The likely appointment of Atanu Chakraborty as HDFC Bank chairman interested me for several reasons, but above all because I have interacted with him closely during my more than 14 year stint in Gandhinagar for the “Times of India”. One of the few decent Gujarat cadre bureaucrats, Chakraborty, belonging to the 1985 IAS batch, at least till I covered Sachivalaya was surely above controversies. He loved to remain faceless, never desired publicity, was professional to the core, and never indulged in loose talk. When he neared retirement, which happened in April 2020, first there were rumours in Sachivalaya that he would be appointed SEBI chairman, and then there was talk he would be chairman (or was it CEO?) of Gujarat International Finance Tec (GIFT) City (a dream project of Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister, which as Prime Minister Modi wants to promote, come what may). But, for some strange reasons, and I don’t know why, none of this happened, despite the fact that he has been c...

Did the Government of India come up with the three farm laws, first rushed by promulgating ordinances in June 2020, to not just open the country’s agricultural sector to the corporate sector but also as a precursor to comply with the requirements of the United States for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), as envisaged by the outgoing US president Donald Trump?

  A National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) tracker by a civil society network, Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), has found that where was a surge in NREGA work demand during the pandemic, with the total job cards demand this year reaching 7.5 crore and the total active job cards 9.02 crore.

Captain Sanjit  Pushkar Raj, who at some point was national general secretary of India’s premier human rights organisation, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), currently settled in Melbourne, sent an email to me seeking my mobile number. I promptly sent it across, and within no time, he phoned me up.  One who has been writing for Counterview.in now and on about national issues, Raj’s concern this time was Captain Sanjit Bhattacharya’s fate, whom he called “missing”, even though at least two of the documents he shared on WhatsApp – one of them signed by President Pranab Mukherjee – sought to “presume” he had passed away in 2004. On duty along the Rann of Kutch, Bhattacharya – a Raj colleague at the SS-54 Officers Training Academy at the then Madras (as his article  said) – went missing on the night of April 19-20, 1997 following a sudden flood, when, ,because of an unpredictable tide, the Rann turned treacherous, in which the Captain was possibly swept to the other...

  A study carried out by the Right to Food Campaign and the Center for Equity Studies in 11 states has found that even five months after the lockdown has ended, a large number of households report lower levels of income (62%), reduced intake of cereals (53%), pulses (64%), vegetables (73%) and eggs/non-vegetarian items (71%), worsened nutritional quality (71%) and an increased need to borrow money to buy food (45%).

  A recent report by multinational advocacy groups, Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Bangkok, and South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), Kathmandu, “Human Rights in South Asia in Times of Pandemic”, has expressed concern that lack of basic health infrastructure has been one of the main reasons why the countries in the region are unable to fight Covid-19 crisis effectively.

Australian Greens Senator Janet Rice, speaking in Parliament, has demanded the resignation of the country’s High Commissioner in India, Barry O'Farrell, for visiting the RSS headquarters in Nagpur on November 15, alleging, the saffron organization is “fascist”, and has “openly” declared admiration for “Adolf Hitler and the genocide of Nazi regime.”

Natubhai Parmar showing plastic extracted from a dead cow's womb After a long, long time, Natubhai Parmar, a grassroots Dalit rights activist based in Surendranagar in Gujarat, rang me up. I was pleasantly surprised. I have known him for the last about eight years. Though we used to talk on phone, and met once in a while in Ahmedabad to do stories on Dalit issues, it was only after the famous Una flogging incident in 2016 that I found how deep his understanding is on Dalit issues.  The Una incident – in which four Dalit boys were tied to chain attached with an SUV and were pushed towards the local police station on the main road, even as cow vigilantes flogged them mercilessly all the way – led to a huge turmoil among Gujarat Dalits. Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, currently independent MLA, became famous following an Ahmedabad to Una march he organised to protest against the flogging. As the cow vigilantes flogged the four Dalit boys on suspicion of cow slaughter, many Dalit...

  A public hearing, organised by the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan (DRRAA) to highlight the crisis of food insecurity and hunger among the working poor and marginalised communities in India’s national capital, highlighted how economic distress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the inadequate response by the government, resulted in people being unable to find adequate work to be able to afford food.

A new book, published by the New York-based Monthly Press Review (MPR), has blamed Microsoft founder Bill Gates for “crowning” the crisis allegedly engulfing India’s health sector, stating, the top American billionaire’s foundation of late has acquired “extraordinary influence" over India’s public health governance,  giving a fillip to a policy that deprives access of public healthcare facilities for majority of the country’s population.

  Bloomberg, a well-known financial, software, data and media company headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, has said that India’s GDP for 2020 would slip to –10.3%, in comparison to three of its immediate neighbours, China 1.9%, Pakistan –0.4, and Bangladesh 3.8%. The GDP comparison comes in a Bloomberg report of 53 countries in its Covid Resilience Ranking.

Ahmed Patel has passed away. It is indeed sad that he became another Covid victim, like thousands of others across the world. His loss appears to have been particularly felt in the Congress corridors. I know how some party leaders from Gujarat would often defend him even if one “negative” remark was made on him. “I personally cannot tolerate any criticism of Ahmedbhai”, Shaktisinh Gohil, Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, appointed Bihar in charge ahead of recent assembly polls, told me about a couple of years ago during a tete-e-tete in Ahmedabad.  I have known Ahmedbhai, though not intimately. The first time I met him was in Gandhinagar. It was 1997, when the BJP hadn’t yet taken over. The elections were to take place in December. Just posted as the Times of India reporter to cover government, I was called for a dinner at a very ordinary government-owned flat in Sector 16 where former Congress minister Urvashi Devi who later switched over to BJP, but now is not with any party, used to ...

Inside IAS academy, Mussoori The other day, I was talking to a former colleague of the Times of India, Ahmedabad. I have known him as one of the reasonable and rational journalists. He later served in a TV. When in TV, he would often tell me anecdotes of how they would report events if they failed to reach the spot on time: “We would just say, here the attack took place, and that was the place from where the attackers attacked.”  On phone for a little more than a half an hour, we talked a bit about how the Modi government was seeking to sideline IAS across India, who, I have always believed, despite their constraints (as serve they must the powers-that-be), are broadly wedded to the Constitution of India, something they are groomed for at the IAS academy in Mussourie. While I told him that my interaction with most IAS bureaucrats – which was direct and live till early 2013 when I retired from the Times of India as political editor, Ahmedabad, stationed in Gandhinagar – suggested th...

It was such a pleasure reading a Facebook post. Rajiv Tyagi is former Indian Air Force squadron, His profile describes him as “politically promiscuous anti-fascist dissident, brain defogger, atheist, adventurer, empath, humanist”. This is what says in his post : “Sanskrit for all practical purposes is a dead horse. No amount of flogging will make it pull a political cart any longer.”  It takes me back to the days when I started covering Gujarat Sachivalaya in 1997. It was, I think 1999, if I am not mistaken. Then education minister Anandiben Patel, currently Uttar Pradesh governor and a known Narendra Modi protege, told me, “We don’t need English, we need Sanskrit.” But before recalling all of it, let me first reproduce what Tyagi has to say about Sanskrit: “Even when it was in currency, it was never the language of the people. Sanskrit was like the silly k-language that schoolkids make up within their gang, by adding a k sound before every syllable, to make themselves unintelligib...

   Digital bank N26, based in Berlin, known to be offering services to customers to manage their bank account online and from their smartphone in real-time in Europe and USA, has ranked India 76th among 100 countries it has analysed in order to measure female opportunity and achievement around the world.

A new book, “Sustainable Development in India: A Comparison with the G-20”, authored by Dr Keshab Chandra Mandal, has regretted that though India’s GDP has doubled over the last one decade, its human development indicators are worse than not just developed countries of the Group of 20 countries but also developing countries who its members.

NGO Anandi campaign against witchcraft in Dahod  In a gruesome incident, a migrant tribal woman worker has been allegedly set on fire after being suspected of being a witchcraftin Virnagar village, Jasdan taluka, of Rajkot district, Gujarat. The incident took place on November 18, when the three men and a woman tried to kill the victim in front of her husband under the suspicion that she was practising witchcraft.

Mahurkar at GMC meet On November 18 evening, the Gujarat Media Club (GMC) organised a felicitation function for Uday Mahurkar, a long-time journalist with “India Today”, as the new information commissioner of the Central Information Commission, the Right to Information (RTI) watchdog of the Government of India. There were two reasons why I decided avoiding the meed (I conveyed it on WhatsApp that I wouldn’t attending).  The first was, of course, the pandemic, though GMC claimed it would do everything to ensure that “enough precautions” would be taken. And the second was, I have found myself a misfit in such ceremonies – I get bored, often lost, sit among the back benches, talking around with those sitting next by me. Surely, it was different when I had to attend some of such ceremonial functions in Gandhinagar as part of my duty as the Times of India reporter. Yet, I decided to watch the function on Facebook live – a link was sent by GMC on WhatsApp. What surprised me was, a maximu...

  As many as 23 members of the Hindu Voices for Peace (HVP), including the founder president of the well-known Haridwar-based Matri Sadan Ashram, Swami Shivananda Saraswati, and a one of its top monks, Brahmachari Aatmabodhanand, have expressed their “dismay” over the arrest of Khudai Khidmatdar chief Faisal Khan and three others on charges of “promoting enmity between religions” and “defiling a place of worship” after they offered namaz in Mathura’s Nand Baba temple premises on October 29.

Dushyant Dave, SA Bobde  Did Supreme Court chief justice SA Bobde ignore a suggestion to allow Reliance Jio as “better platform” for virtual hearings during the pandemic? It would seem so, if the controversial  letter , authored by Dushyant Dave, president, Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), to the apex court secretary-general protesting against what he calls “extraordinary urgency” in listing the special leave petition filed on behalf of Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami is any guide.

I am a little confused. How does one describe the arrest of Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami? Most top newspapers, even as stating that they disagree with Arnab’s style of “journalism”, have condemned it, and so has the Editors’ Guild, which is headed by Seema Mustafa, founder of left-of-centre site thecitizen.in. A Republic TV insider suggested me, refusing to directly defend Arnab, that it all started with “clash of ego” between Arnab and the Mumbai Police Commissioner.  No doubt, Arnab’s way of interpreting things – whether it was the arrest of journalists across India, or of activists allegedly involved in the Bhima Koregaon violence, or for that matter of students and ex-students, even women, participating in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement – were highly objectionable. It appeared to me, as did to many other journalists, that he was defending the authoritarian hand of the government. Arnab even took the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Central Bureau o...

Last month-end, a Dalit poet, Jayesh Jeeviben Solanki, passed away. I learned this from Facebook. Innumerable FB friends, including Gujarat’s topmost Dalit rights politician Jignesh Mevani, who won as an independent MLA with Congress support, paid glowing tributes to Jayesh. Young, perhaps in his 30s, the very name suggests that he wanted to proclaim himself to be: that he is not a patriarch. The middle name is Jeeviben, which, I think, should be his mother’s (he wasn’t married) – unusual, as in Gujarat’s patriarchal tradition, it’s a tradition to put father’s name in the middle. 

Annup Sonii, Bezwada Wilson, Amitabh Bacchan Yesterday, Bezwada Wilson, a well-known Dalit rights activist who has for long been campaigning for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers, was on superstar Amitabh Bacchan’s “popular” Kaun Banega Crorepati show on Sony TV. I was a little surprised, but thought it was indeed a good opportunity for him to put across the plight of the most disadvantaged section of Dalits, Valmikis, before an audience which largely happens to be from dominant castes.  I decided to watch the show and listen to what all Wilson had to say. I also thought it was good of Bacchan to give Wilson, who heads the Safai Karmachari Andolan and is a Magsaysay awardee, an opportunity to tell Crorepati audience on issues that bog this most oppressed community. The level of ignorance that exists on the law banning manual scavenging in any form was revealed, during the show, by none other than the man who accompanied Wilson, top TV actor Annup Sonii. After Wilson gave deta...

Keshubhai Patel, former chief minister of Gujarat, has passed away at the ripe old age of 92. Known to be an opponent (I would call him bete noire in my stories for the Times of India) of Narendra Modi, I am reproducing below a blog on him, “Simply Keshubhai”, I wrote way on June 30, 2012 for the TOI blogging site around the time he was about to dissociate his decades old association with BJP and form Gujarat Parivartan Party, which didn’t last after the December 2012 Gujarat state assembly polls.  Always critical of Modi, going so far as to call political atmosphere of Gujarat under him “mini-emergency”, Keshubhai withdrew from active politics thereafter, “accepting” Modi’s leadership. His activity ever since was confined to remaining chairman of the Somnath Temple Trust. I am tempted to reproduce the blog in lieu of a tribute to the grand old man. Read on: ***  He was addressed as “dinosaur” by late Congress chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhury, but Gujarat government official...

  A US think-tank study has said that even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi still enjoys considerable support among Indian diaspora in the country – 48% of Indian Americans approve of Modi’s performance, 32 percent disapprove, while 20% have “no opinion” – the man often dubbed as American Modi, Donald Trump, is unlikely to get more than 22% of their votes in the November 3 US polls, with his rival, Joseph Biden, likely to get 72% of the votes.

  In a major revelation, top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan has said that between 75 and 80 per cent girls, who come to study at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), founded by Macwan about two decades ago off Ahmedabad to offer alternative training options to manual scavenging and other caste based occupations, have experienced sexual violence or harassment.

A top Gujarat government insider phoned me up the other day, reminding me of a story we carried in Counterview early this year regarding how a Gujarat government public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals (GSFC), “transferred” Rs 250 crore to a Canadian firm Karnalyte for a potash mining project in Canada, but the project never took off, hence whole money has “gone waste.”  Written by by AK Luke, a retired IAS bureaucrat and a former MD of GSFC, referring to my article, this insider phoned me up to inform me that the Counterview story was copy-pasted in a little-known site called Kractivism. On looking up, I found, indeed, Luke’s story had been copy-pasted, but the site, run by a rights activist, did not have the courtesy to acknowledge the original source. Be that as it may, the state insider wondered why such a big news, involving Rs 250 crore “scam” had skipped top newspapers in Gujarat, forget about India. He said, normally, when such “exposures”...

Shukleshwar Mahadev temple in Anaval village The other day, I was informally talking with a younger friend on caste situation in Gujarat. In order to explain how caste has taken shape, he told me his own example. “I am supposed to be Anavil Brahmin”, as he said this, I wondered where these Brahmins are placed in the Brahmin caste hierarchy, which is known to be pretty rigid, and has many sub-castes.  This friend – whom I don’t want to name in order not to embarrass him (I know he does not believe in casteism in either traditional sense of the term) – said, “Well, I don’t think they are among the top of the caste ladder.” Then, he went to explain to be me the myth that is prevailing about the origin of the Anavils. Pointing out that all Anavil Brahmins belong to a village called Anaval in the Mahuva taluka of Surat district of South Gujarat, he said, “We were all said to tribals. According to this story, when Lord Ram reached Gujarat after he was wandering around in forests during h...