Inside Indian Energy and Mining Giant Vedanta's Campaign to Weaken Key Environmental Regulations by Akshay Deshmane 31 August 2023
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/inside-indian-energy-and-mining-giant-vedantas-campaign-to-weaken-key-environmental-regulations .

  Report  shows how mining and oil giant Vedanta successfully ran a covert lobbying campaign during the pandemic to weaken India's key environmental regulations. The Narendra Modi-led government approved the changes without public consultation and implemented them using what experts say are illegal methods.

In early 2022, after a series of closed door meetings, India’s environment ministry loosened regulations to allow mining companies to increase production by up to 50 percent without needing to hold public hearings, which many in the industry considered the most onerous requirement of the environmental clearance process.

Though the head of a major industry lobby group and India’s mining secretary also pressed for the rules to be loosened, internal documents and government sources suggest Vedanta’s lobbying was key. The environment ministry then changed the regulations by publishing an office memo — meant to be used for inter-office communication — on its website.

The year before Agarwal wrote to Modi, one of the company’s subsidiaries, Cairn Oil & Gas, also started lobbying to scrap public hearings for oil exploration projects. As with mining, the government quietly amended the law with no public consultation. Since then, at least six of Cairn’s oil projects in the northern deserts of Rajasthan have been greenlit for development...

Indian authorities blocked the websites of activist groups that were campaigning on environmental issues, including one that was fighting against a major new piece of environmental legislation.

In April, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed charges against environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta, claiming he uses foreign funds to “take down” coal projects. Legal watchdog Article 14 cited experts describing the case as “replete with factual errors and misrepresentations” and saying it would “have a chilling effect on environmental litigation in India.”

This year, the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, had its license to receive foreign funding suspended and tax authorities started looking into their records for alleged violations, reportedly due to its “involvement” with environmental causes.

WA comment by OPS: this is incomplete unless we show the profit of Union Govt in it. for example in Q1-FY23, OMC made a loss but Union Govt collected a few lakh crores. so overall there was no loss really, only the consumers lost a lot and high diesel prices added to the already high inflation 

Outlay on roads and renewables may climb to Rs 13 lakh crore in FY24, FY25 August 30, 2023 https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/outlay-on-roads-and-renewables-may-climb-to-rs-13-lakh-crore-in-fy24-fy25-8915300/ According to Crisil, the growth is expected to sustain over the medium term, supported by conducive policies, strong investor interest and healthy financial profiles, leading to stable credit quality of companies in the Crisil Ratings portfolio in both sectors.

Comment: Wonder if this takes into account increase kickbacks around election seasons! 

YouTube Removed 1.9 Million Videos In India In Jan-March 2023   https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/youtube-removed-1-9-million-videos-in-jan-march-2023-for-rule-violation-4343648

" protected the YouTube community from harmful content."

"more than 93 per cent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans. "Of the videos detected by machines, 38 per cent were removed before they received a single view, and 31 per cent received between 1 and 10 views before removal,"

YouTube removed over 8.7 million channels in Q1 2023 for violating community guidelines. "The overwhelming majority of these channels were terminated for violating our spam policies, including but not restricted to scams, misleading metadata or thumbnails, video and comments spam," it said.

YouTube removed more than 853 million comments in Q1 2023, the majority of which were spam. About 99 per cent of removed comments were detected automatically.

https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/iit-madras-makes-its-computer-science-courses-available-to-the-public-1947329-2022-05-09

 Interview of Dr. Mallika Sarabhai, daughter of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, by Kiran Chandra. https://youtube.com/watch?v=udX5jCrF8f4&si=9v5INc_1f-fCKoBF
Time to remember Dr. Vikram Sarabhai at such an historic moment. The man behind ISRO and many others public institutions like IIM Ahmedabad, ECIL, NID to name a few.

 जहाँ विकास अभी भी सपना ही है मध्य प्रदेश के गांव से ग्राउंड रिपोर्ट   Aug 23, 2023  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEUqQQTyWaM  An isolated village of Madhya Pradesh is still as isolated as it was several years back. Bamangaon of Harda District has no access to government policies and services. In this Ground Report, we bring out the issues of general public from the poll-bound state of Madhya Pradesh.

Centre blaming Myanmar migrants for Manipur violence is dangerous  https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/centre-blaming-myanmar-migrants-for-manipur-violence-is-dangerous/article67212603.ece Aug 24, 2023 Angshuman Choudhury
Is New Delhi endorsing Meitei narrative or diverting from its failures? Until now, Shah had attributed the violence in Manipur to the precipitous Manipur High Court judgment in April that suggested the Scheduled Tribe status for the Meiteis. This was the first time Shah had named a particular community for the crisis in Manipur. And, he made a grievous “error” while doing so.

“A Kuki Democratic Front started a movement there, and the military rulers launched a crackdown on them. As there is no border fencing, a large number of Kuki brothers came to Manipur and Mizoram as refugees,” Shah told Parliament. He was referring to the armed resistance against the junta in Myanmar and the attendant refugee movement across the India-Myanmar border.

Yes, 29 Aug, he was in his room at Hotel Swagat in Raigad district of Odisha preparing for a Press Conf scheduled to be held at 4 pm to highlight atrocities agt Adivasis/Indigenous Ppl  https://twitter.com/leofsaldanha/status/1696740732009381974

Meera Sanghamitra @meeracomposes
Away from 'national news', 25 adivasi, dalit movement leaders from across South Odisha have been arrested in a sweeping crackdown by Govt. for resisting destructive mining projects of Adani, Vedanta, Hindalco. See Press Release of Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakhya Sangathan 

http://emeets.lnwr.in/index.php/4594-jagrit-adivasi-dalit-sangathan-activist-nitin-arrested-in-burhanpur