-Down to Earth Poor financial conditions, reliance on public distribution system among factors that drove change, reduced dietary diversity  There has been a dietary shift among the Bhil and Bhilala tribes of Madhya Prasesh’s Alirajpur and Jhabua districts over the years. Loss of dietary diversity, including little or no consumption of meat, as well as a change in their staple cereal, may impact the health and erode traditional knowledge of the tribals...

-The Telegraph  Jon Wakefield picks holes in Narendra Modi government’s twin claims Jon Wakefield was disappointed. India’s health ministry had issued a statement decrying the methodology adopted by the World Health Organisation to estimate excess deaths worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The exercise indicated 4.7 million excess deaths in India, 9.8 times the country’s official Covid-19 death toll. The ministry statement itself didn’t surprise Wakefield. Five times since July 2021,...

-The Telegraph The economic impact of heatwaves is steep India is feeling the heat in ways other than the rising prices. The ongoing heatwave, in which temperatures have shot above 45 degree Celsius in many parts of northwest and central India, highlights the rising climate risks and their attendant costs. Heatwaves, beginning earlier than in the past, are part of a changing climate whose defining features, in addition to the gradual rise...

-Newsclick.in Agri expert Devinder Sharma says today, as in the past, commodity trading, massive speculation and unfair terms of trade are behind rising food prices. As India battles food price inflation, Devinder Sharma, a well-known trade and agriculture expert, explains why Indian policymakers should boost farm incomes to revive the economy. “If farmers, comprising 50% of the country’s population, were to receive a higher income through a guaranteed MSP, it would create...

-Down to Earth Wheat straw is being sold at Rs 1,100-1,700 per quintal; it was being sold at Rs 400-600 per quintal last year Farmers across north Indian states are facing a shortage of dry fodder due to the wheat crisis, which in turn, has been primarily fuelled by an unusually hot March, according to farmers, agricultural scientists and experts. Many farmers chose to plant mustard instead of wheat this rabi season in...