Modi coming out of the Godhra train: Feb 27, 2002 Twenty years on, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-hand Amit Shah, appear to “firmly” in the saddle, ruling the country, mystery still surrounds as to what might have happened on February 27-28, 2002, the day Godhra train burned leading to death of 58 kar sevaks, followed with one of worst anti-minority riots in Gujarat, spread over around three months, in which at least a thousand people are confirmed dead and as many are said to be “missing.” While Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, and the circles around him called the Godhra train burning an act of Pak-sponsored terrorism on February 27 itself, there is still no official confirmation as to what might have caused it, though several theories still prevail what may have happened -- ranging from an  act of arson  committed by a Muslim mob of 1,000 to 2,000 people (Commission of Inquiry), violent reaction by the local Muslim Ghanchi community  provoked  ...

  Two years into the pandemic, 66% of the respondents to a representative survey have said that their income decreased as compared to pre-pandemic period, and just about 34% reported that their households' cereal consumption in the month preceding the survey was sufficient. In all the survey covered 6,697 respondents from 14 states, 4,881 rural and 1,816 urban.

  Economic, legal, diplomatic and civil society experts – including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and former Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank – have urged the United States Supreme Court to go back to the case  Budha Ismail Jam, et al v. IFC  , ( Tata Mundra case ) concerning immunity from the suit for the World Bank Group and foreign nations. They said, the immunity decision in the US Supreme Court has broad and dangerous consequences in an amicus brief supporting the Earth Rights International. EarthRights represented fishing and farming communities, organised under the Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan (MASS) in Kutch, Gujarat, in the case against the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), over its role in funding a coal-fired power plant that allegedly destroyed local people’s livelihoods. They urged the court: “The collective experience of amici in many countries teaches that the IFC m...

  Access of prisoners to courts fell by 65%, and to hospitals by 24%, according to the Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2020, the latest official statistics on the state of India’s prisons and their inmates, published in December 2021, an analysis of the PSI data by  The India Justice Report  (IJR), released recently, has said. Brought out by a collective of organisations -- Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS–Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives, and supported by Tata Trusts, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the Tree of Life Foundation, IJR, which, since 2019, has been reporting on justice delivery in India, said, prisoners’ visits to courts came down nearly a third, from about 44.5 lakhs in 2019 to 15.5 lakhs in 2020. Impacted too was inmates’ access to health services, with the number of visits, made by prisoners for medical attendance, declining from 4.77 lakh in 2019 to 3.63 lakh visits in 202...