'The senior bureaucrat tasked with laying the foundations for the Indian government’s controversial Social Registry warned that a centralised, cross-linked database of this scale could compromise the privacy and security of over a billion Indians, but his warnings were ignored, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish... “I saw India was emerging as a police state. Strong police state. And my belief is very simple that for any country to develop, it should allow more freedom to the household sector and the businesses and impose less control,” Kumar said.
'The Narendra Modi government has missed several targets it had set for 2019 to tackle tuberculosis (TB). According to a reply given by Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, in Rajya Sabha Tuesday, India has managed to achieve only 6.8 lakh notifications last year — not even half of the set target — from the private sector. The government had set a target of receiving 18 lakh notifications in 2019. The notifications from the private sector are important as around 50 per cent of patients with TB are diagnosed and treated in the private sector.
'Residents of the central Mumbai housing society, where a 63-year-old man tested positive for COVID-19 on March 13 and succumbed on Tuesday, said the patient faced social discrimination, including receiving abusive messages on the phone and social media platforms. His wife and son have also tested positive and remain admitted at Kasturba hospital. The residents alleged that after the man tested positive, people who managed to identify him, sent him hate messages and discriminated against his family members...'
'The Press Council of India has taken suo motu cognizance of a story by The Telegraph for "projection" of the president of India "in a satirical manner" in a headline. It issued a show cause notice to the editor of the Telegraph. In a press release, the Press Council said "satirical comments ridiculing and denigrating the first citizen of the country is uncalled for and beyond the call of fair journalistic content"... Yesterday, the front page of the Telegraph mocked President Ram Nath Kovind's appointment of former chief justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, to the Rajya Sabha...'
'As the experience of countries around the world shows, transparency is the best way to fight the coronavirus outbreak. While the Indian government has published several advisories for the public, it has not released enough granular information for journalists, researchers and the larger health community to assess the effectiveness of its strategy to test, detect and track cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Public knowledge is essential to contain the spread of the disease. Here are 10 questions the government must answer...'
'A 34-year-old home guard, who had his first sip of cow urine in a north Kolkata neighbourhood on Monday, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday after he complained of vomiting and nausea. But Pintu Pramanik did not let that come in the way of his duty. He filed a complaint from his hospital bed against the BJP functionary who “induced” him to drink the gaumutra — as “prasad and preventive medicine” against Covid-19 — following which cops arrested Narayan Chatterjee on Tuesday...'
'Even as the government of India launched Swachh Vidyalaya scheme in 2014 to construct separate toilets for girls and boys in every school, 6790 schools in Andhra Pradesh still have dysfunctional toilets, Parliament was informed on Monday. Of the total schools with non-functional toilets, majority (4746) are government-run schools...'
'A district court lawyer in Kanpur was arrested on the charge of sedtion for retweeting a video of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and calling him a terrorist on Sunday. The man, Abdul Hannan, commented on a tweet by State Information Department’s Media Advisor Shalabh Mani Tripathi on Saturday. The tweet by Tripathi had a video of Adityanath’s Vidhan Sabha speech supporting cane charge on people protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC)...'
'The Narendra Modi government is in the final stages of creating an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents, previously undisclosed government documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish. If the plans of Modi’s bureaucrats and advisors are realised, this system will automatically track when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, buys new property, when a member of a family is born, dies or gets married and moves to their spouse’s home.
'With the growing number of coronavirus cases reported in Kerala, multiple foreign tourists, especially from vulnerable countries, have been shunned by homestay, hotel and resort owners, as well as the public... On Sunday, March 15, residents near the Church of Christ Cemetery in Vagamon, Idukki, witnessed a foreign national walk out from from between the tombs. The lone tourist had reportedly slept inside the church cemetery after being denied accommodation in resorts, hotels and homestay in Vagamon. After residents alerted the police station, local authorities arrived at the cemetery.
