Rajiv Shah's Blog

Human rights defender Vidya Bhushan Rawat talks to Pankaj Singh, a veteran land rights activist based in Champaran, Bihar. One who was arrested for raising the issues of the backward Mushahar community's land rights, he remained in jail for several months till the Patna High Court granted him bail. 

The Nidhi Razdan episode, which I learned from the blog she wrote on the NDTV site, has created a flutter among journalists, whether in New Delhi or in Ahmedabad. I talked with half-a-dozen senior journalists, three of whom said they knew her personally and were "surprised" how and why she was a victim of what she claimed to be a phishing attack, which led her to believe that she had been enrolled in as associate professor to reach journalism at the Harvard Extension School in US.

The controversy surrounding the two vaccines appears to be taking a scary turn. It so happened that I was talking to a senior healthcare expert of Gujarat on January 17. A very kind soul, this expert, whom I have known since 1990s, took the vaccine and posted the exercise on the Facebook so that others should know it's "safe". I contacted him on Facebook messenger, congratulated his gesture, and asked him which one was it. He said, "Covishield. This is the only one in Gujarat."

A keen observer of history, culture and politics, Bhaskar Sur, in a Facebook post , has brought to light an unusual fact: Existence of slavery in India at a time slavery ruled the roost in America and Europe. Even as providing link to a short article published in a little known site “Nalloor Post”, he says, “There are many post-colonial historians who have dwelt exhaustively on the Trans-Atlantic slavery and its relation to capitalism. While we should admire the quality of the scholarship, we cannot help feeling that it is history writing with an agenda.”

Recently, I did a story on a Gujarat NGO report by Buniyad, which said it had noticed a new trend: Especially since 2014, communal violence, it insisted, spread to new rural areas. While I did cover Gujarat riots of 2002, I must admit, as I was based in Gandhinagar, and my main job was to cover the state government, I did fewer spot stories compared many of my journalist colleagues of the “Times of India” and “Indian Express” based in Ahmedabad, who did surely an excellent job.

Mukund Nayak has been a prominent cultural voice in Jharkhand, who has staged live performances worldwide as well as in India. He was awarded with Padmashree by the Government of India several years ago. Sharing his video conversation which took place about three years ago, Vidya Bhushan Rawat , a human rights defender says, the prominent folk singer, songwriter and dancer talks about Jharkhand's Adivasi identity, issues of jal-jungle-zameen (water-forests-land), impact of the outsiders’ onslaught on Jharkhand, caste and untouchability issues.