behalf of the Hindu Mahasabha in the Ayodhya title suit. He was shot and stabbed to death at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.

By  A  Representative  The adivasis from the Sardar Sarovar affected village, Manibeli , the first in Maharashtra from the Narmada dam site, boycotted the voting in the assembly elections on October 21 to protest against waters gushing into the village, allegedly because the dam was filled up to the brink.

By Prateek Aggarwal* The current age of technological revolution is being led by digital technology (mostly computers) that change the way we work, communicate, navigate social relationships, spend our leisure time, and much more. An inherent part of this revolution is automation—the execution by a machine agent which was previously carried out by a human. (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997) Automation has considerably affected various aspects of our lives, directly and indirectly, driving the work of modern devices we are so accustomed to, such as washing machines, ovens, cars, mobiles. Automation has penetrated sectors such as banking, agriculture, education, medical sciences, manufacturing, etc., and is seen in most economic, social, and personal aspects of our lives. Automated devices have become a necessity that enables us to have a better standard of living by providing access to a multitude of services and information. However, what is considered automation changes with time. When a...

During a September 2018 nuns' protest against Malakkal in Kochi By  A  Representative A top US-based Catholic 'voice', "National Catholic Reporter" (NCR), which claims to provide the "only significant alternative" to diverse Christian perspectives, has said that during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the United States was greeted with "a lack of enthusiasm from Christian groups", as they are "aware of the rising violence against religious minorities in India fueled by the government's Hindu nationalist ideology."

Counterview Desk A citizens’ protest, organised on October 19 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, to protest against the 75 days of “oppression” of the people of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) saw over 200 activists, academics, intellectuals, prominent citizens, students, citizens from a large number of groups controversially appeared to suggest holding plebiscite in order to decide the future of the state.

By  A  Representative Hundreds of people gathered at Simdega, Jharkhand, to protest against alleged lapses in police investigation into the death of two young Adivasi girls, who were hockey players. The protest on October 19 was organised by the National Federation of Indian Women in association with several other civil rights organisations.

Pragya Thakur (right) By  A  Representative The Special NIA Court has allowed the intervention application filed by 11 journalists in their individual capacity against the National Investigating Agency's (NIA) plea seeking to make the rest of the 2008 Malegaon blast case "in camera", which effectively means no media reporting. BJP MP Pragya Thakur has been one of the Malegaon blast accused.

By Shamsul Islam* The Quit India Movement (QIM), also known as ‘August Kranti' (August Revolution), was a nation-wide Civil Disobedience Movement for which a call was given on August 7, 1942 by the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee. It was to begin on August 9 as per Gandhi's call to 'Do or Die' in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay at the Gowalia Tank Maidan on August 8. Since then August 9 is celebrated as August Kranti Divas.

By  A  Representative  In what appears to be a major setback for environmentalists in Australia, India’s powerful Adani Group, close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has announced a $100 million rail contract with the Martinus Rail for the 16.5 billion Australian dollar Carmichael coal-mining project. The contract took place amidst continuing protests against the project, with pickets being organized at different sites.

By Shamsul Islam* On October 15, 2019, BJP released its manifesto for the Maharashtra Assembly elections. Apart from making miscellaneous promises it made a specific promise to the Maharashtra voters, that BJP would secure Bharat Ratna, the highest national honour, for the Hindutva icon, 'Veer' Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and two of the greatest thinkers and warriors of anti-Brahmanical Dalit resurgence, Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule.

Counterview Desk Well-known human rights organization Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which actively campaigned for justice for 2002 Gujarat riot victims, and is currently involved in helping out vulnerable sections declared "foreigners", has pointed towards how there is an effort to water down atrocities on children in Kashmir following the August 5 clampdown.

By  A  Representative A Gujarat civil rights organization, Nagrik Sashaktikaran Manch (NSM), in a letter to Ahmedabad municipal commissioner Vijay Nehra has complained about “poor quality of the resurfacing of road” carried out over the last 24-48 hours. Especially referring to road from Surdhara Circle to Subhash Chowk, NSM secretary Jatin Sheth says, “The quality of material -- asphalt, bitumen, coltar -- is probably lower.” He has attached latest photographs to prove his point.

By  A  Representative India is ranked 102 of 117 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2019, behind its neighbours Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.Seventeen countries, including Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Cuba and Kuwait, shared the top rank with GHI scores of less than five, the website of the Global Hunger Index that tracks hunger and malnutrition said. The report, prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe termed the level of hunger in India “serious”. In 2018, it was ranked 103 out of 119 countries. In 2000, the country was ranked 83 out of 113 countries. Now, with 117 countries in the fray, it has dropped to 102.

By Bhaskar Sur* On January 23, 1999 Graham Stuart Steins, an Australian missionary working among the tribals of Odisha, was burnt to death along with his two children by members of the Bajrang Dal, an outfit close to the BJP. Stein had been working among the tribals and taking care of people suffering from leprosy, and in turn, he was deeply loved adored by the tribals impoverished, exploited and excluded.

By  A  Representative Justice Madan Lokur, retired Supreme Court judge, has told a public meeting in Delhi that the recent amendments made to the Right to Information (RTI) Act are regressive and will have an impact on the functioning of the law. Speaking on the occasion of the 14 years of the existing nce of the Act, Lokur regretted, despite their passage more than two months ago, the Central government has not made rules regarding the salary and tenure of information commissioners.

By  A  Representative The Supreme Court has asked the Union water resources secretary to submit a report on the Sardar Sarovar Narmada dam's reservoir regulation by October 21, even as directing the Madhya Pradesh government to provide basic amenities to the dam evictees.