Counterview

Counterview News   As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded their Annual Meetings in Bangkok this week, civil society groups and policy experts outside the official proceedings released two critical documents challenging the institutions' legacy and prescriptions for Asia, calling for a fundamental overhaul of the global financial architecture.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Seventy years ago, on October 14, 1956—a day that coincided with Dussehra—Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, along with millions of his followers, embraced Buddhism at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur. This epoch-making event, known as Dhammachakra Pravartan Diwas, remains one of the most significant moments in India's modern history, a day that fundamentally altered the social and cultural landscape of the nation.

By Bharat Dogra  "People of this country have a right to know every public act, everything done in a public way, by their public functionary. They are entitled to know the particulars of every public transaction in all its bearing." — Justice Mathew, Supreme Court of India, State of Uttar Pradesh vs Raj Narain, 1975

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  Riots have returned to the streets across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. The world is witnessing different waves of unrest. French cities are burning. From Albania, Bangladesh, Britain, and Germany to Nepal, France, and the USA, riots are increasingly being used as a mode of expression against the shrinking political space within bourgeois democracy. 

By N.S. Venkataraman*  Europe’s experience since 2015 offers a useful case study in the difficult trade-offs between humanitarian obligations, border governance and social cohesion. Germany’s decision under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel to admit large numbers of asylum seekers was presented as a humanitarian response. Some critics warned at the time that the scale and speed of arrivals could strain housing, schools, welfare systems and public confidence. Several years later, the debate is more nuanced than either the open-borders or restrictionist camps suggest.

By Ravi Ranjan*  Arun Kamal, the progressive Hindi poet and critic, writes about ordinary lives in a conversational language enriched with vivid imagery. His poem ‘Sleep in the Sunshine’ ( Dhūpa Meṃ Nīnd ), from the collection Kirāye Kā Ghar , brings us face to face with an experience in which the outside world and innerconsciousness seem to merge. Out of everyday objects and sensations it creates a subtle world, inviting both an aesthetic and a sociological reading: unnamed social pressures can leave us empty even amid others, while the poem attends closely to the process by which things appear to us.

By Rosamma Thomas*  On Monday, October 12, 2026, lawyer Prashant Bhushan urged the Supreme Court to hear with urgency the contempt plea challenging the imminent commercial release of gene-edited rice varieties in India.

By A Representative   A coalition of civil society organisations and concerned citizens in Gujarat has issued a joint statement strongly condemning the religious profiling and vigilante interference that took place on October 14, 2026, during a Navratri event in Ahmedabad featuring artist Aditya Gadhvi.

By A Representative   A global civil rights coalition, International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), has strongly condemned the intensifying arrests, criminal cases, and paramilitary deployment directed against Indigenous Adi communities in Arunachal Pradesh as tensions escalate over the contentious Siang Upper Multipurpose Project.