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Inside Indian Energy and Mining Giant Vedanta's Campaign to Weaken Key Environmental Regulations

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.

Hrut Collage - Urmila Samson Homeschool

Activities, events, articles, links among other things to be used for inspiration and a resource.

We perceive education as a natural process through engaging with and forming relationships with the living and non living, exploring ourselves through the arts and silence, in order to discover the inner self and beyond; our non separateness, the Consciousness Connection that make us One.

https://hrutcollage.wordpress.com/

Homeschooling or Whole Being Living | Urmila Samson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCwAz1b6PZ8 TEDx Talks Jul 10, 2018
There is thinking out of the box and then there is learning out of the box. Urmila Samson is a person who is a proponent of the latter. Hailing from Pune, she home schooled or as she calls it "unschooled" her children while being the co-founder of Swashikshan-Association of Indian Homeschoolers. The pedagogy revoles around picking up cues from the child about their inclination and providing them the tools to develop those skills.

It worked out when her daughter got into Eurythmy in London based solely on the merit of her essay, without having to give her A-level exams. With the community of parents choosing to home school their children growing, it is an honour to have Pune's MVP to tackle the orthodoxy of our current education system. Urmila Samson is one of the most distinguished homeshooling mothers in India. She, with her husband John, have radical ideas about learning and have opted to un-school their three children aged 25 years, 21 years and 18 years, who have never been to school. Her favourite definition of education is engaging with everything – living and non-living. Urmila is the co-founder of Swashikshan-Association of Indian Homeschoolers and has always been connected with people to guide them on right information and resources, with a burning desire to change the current scenario of the education system.

All Those Demanding a New Constitution Are Fighting for a Less Equal India

In his recent article, titled
There’s a case for ‘we the people’ to embrace a new Constitution https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/theres-a-case-for-we-the-people-to-embrace-a-new-constitution-11692021963182.html 14 Aug 2023 Bibek Debroy, highlighted the Hindu right's real problem with the Constitution.. ...the three recent Bills on criminal justice are examples. Partly, one reclaims our forgotten heritage; Sengol is a metaphor for that.

what about the Seventh Schedule and local bodies? If development is correlated with urbanization, why have we set up these rural-urban silos, exemplified in the 73rd and 74th amendments?

what’s the Supreme Court’s role... There are articles in the Constitution that impede executive efficiency, at least for all-India services. What about electoral reform and the Rajya Sabha’s role?

..Should one subject specific geographical areas to special laws, thereby never mainstreaming them? (This isn’t only about Article 370 as there are others.) If reforms are about markets and a refocused and reduced role for government, what sense do we make of the Directive Principles of State Policy?

All Those Demanding a New Constitution Are Fighting for a Less Equal India https://thewire.in/politics/all-those-demanding-a-new-constitution-are-fighting-for-a-less-equal-india Runyani .. the ideologues and leaders from the Hindu right have been asserting that this constitution is a colonial legacy, based on the Government of India Act of 1935 of the British and does not reflect ‘Indian values’

As the Constitution was implemented, the RSS mouthpiece rejected it and demanded the Manusmriti as the Constitution. An editorial in Organiser on Novemner 30, 1949 read: “But in our Constitution, there is no mention of the unique Constitutional development in Ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparata or Solon of Persia.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/bibek-debroy-article-for-new-constitution-pm-panel-says-not-our-view-8897462/ “The recent article by Dr @bibekdebroy was in his personal capacity. In no way do they reflect the views of EAC-PM or the Government of India,” the EAC-PM posted Thursday evening. The EAC-PM is an independent body constituted to give advice on economic and related issues to the Government of India, specifically to the Prime Minister.

Gaddar, Who Symbolised Revolutionary Politics, Leaves Behind Questions on Social Transformation

He transcended the political through aesthetics and politicised the symbolic. For a generation, he symbolised the spirit and politics of revolutionary change, primarily in Telangana, but his songs travelled well beyond.

https://thewire.in/rights/gaddar-who-symbolised-revolutionary-politics-leaves-behind-questions-on-social-transformation

Revolutionary balladeer Gaddar passed away on Sunday, August 6. He leaves behind a legacy that will last for a very long time and with it a number of questions that hold the promise of rethinking the processes of social transformation.

Gaddar rose to unprecedented fame in the 1990s, when he walked into the open from a life in the ‘underground’. He was part of the revolutionary movement that later came to be known as the Maoists. For a generation, he symbolised the spirit and politics of revolutionary change, primarily in Telangana, but his songs travelled well beyond. He was neither a trained singer nor a writer. He spontaneously reflected the rebellious spirit of Telangana. He symbolised the energy of the time of revolutionary politics and was its greatest makings. His songs were not just an art but a phenomenon. His songs were listened to and appreciated cutting across classes. He had a unique reach into the drawing rooms and playing recorders of the rich and dominant castes.

by Ajay Gudavarthy

09/08/2023

A Salute to Achyut Yagnik

A Salute to Achyut Yagnik, the One-Man Storehouse of Knowledge on Gujarat https://thewire.in/society/a-salute-to-achyut-yagnik-the-one-man-storehouse-of-knowledge-on-gujarat

He was always “Achyut Bhai”, always available for a spot of conversation, or a dialogue if you preferred, or a declamation if you had the discipline of patience. Either way, it was always a rewarding encounter.

(SETU – Centre for Social Knowledge and Action) resembled an ashram in its bare austerity but suggested the ambience of a coffee house, where over many cups of syrupy tea – and the smoke of his never-extinguished cigarette – the visiting interlocutor could get tutored into the nuances of the latest developments, be it the Navnirman Movement, the anti-reservations riots of 1981, the 1985-86 communal flare-up, the anti-Narmada dam movement, the 1990-92 Ayodhya violence, or the horrible, horrible 2002 carnage.

Achyut Bhai himself personified the very idea of a robust civil society – keeping a firm distance from the wielders of power in Gandhinagar yet willing to engage with “authority” on behalf of the poor and the underprivileged. He was available to any NGO, any movement, any group wanting to correct this or that economic injustice in any part of Gujarat

Analysing the Adani-Ambani BUSINESS EMPIRE (and its impact on you)

Analysing the Adani-Ambani BUSINESS EMPIRE (and its impact on you) | The GREAT Indian MONOPOLIES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPGgKbSORb4 Akshat Shrivastava Jul 26, 2023
2 companies that have become household names in India. Are they going to end up owning the country?

Solution suggested by Akshat Srivastava.

Duoploistic Bussiness.

Learn about stock investing, and invest wisely.

Support small business, in your investment aswell as in your consumption.

Vocal for Local.

Learn to Question.

Our Own Hurt Us the Most

this report is very much about the lives of the queer and trans persons whose rights will be debated not just in the Supreme Court, but all around us, in the media, on the streets, in houses and where you have. The voice of the State has already become clear in the invocation of sanskar, sacrament, and such like in the defense of the cis and heterosexual marriage and family. There is a slew of voices all around defending the existing structures of families and opposing the right of not just queer and trans persons, but also inter-religious and inter-caste heterosexual couples to live as they desire.

This moment therefore, is as much about families, and not just about marriage. While the focus is on the demand for marriage equality for queer and trans folx, the legitimacy given to assigned families is as much under question. Chosen families and intimacies cannot be thought of without also looking at the reality of what assigned families do to their queer and trans children.

The families that are supposed to be spaces of nurture, care and support, turn against their own children (often at very young ages), treat them with utter disregard and violence, and force them to conform to socially accepted ideas of what is “normal” without any regard to the individual’s dignity or personhood. Stigma and violence run deep within the space of these families that are assigned to us at birth (or adoption).

https://pucl.org/sites/default/files/reports/Combined_all_2_compressed.pdf

Rights & Health

Rights and health - Dr. Ramani Atkuri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIFn1Qn7x3gMar 27, 2023
Correction at time 20:00 . 67 times should be read as 6.7 times. ie The defence budget in 2023-24 is 5.94 lakh crore rupees. This is 6.7 times the health budget..

The long road to the ‘Right to Health’ in India https://www.southasiamonitor.org/perspective/long-road-right-health-india By Pavitra Mohan and Naina Seth Sep 29, 2022
Clearer commitments and standards on access and quality, making oversight and redressal mechanisms more participatory, and allocating adequate financial resources alone would make the right to healthcare to all citizens a reality.

MGNREGA Sangharsh Morcha

MGNERGA Sangharsh Morcha : मनरेगा बजट काट अडानी की जेब भर रही सरकार_bjp is filling Adani's pocket by cutting MANREGA budget https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08g0KAxGnkk Apr 2, 2023

Should India break up its big conglomerates?

Should India break up its big conglomerates? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65108865 30.3.23 India should dismantle its large conglomerates to increase competition and
reduce their ability to charge higher prices, former Reserve Bank of India deputy governor Viral Acharya has argued in a new paper for Brookings Institution, an American research group.

According to Mr Acharya, who is now a professor of economics at NYU Stern, "industrial concentration" - which refers to the extent to which a smaller number of firms account for total production in a country - fell sharply in India after 1991 when the country opened up its economy and state-owned monopolies began giving away their market share to private enterprises. But after 2015, it began rising again.