Counterview.in

A few months back, I was made a member of a WhatsApp group called Polymath Academy. Frankly, I didn’t know what the word polymath meant until its administrator, veteran Gujarat-based sociologist Vidyut Joshi — with whom I have been interacting since the mid-1990s when he was with the Gandhi Labour Institute — told me it refers to a person with an exceptional academic record.

  Jagdish Patel, Director of the health rights NGO Peoples Training and Research Centre, Vadodara, has called for urgent national action to address the deepening crisis of silicosis in India, terming it a public health emergency that has been continuously ignored. In an article published by the  Indian Journal of Medical Ethics  on June 21, 2025, Patel exposes the scale of state and institutional neglect toward occupational diseases, especially in India’s vast unorganised sector.

While writing my previous blog on how and why Narendra Modi went out of his way to promote English when he was Gujarat chief minister — despite opposition from people in the Sangh Parivar — I came across an interesting write-up by Aakar Patel, a well-known name among journalists and civil society circles.

This blog is a continuation of my story "English proficiency for empowerment: Modi’s SCOPE vision contrasts Amit Shah’s remark". I personally found nothing unusual in the Union Home Minister's “feel ashamed” remark directed at those who speak in English, as I have witnessed his dislike for the language on several occasions during my stint as the Times of India representative in Gandhinagar from 1997 to 2012.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), one of India’s foremost rights-based legal organisations, has released its  Annual Report for 2024-25 , highlighting a year of extensive grassroots engagement, strategic legal victories, and systemic policy interventions that have empowered thousands of people from marginalised communities across Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand. According to the report, CSJ carried out 5,522 legal interventions, conducted 336 fact-finding investigations, and connected with over 1.19 lakh people through outreach, legal awareness, and community mobilisation. With a strong network of lawyers, paralegals, and grassroots volunteers, CSJ not only provided direct legal aid but also strengthened institutional accountability and constitutional values through education, advocacy, and partnerships.

While Union Home Minister Amit Shah may have asserted that soon a time would come when those speaking English in the country would “feel ashamed”, it is ironic that Narendra Modi, when he was Gujarat chief minister, had launched what was called the SCOPE programme, actively involving the University of Cambridge to provide opportunities to the youth of Gujarat to "become not just job seekers but job creators (entrepreneurs)."

  A Niti Aayog  report , released about two years ago, estimated that in Gujarat — which our powers-that-be have long considered a model state — 11.66% of people are "multidimensionally poor," a term referring to an index that seeks to estimate "multiple and simultaneous deprivations" at the household level across three macro categories: health, education, and living standards.