-The Hindu Modi government cracked down on critics: report. U.S.-based human rights watchdog Freedom House has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of “driving India toward authoritarianism” with a “hamfisted lockdown”, scapegoating of Muslims, and a crackdown on critics, and downgraded India’s status from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’, in its annual report. “Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-Newslaundry.com Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta faces arrest for an article on the Adani Group, comedian Munawar Faruqui languishes in jail. The good news we were all waiting for in these bleak times came with India’s sensational win in the cricket test series against Australia in Brisbane on January 19. But even as we celebrated good times for Indian cricket, the bad times for Indian journalism and freedom of speech and expression continued. On...

-National Herald While Americans take themselves as citizens and demand responsibility and accountability from power, Indians are still slavish, says Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from IAS What happened in Washington DC at the Capitol Hill Building was watched in horror and everybody said, “Look democracy can fail even in America.” To me it looked like the triumph of American democracy. Attempts to overturn the Presidential election failed. State after state stood up to...

-Sabrang.in The HRW report puts on the world stage allegations of multiple human rights violations recorded in the country in 2020 Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent group that investigates and reports on abuses happening across the world, has released a report titled World Report 2021: Rights Trends in India. The report highlights the allegations of multiple human rights violations under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government of India. According to the...