-Business Standard Total horticulture production pegged at 333.3 million tonnes in 2021-22, outstripping foodgrains output again India’s potato and tomato production could be marginally less in 2021-22 as compared to the previous year while onion output could be almost 17 per cent more than last year, the first advance estimate of horticulture production released today said. The government also said that total horticulture production is estimated to be at 333.3 million tonnes, a...

-The Hindu Child Rights Commission tells SC that 1.47 lakh children lost a parent during the pandemic The Supreme Court is worried for children, some as young as six year old, whose parents suddenly died of COVID-19, leaving behind unpaid debts, mortgages, loans and insurance premiums. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has so far identified 1,47,773 children who have lost one parent and another 10,600 who have become orphans...

-Scroll.in There is an entangled web of issues related to caste, class and religion that defines disparate land imaginaries in the state. In Uttarakhand, land is a political flashpoint. A controversial 2018 law introduced by state legislature now allows outsiders to buy land in the Himalayan state. In 2018, as these laws were coming into force, I asked Bhim, an elderly man from a backward caste, what he thought about it all....

-The Hindu There are many indices of proof that seriously contradict the tall claims of employment generation in India Reports on and the visuals of the recent agitations by railway job applicants reveal a widespread problem of massive job insecurity among India’s youth. Alarming figures of unemployment have been recurrent even before the huge dislocation unleashed by lockdowns imposed in 2020-21 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much before the pandemic,...

-The Hindu There are signs that this pandemic has not followed the usual script — of the poor bearing the brunt of the pain COVID-19 has upended Indian society. Over two-thirds of the country has been infected by COVID-19 and perhaps five million or so people have died, directly or indirectly, from the pandemic. The economy too has taken a beating. Even though there has been a V-shaped recovery, output remains about...