South Asia Citizens Web

September 2018 State of Working India report by the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
The State of Working India 2018 by Centre for Sustainable Employment (also available here by chapter)

The Government of India, by giving the cabinet approval to the Coastal Regulation Zone [CRZ] Notification 2018, has turned a deaf ear to the protests and objections raised by the thousands of fishing communities, concerned organisations and individuals from all around the coast and the country. The sole purpose of the Government of India in drafting and approving the CRZ 2018 Notification has been to pave the way to further sell off our coastal land and water to corporate and business houses by removing restrictions on constructions and activities detrimental to coastal natural resources.

Since the BJP came to power in 2014, it has stacked institutions with Hindu nationalist ideologues, presided over an increase in Hindu extremist vigilantism, and replaced Islamic place names with the names of Hindu nationalist heroes. The textbooks’ promotion of an essentially Hindu history provides a foundation for slowly remaking India into an essentially Hindu country.

GENEVA (20 December 2018) - UN experts have expressed alarm about political violence, restrictions on freedom of expression and the rise of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh ahead of general elections on 30 December [2018].

The mob violence in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh (U.P), on 3 December 2018, instigated and engineered with malicious intent, which led to the cold blooded murder of a police officer brave enough to step forward single-handedly to pacify the mob, marks the most dangerous turn yet in the direction taken by the politics of hate in recent times. It shows that in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, fundamental principles of governance, of constitutional ethics and of humane social conduct stand perverted. The Chief Minister of the state acts as a high priest of the agenda of bigotry and majoritarian supremacy – an agenda which now seems to take precedence over everything else.