Counterview.in

In the latest episode of the podcast Unmute , hosts Gagan Sethi and Minar Pimple convened a profound conversation with two veteran development practitioners to dissect a persistent tension within civil society: the perceived divide between service delivery and the struggle for rights. The episode, titled "Beyond Service Delivery: Civil Society, Rights, and the Politics of Social Change," featured Apoorva Oza , a development practitioner with decades of experience in rural development and institution-building, and Professor Dipa Sinha , a development economist known for her work on food, nutrition, gender, and social policy.

The other day, I was speaking with my former colleague and friend, Neeraj Nanda, who is now settled in Melbourne, where he runs South Asia Times (SAT). We worked together in the early 1980s at Link Newsweekly, published from Link House in Delhi. Before that, we were active together in the All-India Students Federation (AISF), India's oldest student organisation.

European banks that helped shut down Adani ’s Galilee Basin coal frontier in Australia a decade ago are now bankrolling a far larger coal expansion just 150 kilometres away, according to a new report from Reclaim Finance and partner NGOs. The study , "Coal Hypocrisy: European Banks’ Double Standard on Thermal and Metallurgical Coal in Australia", finds that 19 European banks provided US$30.3 billion to companies planning metallurgical coal expansion in Queensland’s Bowen Basin between 2021 and 2025, out of a total of US$105.9 billion from international banks.

The world’s largest banks and investors are continuing to finance companies responsible for tropical deforestation, ecosystem destruction, and human rights abuses, according to a major new report released by the Forests & Finance coalition. The findings highlight a stark accountability gap in the global financial sector, even as international governments prepare to review critical biodiversity goals.

Currently on a visit to the US, I woke up the other morning to find social media flooded with posts about how the Indian state had clamped down on the so-called cockroach protests, not just in Delhi but also in Ahmedabad, long regarded as the BJP's impenetrable fortress.

A new report released this month by human rights organization Equality Now and the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage highlights critical advancements and ongoing challenges in global legal frameworks aimed at eradicating child marriage.

  A new dataset released by the German environmental and human rights organisation, Urgewald, has shown that Indian banks cut their coal financing by 19%, from $3.5 billion in 2022 to $2.8 billion in 2025, but cautions that the fall is unlikely to be lasting, because very few Indian banks have adopted coal restrictions. 

A few days ago, while visiting a local library in a relatively small town on the eastern coast of the United States, the person who took me there asked if I wished to borrow a book. I looked around. While I couldn't find much that immediately connected with me, one book seemed of particular interest: Black & Buddhist .

Persistent caste discrimination , the marginalisation of Dalits , concerns over the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples , and the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities are among the issues flagged by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in its latest observations on India.

A new academic study has drawn fresh attention to Sankalp Bhoomi, a modest memorial site in Vadodara's Sayaji Baug, arguing that the spot where B.R. Ambedkar spent five difficult hours in 1917 has quietly grown into one of Gujarat's most significant sites of Dalit political and cultural assertion.

The arrest and remand to judicial custody of Arun Pannalal , president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum , has triggered concern among civil-liberties, religious-freedom and minority-rights activists, who have accused the Chhattisgarh government of using criminal law to suppress dissenting voices.

Global civil society alliance CIVICUS has placed India on its latest CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist , citing what it describes as a rapid deterioration in civic freedoms during Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's third term in office. The organisation says the move reflects an escalating crackdown on activists, journalists, civil society organisations and critics of the government through restrictive legislation, censorship measures and expanded state powers.

At least 66 sanitation workers across India died between February and July 2026 while cleaning sewers, septic tanks, sewage treatment plants, and open drains, according to the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM), a rights group tracking caste-based forced labour in sanitation work. The deaths continue despite a 2013 law banning manual scavenging , repeated Supreme Court orders requiring full mechanisation of such cleaning, and constitutional guarantees of equality and the right to life.

  The recent decision of the Supreme Court of India to initiate contempt proceedings against 15 states and Union Territories for failing to eradicate manual scavenging and for non-compliance with its 2023 directions on eliminating hazardous sewer cleaning and paying ₹30 lakh compensation to the families of victims could have significant implications for Gujarat .

    A new study analyzing the attendance records of Members of Parliament during the Budget Session of 2026 has revealed significant disparities in the attendance patterns of MPs across both Houses of Parliament, highlighting that less than two-thirds of the members met a minimum attendance threshold of 75% of the sittings, raising crucial questions about legislative accountability and citizen representation.

India’s rights-based welfare architecture, painstakingly built over two decades through legal guarantees to work, food, and education, has undergone a systemic legislative and budgetary rollback over the last decade. In its place, a discretionary model of "New Welfarism"—characterized by centralized cash transfers, digital gatekeeping, and diminished state accountability—has been institutionalized, driven primarily by electoral calculations rather than administrative reform.

As the Right to Information (RTI) Act completed 21 years since its enactment on June 21, 2005, a detailed analysis of the Central Information Commission's (CIC) Annual Report for 2024-25 has raised questions about reporting accuracy, transparency practices and the overall implementation of the law across Union government institutions.

  In a detailed discussion on the Unmute podcast, leading labour scholars Professor Ernesto Noronha and lawyer-researcher Anusha Ravishankar have issued a stark assessment of India’s newly notified labour codes , arguing that the long-pending reforms are designed to attract capital at the expense of worker security, weaken collective bargaining , and exacerbate the vulnerabilities of the country’s vast informal workforce .

The heavy military presence and frequent communication blackouts in Jammu and Kashmir are taking a disproportionate toll on female education, reversing years of progress and driving up school dropout rates for girls, according to a recent analysis published in The Conversation . ​Writing for the publication, Shambhavi Siddhi , a PhD candidate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University , highlights that while the Indian government cited " women's empowerment " and the eradication of gender discrimination as key motivations for revoking Jammu and Kashmir's semi-autonomous status in August 2019, the reality on the ground has told a vastly different story for young women seeking an education. ​Rising Dropout Rates and Low Literacy ​According to data presented before the Indian parliament in March 2026, the secondary-level dropout rate for girls in the region peaked at 12.6% during the 2023–24 academic year—surpassing India’s national average of 9....

The death of Rajesh Awasthi , a long-serving employee of Dainik Jagran , has left the journalistic fraternity shaken. His suicide, reportedly by consuming sulphas tablets, was not just an isolated tragedy but a reflection of the silent struggles faced by countless journalists across India .