Annup Sonii, Bezwada Wilson, Amitabh Bacchan By Rajiv Shah 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. 

A blogging site carries an interesting article, "4 African Kings Who Ruled India That Have Been Erased From History". Two Ghana bloggers ( Koby PI and MR Eris ), apparently, are owners of the site, which calls itself “Mind Builders Fellowship", which, it says, is an organization that helps each and everyone to liberate oneself by "renewing of the mind and flashing out the unwanted elements out of the mind.”

By Rajiv Shah 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. 

By Rajiv Shah 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.” 

By  Pramod Ranjan* It is said that had the spread of the Novel Coronavirus not been contained by imposing lockdowns, by now, it would have consumed a substantial chunk of the human residents of the earth. But is the truth as one-sided as is being claimed? Lockdown killed lakhs of persons the world over and its after-effects have ruined the economies of scores of low- and middle-income countries like India. Crores of persons have been condemned to a life of poverty and misery. What is going to change Offices and educational institutions were a gift of the modern age. By bringing human minds together, the places of work and the centres of education not only scripted a new chapter in the development of the human race but also brought diverse communities on common platforms. It is almost certain that in the post-Covid world, schools and offices would not exist as we know them today. A new law for bringing about changes in educational institutions has come into force in India. Labour law

Shukleshwar Mahadev temple in Anaval village By Rajiv Shah 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. 

By Rajiv Shah A retired IAS bureaucrat, with whom I used to consult, especially on issues related with nuances in the Gujarat economy during my Gandhinagar days, recently sent me a WhatApp message stating that it should be shared with as many persons one could, especially to the younger generation, as a humble tribute to this “great emperor” Ranjit Singh (1780-1839). 

By Rajiv Shah I was greatly amused the other day when I found a Facebook friend, Rajiv Tyagi, a former Indian Air Force squadron, sharing a post which quotes historian DN Jha to say that “beef-eating habits of ancient Hindus, Buddhists and even early Jains.” This, the post said, finds reflected in the book titled “Holy Cow – Beef in Indian Dietary Conditions.” 

By Rajiv Shah I felt terribly awed, and somewhat strange, when I received an email from the “Hindustan Times Media Group, India”, one of India’s top corporate media houses, owned by  offering Counterview , a nonentity, run on a voluntary basis, and edited by me, offering what was called “content subscription business.”  The email, by the Group’s “Content Alliances manager”, elated me somewhat – that a top media house has approached Counterview , suggesting, they seem to be closely observing what all is being published in Countervew , which essentially deals mainly with current affairs stories.

Development and Cooperation, a website produced on behalf of a German institute, Engagement Global, with the aim to discuss international-development affairs and explores how they relate to other fields of policy-making, recently published an interview with Nandini Sundar, professor of sociology, Delhi School of Economics, where the academic seeks to answer when why, around the world, forest areas tend to be haunted by violent conflict, in the context of India.

By Rajiv Shah In my previous blog I had said that India’s poor ranking in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) suggests failure of percolation theory of economist Arvind Panagariya, professor at the Columbia University, who served in the Niti Aayog after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 but resigned reportedly because of high bureaucratic interference. I am no economist, yet the fact is, the percolation theory has been put to test time again across the world.  While there is little doubt that percolation theory – which suggests higher GDP would automatically lead to reduced poverty – has been disputed by many an economist, especially those on the left-of-the-centre, it has also been questioned by top international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, not once but several times over. But there has been yet another extreme which I had noticed way back in 1970s as a student – especially some die-hard “Marxists” of the CPI-M type. I

By Rajiv Shah Following the news that India ranks 94th among 107 nations in Global Hunger Index (GHI), I got interested in the study , a joint exercise by institutes in Ireland and Germany (Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe). Scanning through the report, I found that it does not take into account the serious situation arising in India (or for that matter in other countries) because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It admits, “While the 2020 GHI does not yet reflect the impacts of Covid-19, it shows that the situation is already worrying in many contexts and is likely to worsen in the years to come.”

Sanjay Gandhi By Rajiv Shah Yesterday, I did a story , based on an official communique of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, on a book launched by it on bonded labour, authored by a retired IAS bureaucrat, Lakshmidhar Mishra. 

By Rajiv Shah Scanning through a “Quint” article recently, I got somewhat curious. The headline was enough attract me: “Will Nitish Kumar ‘Legitimise’ BJP in Bihar Like Chimanbhai Did?” Authored by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, it said, as Bihar prepares for India’s first elections in the post-Covid-19 era (is it?), it was necessary to examine “a few slices of history”. Thus, it refers to how, between the summer of 1989 and the autumn of 1990, the BJP cozied up to Patel, propped him up as Gujarat chief minister, “and thereafter, pulled the rug from beneath his feet.” 

Reproduced below is the executive summary of the “Exporting Corruption Progress Report 2020: Assessing Enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention”, with Gillian Dell as lead author, published by Transparency International , a global movement with the claimed vision of having a world in which government, business, civil society and the daily lives of people are free of corruption: ***

By Rajiv Shah A couple of days back, I felt very strange: Two of the top online sites of India, one of the “Times of India” (TOI) – for which I worked for two decades before I retired in 2013 – and other of Daily News and Analysis, better known as DNA, carried a story which said, the Kapil Sharma TV show-fame "Bhuri aka Sumona Chakravarti is 'numb' and 'hollow' after losing pet dog Rooney.” 

VRS Cowlagi By Rajiv Shah This is continuation of my previous blog on the role of IAS babus in the Government of India. At the end of the blog, I had said that it would be more pertinent to point towards how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been toying with the idea of undermining IAS, replacing with what he may consider as professionals. I don’t know the degree to which he has been successful, but from available indications, he does not appear to have seen any major breakthrough in breaking the powerful IAS grip on the administration.

Jean-Paul Sartre, (1905-80), French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines.

By Rajiv Shah Jay Narayan Vyas, former BJP minister in Gujarat, is right now writing long profiles of some of the well-known names who he thinks have contributed immensely to society and polity. Currently no more in good books of the BJP leadership, Vyas has been even critical of several of Modi policies, including the three recent agricultural Acts – something he has been justifying by stating that even Subramaniam Swamy, a Rajya Sabha MP, has been doing so, which is his – and Swamy’s – “right.” At least this what I have found him stating on Gujarati TV channels as also on Facebook. 

Modi with IAS officials during his Gujarat days By Rajiv Shah Recently, I was forwarded an article , published in “The Print” which, making the appointment of PD Vaghela, a 1986-batch Gujarat cadre IAS official, as chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as the peg, to suggest that, six years on, the Modi government in Delhi “is in the grip of IAS, IPS, IRS officers from Gujarat”. I don’t know much about IPS and IRS officials, but as for IAS bureaucrats, including Vaghela, with whom I used to interact during stint in Gandhinagar, suggests the article appears to have gone largely overboard. 

This is a controversial intervention by Francis A Boyle , American human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, at an international webinar on June 24 on eradication of biological and chemical weapons organized by the Maharashtra Institute of Technology World Peace University, Pune, with special focus on Covid-19 as an offensive biological warfare weapon that leaked out of China’s Wuhan BSL4 Lab: *** 

Nachiketa playing mouth organ By Rajiv Shah Living in Covid times in Ahmedabad has made me curious as to how the health establishment, which is under the joint control of the municipal corporation and the Gujarat government, is managing the pandemic. As I don’t go out much or meet people, the information that I get is from individuals who have had Covid treatment. One such person is Nachiketa Desai, a veteran journalist who also happens to be grandson of Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai. 

Manisha, Dalit Valmiki girl, whose body was forcibly cremated By Rajiv Shah I was talking to a senior Gujarat cadre IAS official the other day. He had just phoned up to find out how things were, and slowly went ahead and started discussing Hathras – the gangrape of a teenaged Dalit girl, who died a fortnight later in hospital. What he told me was interesting: That there was considerable flutter on an IAS WhatsApp group, in which he also happened to be a member, around the horrendous event. 

By Rajiv Shah As I was scanning through Sabrang India, a website run by well-known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, I came across a post pointing towards how, on the Gandhi Jayanti day, #नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद (#Nathram_Godse_Zindabad) was trending on Twitter. I don’t know if it was among the top trends of the day, but what is interesting is, while some of the those who were posting anti-Gandhi tweets praising Gandhi’s murderer, others called Gandhi racist and casteist, still others blaming him for India's partition. 

By Pramod Ranjan* The exaggerated fear of Covid has pushed human civilization and culture - which was moving in a certain direction - into deep peril. The direction in which humanity was moving had its own problems but this new crisis has made it imperative to explore which way we were going and what should be our future direction. We also need to dwell on what science is and how much should we depend on it. Is science and scientific temper one and the same thing? Or is there some fundamental difference between the two? How much faith can we have in science and why is it necessary to be equipped with scientific temper? The two are not contrary but complementary to each other. However, it would be erroneous to believe that scientific temper is only about having faith in science. Scientific temper is also about questioning the intents of science, of suspecting them. It was in the beginning of 2020 that the world was informed about an unknown virus spreading in the Wuhan province of China

Venki Ramakrishnan By Rajiv Shah I wasn’t surprised, but surely liked it, when a few years ago, Nobel laureate (2009) Venkatraman "Venki" Ramakrishnan, a structural biologist, said he was Indian only by chance, perhaps during a visit to Vadodara, where he did his graduation. I tried searching his quote but couldn’t find it on the web (I think it was published in the “Indian Express”), though I finally found a quote where he suggested somewhat similar about his birth -- in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu.