-The Hindu Plea against nod for felling of trees New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has held that Aravallis in Faridabad district will be considered as deemed forest. The NGT was hearing a plea against the Haryana government permitting felling of more than 7,000 trees for a group housing project, to be undertaken by Bharti Land Limited. A Bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said, “It is difficult to uphold...

-The Hindu ‘Open defecation levels are still above 40% in ODF States; Swachh Bharat has not brought behavioural change’ New research on the impact of the Swachh Bharat Mission in the rural parts of four Northern states shows that while open defecation has fallen and toilet ownership has increased, the percentage of people who owned toilets but continued to defecate in the open has remained unchanged between 2014 and 2018. This indicates...

-The Hindu The national framework to improve nutrition for children must be upgraded on priority The health, longevity and well-being of Indians has improved since Independence, and the high levels of economic growth over the past two-and-half-decades have made more funds available to spend on the social sector. Yet, the reality is that a third of the world’s stunted children under five — an estimated 46.6 million who have low height for...

-Livemint.com The recent Chhath festival in Bihar saw a visible thinning of the workforce in Kerala, clearly the ground zero of India’s mass labour movement Eroor (Ernakulam): Oh, I miss Vicky!,” Ravi says, in Malayalam, as he rolls up his sleeves. He is walking quickly back to his house from a protest—that quintessential Kerala activity. Breathing in the pungent chemicals of Kochi’s industrial belt in Eroor as he walks, Ravi (who did...

-Livemint.com The pollution problem is about the allocation of right resources in the right areas. It is a political problem more than an economic one Delhi starts to become dystopian, a few weeks before Diwali, and this continues for around a month after the festival of lights. The conventional explanation for the Delhi smog (in fact, it impacts large parts of North India) is the burning of rice straw by the farmers...