RajivSpeak

   A recent peer-reviewed study has sharply criticized Project Cheetah—India’s high-profile initiative to reintroduce African cheetahs into the wild—as ethically compromised, scientifically flawed, and socially unjust. Titled “Delineating the Environmental Justice Implications of an Experimental Cheetah Introduction Project in India”, the paper is authored by Yashendu C. Joshi, Stephanie E. Klarmann, and Louise C. de Waal, and was published in  Frontiers in Conservation Science.

The Gujarat government’s reported decision to discontinue the ₹50,000 financial assistance provided to students from Nomadic and Denotified Tribes (N&DTs) pursuing diploma engineering courses has drawn strong criticism from social activists and concerned journalists across the state.

I have been forwarded a Guardian story which surprisingly suggests that, despite generating huge revenues from its controversial Carmichael coal mine in Australia, the Adani Group continues to report losses even three years after commencing operations, which began amidst strong opposition from powerful environmental groups.

This is about Sumit Chakravartty, who passed away in Kolkata last Saturday. One of the most unassuming colleagues during my Patriot-Link days in Delhi, which lasted from 1979 to 1993, Sumit, as we would address him, was perhaps the most polite and soft-spoken among all others.

  A new paper published by the Indian Council of Political Studies (ICPS) presents fresh evidence to argue that Britain deliberately shaped the partition of India and Kashmir’s fate to advance its own imperial interests. Titled “Partition by Design: ‘Kashmir-in-Pakistan’ in the British Strategic Chessboard”, the detailed account by Amit Krishankant Paul  reveals  a concerted British effort in 1947 to create Pakistan as a pro-Western Islamic buffer state aligned against the Soviet Union — with Kashmir envisioned as part of that strategy.

   The other day, I received a message from education rights activist Mitra Ranjan, who claims that a whopping one lakh schools across India have been closed down or merged. This seemed unbelievable at first sight. The message from the activist, who is from the advocacy group Right to Education (RTE) Forum, states that this is happening as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, which floated the idea of school integration/consolidation.

   The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC)’s notification on July 11, 2025, relaxing the 2015 mandate for Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) systems in coal-based thermal power plants (TPPs), has drawn sharp criticism for creating a hazardous health divide and undermining India’s environmental commitments. 

  As trade negotiations between India and the United States continue, a prominent advocacy group, the Coalition for a GM-Free India, has voiced strong concerns regarding potential concessions on genetically modified (GM) crops, seeds, and related products. In a letter addressed to Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Shri Piyush Goyal, Rajesh Krishnan, Co-Convenor of the Coalition, has urged the Indian government to resist American pressure and uphold the interests of Indian farmers, consumers, and exporters.

  Is the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India, seeking to bail out Boeing in its preliminary report released recently despite  the top MNC's whistleblower concerns ? It would seem so, if the Ministry's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's (AAIB's) preliminary findings into the catastrophic crash of Air India’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, registration VT-ANB, which went down shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025, killing all 241 on board and 19 on the ground, is any indication.

   A recent article by noted economist Indira Hirway, titled “The Hoax of Decline in Poverty in India” and published in  The Wire  on July 8, 2025, casts serious doubt on official claims of a dramatic fall in poverty rates in India. Hirway critiques the recent estimates by economists C. Rangarajan and S. Mahendra Dev, which assert that extreme poverty declined from 29.5% in 2011–12 to 9.5% in 2022–23, and further to 4.9% in 2023–24—a near 25 percentage-point drop over a decade.

  As Delhi nears the second anniversary of the catastrophic Yamuna floods on July 13, 2023, the city remains ill-prepared for another potential disaster, with experts warning that systemic failures and unchecked development continue to threaten the river’s health. The 2023 floods saw the Yamuna inundate its floodplains and reclaim lost channels, surpassing the 1978 flood level at the Delhi railway bridge by a significant margin. 

 India’s ambitious net-zero target by 2070 hinges critically on the success of its soon-to-be operational Indian Carbon Market (ICM). As per the CRISIL–Eversource Capital report, the ICM, structured under the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), 2023, is designed to create economic value out of emission reductions through a market-based carbon trading framework. But can a market-based solution work for India’s development context—and what are the risks?

   Researchers from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have attributed the failure to address inhalant misuse among teenagers to "existing domestic policies." While the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act 2015 penalizes the sale or provision of narcotics, psychotropic drugs, alcohol, and tobacco to minors (under 18), it notably omits inhalant misuse. Even the Gujarat Juvenile Justice Rules 2019, formulated for the Act's enforcement, also fail to "recognize the issue," the researchers highlight.

   The advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has raised serious concerns over a recent World Bank brief that cites a decline in India’s consumption-based Gini coefficient — from 28.8 in 2011–12 to 25.5 in 2022–23 — portraying it as a sign of growing equality. According to CFA, the data offers a misleading picture of socio-economic reality on the ground.

    The Government of India has refused to disclose any information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act related to its controversial decision to block over 8,000 social media accounts—mostly on X (formerly Twitter)—during Operation Sindoor, as well as to restrict access to several digital news platforms, including The Wire, in early May.

 "Major Hints" ("મેઝર હિન્ટ્સ"), translated into Gujarati by veteran journalist Anil Devpurkar and noted Gujarati writer Dr. Bharat Mehta, is an honest and powerful account of the author Dr. I. I. Pandya’s decades-long engagement with Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Vadodara. Originally written in English, this work is more than just a personal memoir—it is a critical testimony on how public institutions function, fail, and sometimes resist.

  In a thought-provoking  column published in  Sandesh , eminent sociologist and former Vice-Chancellor Prof. Vidyut Joshi has raised urgent concerns over the erosion of intellectual autonomy and social relevance in Gujarat’s leading research and academic institutions. Building on insights from the recent paper  Secret of Creating High Performing Knowledge Institutions  by development economist Prof. Tushaar Shah, Joshi paints a stark picture of institutions that have strayed far from their foundational vision.

    As India commemorates a decade of the ambitious Digital India mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 1, 2015, a critical digital gap remains unaddressed: citizens still cannot file Right to Information (RTI) applications online with the Indian Parliament.