-Newsclick.in Major budgetary allocation cuts in crucial schemes for women, children and vulnerable sections are indicative of the government’s lopsided priorities. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget has helped reinforce one home truth -- that India is divided into the salaried section and a vast underbelly, including the middle class who have been edged into poverty due to job losses suffered during the COVID pandemic. Coming out of the pandemic’s ‘third wave’, issues of...

-The Hindu The government seems to have prioritised meeting its fiscal deficit targets rather than using this opportunity to signal a path of employment-centred and inclusive growth India continues to rank poorly in various global indices that reflect the quality of life, human capital or human development in the country, such as the Human Development Index (rank 131 out of 189 countries) and the Global Hunger Index (rank 101 out of 116...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...

-Financial Express According to Rao, the ICAR committee went through more than 1,400 scientific journals on various methods of promotion of sustainable agriculture besides interacting with farmers who have claimed to have adopted ZBNF across seven states. Large scale adoption of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)  — farm practices which exclude all synthetic chemical inputs and promote use of on-farm biomass — would result in ‘tremendous reduction’ in production of agricultural crops...

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...