The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's (IIM-A's) latest round of Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES) has found that sales and profit margins of Indian businesses have remained subdued despite  tall claims  by the Government of India (GoI) that the Indian economy doing well even as world is going in wrong direction.

Recently, reputed Gujarati journal "Sarthak Jalso", edited by well known writer Urvish Kothari, published an article by Shruti Shah. I posted its pdf version, sent to me by Urvishbhai, on a blog Shruti and I run:  https://saankal.blogspot.com/ .   The article is about our seven year long stay in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent period that led to the collapse of the Communist rule -- 1986-93. I thought Gujarati readers would be interested in reading the article, hence I posted a link of the blog post on Facebook. Prompt came Facebook's reply: the link violates it's community standards, so I should withdraw the article or send my objection. I sent objection, but nothing happened!  I don't understand which community standards was the Facebook referring to. The link carried snapshots of cover of "Sarthak Jalso" and first page of Shruti's article.  The cover has photograph of two towering mountain edges very close to each other and a person, ...

I was much amused to read the "visual story" about Reliance World Plaza put open in Mumbai. Top celebrities of Bollywood participated in the event. Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani, Nita Ambani, others must be feeling great about it. The event ironically took place a day after I visited ISCON mega mall in Ahmedabad. The mall, to put it mildly, is in tatters. Yes, it too is part of Reliance framework. It used to have some of the big names quoted in the Reliance World Plaza Mall visual story. Once a throbbing attraction of Amdavadis, the ISCON mall's 70% shops are closed. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has sealed several of the high profile shops of the Ahmedabad mall for failing to deposit tax. Even elevators and lifts are not working, hence senior citizens have to climb up on stairs, which are dirty. Its passages are dark, as there are no lights there. ISCON mall used to have an excellent food court, a bakery shop. Nothing of it exists now. Do Muk...

A high-profile American Bar Association (ABA) report, prepared by its Center for Human Rights, which claims to mobilize lawyers to defend threatened advocates, protect vulnerable communities, and hold governments accountable under law, has accused the Government of India of misusing counter-terrorism financing legislations in order to targets non-profit organizations (NPOs) and human rights defenders.