Situated behind the Gujarat University, some of the families of the migrant construction workers from Dahod and Panchmahals districts of Gujarat, and a few from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, who had stayed put in make-shift shanties in Ahmedabad’s sprawling GMDC Ground, have begun a long journey, by foot, back to their home villages in the eastern tribal belt of Gujarat.

World's most polluting capitals Stating that, regionally, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East carry the highest burden of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution overall, a high-profile report, jointly prepared by the top environmental NGO Greenpeace has said, "Of the world’s top 30 most polluted cities during 2019, 18 are located in India, 28 in South Asia, and all the top 30 cities are within greater Asia."

  A 30-day moving average of the unemployment rate during most of the first week of March 2020 was over 8 per cent, even though the ended with an unemployment rate of 7.71 per cent, Mahesh Vyas, managing director and CEO of one of India’s top consulting firms, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), has said.

   A new “fact-finding” report, taking a line similar to that of Union home minister Amit Shah, who has  termed  Delhi riots “pre-planned” and “part of a conspiracy”, has admitted that “the police and law enforcement agencies were on a back-foot” during the riots which have claimed more than 50 lives, rendering hundreds injured and thousands homeless.

  The top United States think tank, Freedom House, based in Washington DC, has sought a series of measures, including from top social media companies like WhatsApp, against the Modi government as retaliation against the alleged crackdown in the country’s only Muslim-majority state Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and the “discriminatory” citizenship amendment law, which has sparked nationwide protests, which are sought to be suppressed by Modi administration.

    In strong message to India’s powers-that-be, a new report by Freedom House, a high profile US organization, has rated the status of democracy in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) as equal to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Giving both J&K and PoK the same score, 28 on a scale of 100, and categorizing both as “Not Free”, the report rates 210 countries, including individual territories, in order to rate two sub-categories, political rights and civil liberties.

  Finding crucial relationship between what it calls “unpaid work” and sexual violence as a social norm in rural Rajasthan, a new study, carried out by high-profile NGO Oxfam India, has found that a whopping 54.4% of women it had interviewed were beaten up as and when they attempted to leave house without permission, while in 86.4% cases they were harshly criticized for this type of “disrespect” shown to their male folks in the family.

Neeta Mahadev, Gandhian activist, in Khambhat While the world watched how Delhi burned when President Donald Trump, on his two-day visit to India, was praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged religious tolerance, few noticed that when he was arlready addressing more than one lakh crowd, brought to Ahmedabad to “welcome” the US President on February 24, communal flare-up hit Khambhat in Central Gujarat.