-Down to Earth Urea subsidy cut 17%; allocation for NPK subsidy reduced 35% Amid acute shortage of fertilisers in India, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman February 1, 2022, reduced subsidy on urea and nutrient-based (NPK) fertilisers. The move is expected to adversely hit the ailing farm sector. The Rs 63,222.32 crore allocation for urea subsidy in her Budget for 2022-23 was 17 per cent lower than the revised estimates (RE) for 2021-22. Another...
More »SEARCH RESULT
1,750 Indians died due to extreme weather events in 2021, says new IMD report
In the month of January this year, more than 100 homeless persons died (please click here and here to access) in Delhi-NCR due to cold wave like conditions. Although a Delhi-based non-government organisation (NGO) Centre for Holistic Development (CHD) made that claim, and therefore asked the Chief Minister of Delhi to make proper arrangements for the homeless poor during winters, the officials of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB)...
More »The under-nutrition problem in Bundelkhand should receive equal attention of the policymakers, if not more
Recent media reports point out that the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is likely to get about Rs. 6,300 crore projects ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, including a Rs. 400 crore worth plant for the propulsion system of anti-tank guided missiles in Jhansi. The foundation was laid for the first project in the Jhansi node (related to the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor) on November 18, 2021. The two...
More »Farm Fatale -Anita Joshua
-The Telegraph The agrarian laws might have been repealed but are we any wiser about what it was that the farmers were so against, what reforms they could do with instead of the ones thrust upon them? Even in retreat over the farm laws, the Modi government adopted the same top-down approach it employed while bringing them in in May 2020. Pleasantly surprised as they were by the Prime Minister’s unexpected announcement,...
More »Book Review: Working Lives in the Shadows of the Global City -Aparna Sundar
-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...
More »