'Last week, two Dalit children, aged 10 and 12, were beaten to death when they were defecating next to a road in Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh. Their village has been declared and verified ‘open defecation free’ (ODF) as far as the Swachh Bharat Mission’s database is concerned, but their family had no access to a toilet... According to the SBM database, as of September 26, all villages had declared themselves ODF and 90% of villages had undergone first-level verification. The authenticity of the information contained in this database is questionable.
'Just weeks before the state assembly election, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis will have to face a criminal trial for allegedly failing to furnish details of two pending criminal cases in his election affidavit in 2014...'
'...there is a case for autonomy [of central banks], for sure. And that autonomy is important for all institutions, and that autonomy in the central bank in India was dead, certainly, in November 2016, when demonetisation was announced. Because it was very clear at that time that this was a decision taken against the wishes of the RBI, imposed on the RBI, which then had to implement something, which it did very badly. Which it had absolutely no knowledge of, and no preparation for.
'It is considered highly unusual for a sitting president or vice-president to weigh in on a contemporary political controversy. However, M. Venkaiah Naidu may have crossed two Rubicons when an op-ed he wrote defending the Modi government’s move to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special constitutional status attributed a fake quote to Dr B.R. Ambedkar – one that does not form part of the official record of his statements and was actually produced by a top RSS leader in 2004.
'When the history of India’s sordid new chapter in Kashmir is written, let it be noted that it all began with lies. To be sure, it will never be clear whether the ‘intelligence inputs’ warning of a ‘major terrorist threat’ was in itself a lie. What is clear in hindsight, though, is that it was used for systematic deception. When the government told the public that this terrorist threat was the reason for the massive troop surge, that was almost certainly a deception.
'India was until recently the fastest-growing major economy in the world, clocking annual rates of 7% or more and sparking predictions that it would soon overtake the likes of the U.K. and Germany. Now it looks like that rapid pace may have been overstated. An academic paper by a former chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi estimates annual growth averaged closer to 4.5% a year in the fiscal years from 2011-12 through 2016-17, and says recent changes to the way gross domestic product is measured are problematic.
'On 10 and 11 July, the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada hosted a global conference on media freedom, in London. Over 1,500 ministers, diplomats, politicians, jurists, academics and journalists from over 100 countries gathered to avow the world’s commitment to promoting media freedom. Vinod Jose, the executive editor of The Caravan, was invited to speak on a panel discussing religion and media.
'It is now official that the country has indeed been witnessing jobless growth. Months after rejecting the claim by a leaked report that India's unemployment rate had touched a 45-year high, the government admitted the same on Friday with the latest data showing that joblessness had indeed touched 6.1 per cent in the 12-month period from July 2017 to June 2018. The government had earlier brushed aside a leaked official report on the country's poor job scenario and maintained that the unemployment data was yet to be finalised...'
'Expressing concerns over “political interference” in influencing statistical data in India, 108 economists and social scientists Thursday called for the restoration of “institutional independence” and integrity to the statistical organisations. Their joint statement comes in the backdrop of controversy over revision of GDP numbers and withholding employment data by the NSSO.
'Outstripping the social media platforms – that continue to be flooded with fake news – one of the leading news channels in Hindi, ABP News, has managed to air an entire “fake” show. It has been brought to notice that in a programme aired by ABP news on March 1, many BJP supporters – who appeared to be IIT Bombay students on the campus – were in fact outsiders, participating only to propagate pro-Modi propaganda. In the programme titled “2019 Ke Joshile”, some of the “students”, were allegedly planted by the channel itself.
