-Down to Earth Around 88% respondents want to switch to less-polluting alternatives but report they are not easily available Around 12.3 billion sanitary napkins, amounting to 113,000 tonnes of waste, reached India’s landfills every year, according to a new study. Improper disposal and non-segregation from household waste leads to unhygienic working condition for waste workers, the report said. Commonly available sanitary napkins constitute 90 per cent plastic, the report claimed. India generates 3.3...
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Sundarban Farmers Need a Rice Variety That Is Salt-Tolerant But Also Marketable -Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
-TheWire.in The increasing frequency of cyclones means growing high-yielding varieties – which do not grow well on saline soil – is no longer an option. Kolkata: Cyclone Aila of 2009 had triggered a wave of migration from the Sundarbans region, after the storm surges associated with the cyclone inundated thousands of acres of land with saline water from the rivers and the seas and left them uncultivable for years to come. It...
More »Agri Ministry’s New App Gives Microsoft Access to Millions of Farmers’ Personal Data -Sashwata Saha
-TheCitizen.in ‘The whole process is faceless’ As the managing director of CropData Sachin Suri explained to Microsoft’s news desk last year, the abstract looking artwork behind him is not a painting. “This is actually a spectral analysis satellite image of farms. Each tiny spot, or a geo-spatial tile, is an actual field in Punjab and the different colors denote the stress levels in individual farms.” That frame is the crux of what CropData,...
More »Rent issues as an ignored COVID stress point -Mewa Bharati and Juhi Jotwani
-The Hindu The second wave has amplified the issue of rent which does not draw much attention as food and income support do As State governments have begun implementing weekend curfews and lockdown-like conditions amid the second wave of COVID, there is another issue that is emerging — rent crises within informal rental housing markets. For example, domestic workers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, have begun reporting to the Rajasthan Mahila Kamgar Union (RMKU)...
More »Are we listening to the lessons taught in the first year of Covid-19? -Ashish Kothari
-The Indian Express The pandemic revealed the precarious state of India’s informal sector. Localised production, trade and markets offer a better alternative to existing paradigm of development. Another wave of COVID, another round of lockdowns, another long journey back home for migrant workers. If there is one lesson we are learning after a year of COVID-19, it is that we have not learnt any lessons, at least not the crucial ones. 2020 exposed...
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