Modi government has commissioned an audacious operation to scrub India’s global image. The primary target is international indices in which India fares badly. Ministries, embassies, and a special unit called GIRG have been tasked to track and influence over 30 indices that rank countries on hunger, poverty, democracy, rule of law among others. Their playbook? Lobbying to alter methodologies to bump up India’s rankings, unleashing ministers to bash the indices, and creating homegrown indices with cherry-picked data to make India look good. This investigation exposes a government more obsessed with optics than fixing country’s real problems.

Fuelling Manipur's conflict is a complex interplay of political ambition, armed groups, cross-border migration, ethnic divisions, narcotics, tainted armed forces, cynical statecraft and a devious game to give it all a communal colour. In this, the youth have become the fodder. Fed on hate, mobilised to defend themselves as the State fails to end violence. Our two-part investigative series delves into the layers, exposing a web of power, armed factions, and the battle for control.

The Collective’s investigation reveals the Union government gave away coal blocks to private companies based on its discretion, undermining the landmark 2014 Supreme court order and the coal reforms it had unveiled. The Centre also gave into lobbying by power companies to open up the densest forests for mining, defying environment ministry

The Collective’s investigation illuminates the corporate influence on the agricultural policies of the Union government. It uncovers how an NRI with no agricultural expertise managed to capture Niti Aayog's attention and got himself, and the people he picked, to be part of the task force formed by Niti Aayog to find ways to double farmers’ income. The investigation thrust open the doors of the task force behind which Adani Group candidly advocated the removal of restrictions on corporate companies hoarding agricultural commodities, which become a law two years later and trigged farmers’ protest.

The Collective's investigation uncovers the Union government's rush to supply fortified rice to 80 crore Indians, ignoring failed pilot projects and warnings from the finance ministry and the head of premier medical research body. NITI Aayog confidentially reported the that government bungled pilot projects meant to gather scientific evidence on fortified rice. The investigation further revealed that international organisations linked to a Dutch fortified rice premix producer influenced government policy, provided evidence, and influenced standards.

The investigation reveals that the government allowed private corporations to bypass the competitive process to corner large coal reserves. It allowed shell companies of a conglomerate to manipulate auctions, and granted an extraordinary favour to another.

The think tank pushed Modi gov't to cut food subsidies, curtail food security coverage and privatise PDS, documents reveal

Thousands declared qualified yet denied jobs in Central Armed Police Forces as Union government leaves thousands of seats vacant without stating why

Union government asks two prominent nonprofits to quit seeking donations in areas where the government runs schemes.

Banks have been either enrolling customers en masse from the backend or by obtaining consent signatures through lies, deceit or coercion

After the Bhopal gas tragedy, Union Carbide and its executives were declared absconders. Their properties were ordered to be attached. But, using a web of front companies it funnelled in goods and took out profits for more than a decade.

Internal files of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change reveal it had been planning to weaken tribal rights over forests since 2019. Modi government’s new Forest Conservation Rules made it easier for industries to grab their traditional homelands.

A grammatical loophole in appointment rules helps Women and Child Development Ministry push through the amendments to increase the terms of chairpersons of the National Commission for Women and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights

The move could stop millions of poor children without Aadhaar from having healthy meal, and violates a Supreme Court order that no subsidy or service may be denied to children for want of Aadhaar

The Union government used a flawed set of data to mask the gloomier death count calculated by the UN body, and ignored a robust number thrown up by another of its own survey. The data was so unreliable that 20 of the 36 states and Union territories saw more registered deaths than what the government claims died.

Supreme Court has not heard the Electoral Bond case for more than 2 years after receiving data from parties in a sealed cover. That has let the belief spread that Electoral Bonds were encashed by 105 political parties and the BJP’s claim that bonds are an efficient way to allow “donation to any political party of donors’ choice”.

The Union government's auctions worth more than Rs 4,600 crore to provide pulses to the poor and armed forces were rigged to benefit a few big millers, shows the findings of the National Productivity Council, a government research body headed by Minister Piyush Goyal. The Council’s findings confirm The Collective’s previous exposé that the terms of auctions allowed the millers to rip the government off tonnes of pulses and sell them at a profit in the open market, and also supply poor-quality pulses.

Nirmala Sitharaman's old friends were surprised at her decision to join the BJP over a decade ago as they remembered her as a hardcore Freethinker, a student union that took pride in itself on its lack of dogmatism, at the JNU. She moved up the ladder by making the right friends. Sitharaman is now employing the skills that stood her in good stead, as the BJP's national spokesperson, to deflect criticism about the worsening state of the Indian economy during her stint as the finance minister.

Through death register data obtained from across the country, The Reporters’ Collective estimates that in the pandemic 3,59,496 more people died than in a normal year in just 3 states where officially only 28,609 died of Covid. Experts fear relatives of thousands of Covid-19 victims will be excluded from compensation due to lack of medical records, poor testing and red-tape despite the Centre initiating compensation procedure on the instructions of the Supreme Court.

The land, whose current market value could be anywhere between Rs 600 crore and Rs 1,000 crore, was leased for 33 years at Rs 6 lakh annually with a 5% increase in the rent every four years. Illustration: The Wire

Auction method used to mill pulses under welfare schemes for poor and armed forces allowed millers to make unchecked profits for years, hammering the public exchequer and the quality of pulses supplied

A year after Punjab's Hooch tragedy when over a 100 people died in mid-2020 after consuming illicit liquor the state's politicians, police and excise officials have ensured the state's illicit liquor trade carries on.

Data from thousands of pages of death registers maintained by municipalities in Gujarat show an excess death count of 16,892 for just 6% of the state's population during the pandemic. When projected across the state, the figure zooms to a staggering 281,000.

Under its commercial coal mining auctions, the Modi govt has sold off at least two coal blocks for rates cheaper than their 2015 prices. As a result Chhattisgarh will end up losing Rs 900 crore every year and over Rs 24,000 crore over decades.

Two days after the Health Ministry said it has ensured 'effective' distribution of foreign Covid aid and lambasted media for reports on its haphazard handling of the donations, its own records belie the claims. Internal records show large consignments were either 'in transit' or yet to even be allocated -- some from as far back as April 30!

MEA made urgent late evening deployments to its Covid Cell as late as May 01. This was 24 hours after the Philippines Embassy sought help from Indian Youth Congress for delivery of oxygen cylinders. In response, the MEA launched a bitter Twitter dogfight against the opposition for supplying cylinders to the embassy.

Investigating the records and practices at India's largest and government owned-steel plants in Asansol and Durgapur in West Bengal shows hundreds of workers lost jobs, and many more suffered wage loss even as the company made profits.

Through a secretive deal, the government sold off vehicular bulk data of the entire country to a private company in a deal that officials red-flagged over lack of price discovery. With this exclusive low-cost bounty, the firm developed an entire business model based on the data. It even cut a separate agreement with a German firm and sent samples of sensitive data it received from the government. All this happened five years before the government announced a dedicated policy to sell the same data to other buyers.

Modi government first ignored its experts' recommendations on how to lift the country-wide lockdown. It then based its response on unreliable data, show its own records. This led to surge in Covid-19 cases

Government documents and internal meeting records show its experts warned that a country-wide lockdown would only delay the pandemic not control it. The government repeatedly ignored experts' warnings and did not put in place key protocols even after a month into the lockdown