BBC पर UK विदेशमंत्री से भिड़े जयशंकर, UK Foreign Minister vs S.Jai Shankar on BBC Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnV56T0lf54 DESH NEETI  Mar 4, 2023

All entities must comply with laws, Jaishankar tells UK Foreign Minister on BBC tax ‘survey’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8MYLgpzxL8 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/uk-foreign-secretary-james-cleverly-raises-bbc-tax-issue-with-eam-jaishankar-484191 Last month, the Income-Tax authorities had carried out surveys at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai. The action by the tax authorities came immediately after the BBC released a documentary about the 2002 Gujarat riots which alleged inaction during the massacre by the then CM Narendra Modi.

‘Positive’ on India, UK ‘raises’ BBC https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/positive-on-india-britain-raises-bbc/cid/1919832 Indian sources said that when Cleverly brought the matter up, “he was firmly told that all entities operating in India must comply fully with relevant laws and regulations”. The Reuters news agency reported that Cleverly did not go into the details of what he said about the tax searches on the BBC.

“The conversations I had with him are best to keep with him. I did raise it,’’ Cleverly was quoted as saying. “One of the advantages of having such a strong and professional relationship with Dr Jaishankar is I am able to bring up, and indeed he brings up with me, some of these sensitive issues. I did raise it with him.”

We, the undersigned members of the filmmaking community in India, and supporters, are shocked to hear that the inaugural film festival organised by Film Society Ravenshaw at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, was stopped from screening Debalina Majumder's Gay India Matrimony and Shabnam Virmani' s Had-Anhad.

Gay India Matrimony is a 2019 documentary which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the problems and prospects of same-sex marriage in India, featuring the director herself and two others. Gay India Matrimony has been criticised by the opposing outfit Hari Om as "an attempt to corrupt the minds of yore ruth to steer away from family see values and tradition". In Had-Anhad (2008), Virmani traces the 15th century mystic poet Kabir's attachment with Ram, across the Indo-Pak border. In this case, Had-Anhad is charged with "romanticising the Indo-Pak right relationship".

Both films are well-known and have already been in circulation in film festivals and campuses in India and abroad. At a time when free speech is threatened across the country, journalists and mediamakers attacked, the forcible stoppage of the screenings of these two films only adds fuel to the rising intolerance in the country.

What is particularly dismaying is how an institute of higher learning, a University, finds documentary films that have been widely screened and acclaimed in many public fora unsuitable for its own students.

We are also appalled to hear that the outfit, Hari Om, objected to the screening of Pather Panchali (1955) by Oscar awardee and Bharat Ratna Satayjit Ray as "romanticising poverty in India" and to his equally classic cinematic work Charulata (1964) as "borderline incest". Such policing of Indian cinema through intimidation and threats of violence further shrinks the culture of free thinking and creativity. Universities and film societies are integral parts of our public spaces, their right to screen and discuss cinema needs to be upheld at all costs.

We strongly condemn this illegal vigilante action by self-appointed "guardians" of "morality" and culture.

We stand in solidarity with the filmmakers and the organisers of the film festival, and extend our unflinching support to them.

$1 trillion in the shade – the annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb https://theconversation.com/1-trillion-in-the-shade-the-annual-profits-multinational-corporations-shift-to-tax-havens-continues-to-climb-and-climb-200034 : February 23, 2023.  By our reckoning, corporations shifted nearly US$1 trillion in profits earned outside of their home countries to tax havens in 2019, up from $616 billion in 2015, the year before the global tax haven plan was implemented by the group of 20 leading economies, also known as the G-20. 

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 37 democracies with market-based economies, developed a plan that consisted of 15 tangible actions it believed would significantly limit abusive corporate tax practices. These included creating a single set of international tax rules and cracking down on harmful tax practices. ..

following leaks like the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers – which shed light on dodgy corporate tax practices – public outrage led governments in the U.S. and Europe to initiate their own efforts to lower the incentive to shift profits to tax havens.

Our research shows all these efforts appear to have had little impact.