I have been forwarded a report titled “Profit and Genocide: Indian Investments in Israel”. It has been prepared by the advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) and authored by Hajira Puthige. The report was released following the Government of India’s signing of a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with Israel.

  My interaction with critics and supporters of Mahatma Gandhi, ranging from those who consider themselves diehard Gandhians to Left-wing and Dalit intellectuals, has revealed that in the long arc of his public life, few issues expose his philosophical tensions more than his shifting stance on Varnashram Dharma—the ancient Hindu concept that society should be divided into four varnas, or classes, based on duties and aptitudes.

  A  new report , "Who Controls the Narrative? Legal Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in the Commonwealth", prepared by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA), and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, approvingly quotes Access Now, which has named India the “world’s internet shutdown leader,” with at least 116 recorded shutdowns in 2024.

The other day, P. Sainath was in Ahmedabad to deliver a lecture on the "Role of Media in Democracy: Prospects and Retrospect." An excellent speaker, he is not just a left-wing rural journalist but also an  erudite scholar . This was the second time I listened to him in Ahmedabad. The last time I attended his lecture was in 2017, when he  told me , on the sidelines of a function organised by an NGO, that he “differed” from Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s view that rural-to-urban Dalit migration would help annihilate casteism. Frankly—call it my inertia or whatever—I am not very familiar with Sainath’s recent writings, though from time to time I do read some of the very in-depth reports focusing on rural India on the excellent site he has been running for about a decade, People’s Archive of Rural India ( PARI ), which is, for all practical purposes, a virtual database for learning or understanding anything about how people live and work in rural India. Not that I wasn’t familiar with Sainat...

Maryam Namazie , a British feminist heading an organisation called Ex-Muslims International , has been frequently sending me e-mail alerts about the activities of her group. The latest one—about the organisation taking strong exception to the persecution of a feminist for wearing a "blasphemous" T-shirt in Morocco —was particularly striking. Namazie's organisation interests me also because it claims on its website that it has affiliations in several countries,  including India .

The other day, someone very close to me took me to a sub-office of the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS), where I filled out a form for what has been loudly advertised as a free pass for senior citizens aged 65 and above.

Following my blog "AAP’s rising star in Gujarat or guardian of patriarchy? The Gopal Italia dilemma", I received an interesting comment from social activist Sudhir Kariyar, who works among tribal workers in Gujarat. The blog discusses how Italia, who won a by-election, wrote a letter to the Gujarat chief minister claiming that, on getting involved in love affair, young girls are being "lured" and "trapped" by wedding mafias across the state, urging the authorities to take legal action against this.