-Countercurrents.org I am Neena secretary of Extrajudicial Execution Victim Families Association Manipur (EEVFAM). On 4 November 2008 after enjoying a family lunch, my husband Nongmaithem Michael, went to a friend’s helping him to set up his father’s shradha ceremony. Around 3 p.m. he got a phone call and left the place. At 3.32 p.m. I received a call from him saying that he was apprehended and told me to inform his sister...

Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In an explosive revelation, a whistle-blower in the state government has said a staggering Rs 35,000 crore was siphoned off and wasted on dud irrigation projects in the past decade. The Maharashtra government has spent Rs 70,000 crore on such projects across the state during this period. Vijay Pandhare, chief engineer (water resources department) and member of the state-level technical advisory committee who wrote a stinging 15-page...

-The Hoot Buried in a parliamentary committee report is a refutation by villagers of TOI’s controversial stories on BT cotton’s virtues, published in 2008 and reprinted in the paper as paid news in 2011. PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA revisits the saga  Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this...

-The Hindu The ongoing peaceful protest against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KKNPP), which began in the early 1980s intensified after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The protests revolve around fears over public safety and health arising from the existence and operation of the nuclear facility. The protesters, the men, women and children of Idinthakarai and surrounding villages, have consistently demanded transparency and honest public consultation. They do not need high...