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.[[BR]][[BR]]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.

In the past few years, at least half a dozen states have adopted profiling software to predict the eligibility of citizens for welfare schemes. These algorithms have wrongly declared the alive as dead, the poor as well-off, the disabled as able-bodied, robbing thousands of subsidised food, old-age pension, disability pension, widow pensions, and other welfare benefits for the poor. An investigation into how states are using artificial intelligence in an unintelligent way, at the cost of citizens. With support from the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network.

Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam reveals Modi held backdoor negotiations with the Finance Commission to cut tax funds allocated to states, and says gov't finances are so shady, they could be hit by a 'Hindenburg'.

Hidden in plain sight, the Patanjali business empire is functioning as a dubious real-estate agency buying and selling forested lands in the fragile Aravalli mountain range through a web of shell companies.

Who had access to internet during the Manipur conflict when the state shut it off for ordinary citizens? And what did they use it for? A war on social media. Concerted campaigns. Hackers on hire. And angry citizens. We report on the battle of information, disinformation and hate from Manipur. We teamed up with tech experts to analyse hundreds of thousands of social media messages to understand the conflict running online.

RBI asks Bank of Baroda to suspend registering new customers on its banking app after exposé, but cover-up afoot

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

This investigative series exposes how the Modi government favoured commercial interests over forest conservation and indigenous rights while abandoning the long-delayed National Forest Policy. Just after taking office, it aimed to open forests for private plantations, culminating in the 2023 amendments to the Forest (Conservation) Act. These changes prioritize profit over biodiversity, granting private businesses access to India's forests. The amendment limits protection to recognized forests, endangering large swathes of potential unofficial forestland. These investigations reveal a troubling pattern of forest exploitation, corporate interests, and indigenous rights neglect.

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.

Gig workers have welcomed a new law in India’s largest state Rajasthan to impose a tax on revenue earned by digital platforms that operate in the state, including global giants Uber and Amazon, even as industry groups have warned it will eventually hurt customers and derail business in the state. The new law will impose a tax on each transaction on digital platforms to fund a welfare scheme for gig workers.

Internal Emails Reveal Thousands Of Bank Accounts Linked To Unauthorised Mobile Numbers To Fraudulently Boost Registrations On Its App, Raising Security Concerns

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

Tapering growth, untamed inflation, alongside the pressure to ramp up welfare schemes in the run up to elections will shape the budget

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.

Under the law, similar to the one in UP, the child if found guilty could be ordered to pay compensation to his neighbour. It will happen without a formal criminal investigation that requires a police investigation, a prosecution and a trial before a proper court that follows procedures and offers safeguards under IPC.

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.

Vedanta’s pig iron industry in Goa got clearance to expand despite being caught emitting dangerous substance for more than a decade. It went to great lengths to dodge environmental laws and avoid paying for pollution mitigation efforts.

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.

In the investigative series on India’s monetary policy, The Collective found evidence of Modi government’s attempts at making inroads into the RBI and nibble away its independence in setting the country’s monetary policy, which primarily aims to keep prices stable. The series spotlights how the same government that brought in the independent monetary policy framework defeated its key goals of transparency and accountability.

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.

TRC investigated more than 5 lakh political advertisements on Facebook and Instagram to assess the influence of Facebook on elections. We found evidence that the world’s biggest social media network systematically undercut political competition by giving unfair advantage to BJP in elections. Read our four-part investigative series here.

Former J&K BJP legislator Vikram Randhawa accused BJP's Union minister Jitendra Singh of profiting from corruption in Jammu's mining department after being being slapped with Rs 96 lakh penalty for illegal river mining. The accusations were withdrawn and guns holstered. But penalty documents and inquiry committee reports reveal how Jammu's mining department abandoned penalties worth Rs 6.68 crore on stone crushers operating illegally around Tawi and how miners had it easy.

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

From predicting millions of voting choices to deleting inconvenient voters, a world of manipulative possibilities could be opened by the government’s decision—controversially pushed through Parliament—to link Aadhaar, India’s national identity database, and election commission data.

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.

The Niti Aayog wants to review economic impacts of Supreme Court rulings on environmental-law violations. Its officials are supposedly not investigating ‘judicial activism’. Files we obtained under RTI show that is indeed what they are doing.

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.

A new report by US-based Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensics agency, claims that 22 ‘incriminating’ filed were planted into activist Rona Wilson’s laptop. These files are among the primary evidence against Wilson and 15 others currently in jail.

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.

A network of self-proclaimed Hindu volunteers file legal complaints and unleash a toxic wave of trolling, harassment, threats and doxing against social media users who they believed make “anti-Hindu” remarks

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

Analysis of Modi's package: Analysis: Modi govt’s #COVID19 aid package is miserly & unimaginative. It will do little for poor who need help. With data & more.

The government is setting up building blocks of a project that, in the garb of welfare programs, can lead to tracking of all 1.3 billion citizens from cradle to grave. Every bit of our lives will be linked, recorded and monitored

Documents sourced through Right To Information applications reveal several irregularities in how the government brought the controversial source of political financing into effect

Women’s safety and empowerment is an empty rhetoric in India.While brutal crimes spark public outrage and political blame games, the daily violence faced by women and female-bodied individuals goes unnoticed. The safety mechanisms and government schemes meant to protect them are equally overlooked.Effective implementation of women’s safety schemes remains critical — but as The Reporters’ Collective found, the reality falls far short. This three-part investigation interrogates the failures of a system meant to protect women and uncovers government falsehoods and half-truths concealing these failures.

Welcome to Parliament Defied, an investigative series that examines the assurances given by politicians to Parliament, and their outcomes. The Reporters’ Collective analysed over 100 parliamentary reports, spanning thousands of pages, documenting pledges by 55 ministries over the last five years in Parliament.