-The Telegraph 'It is on the verge of losing status as a democracy due to shrinking space for media and civil society' More people are living under autocracies than under democracies across the world and India’s “steep decline” on democratic traditions despite electoral politics is a contributing factor to the global surge in autocratisation. India has also been put among the top 10 autocratising countries. This is one of the conclusions of a study...

-The Hindu If doctors have a duty to provide care then what about the value of reciprocity: does society not have a duty to support those who assume the burden to buttress the public good? During the lockdown I come across a number of stories in the press that are in some way related. A woman in Bengal was refused admission into a government hospital and eventually gave birth in an autorickshaw....

-The Hindu The projects, including mining and a highway, were brought up during virtual conferences; but site inspections are ‘a crucial component’ of project evaluation, say scientists Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh has a decidedly other-worldly feel. “Yeh kaunsi duniya hai,” my colleague exclaimed as we climbed the towering mountains — home to the endemic goat-antelope Mishmi takin, the ‘bright-eyed’ butterfly Callerebia dibangensis, and the Mishmi wren-babbler. I had read about the...

A recent survey conducted by National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) -- a Delhi-based non-profit organisation -- shows how persons with disabilities in the country were disproportionately affected by the COVID–19 crisis. The report by NCPEDP has observed that persons with disabilities, particularly those from economically deprived sections, went through severe hardship during the lockdown. Without sufficient access to food or money, many of them faced hunger...

-The Indian Express The survey has found a “very strong association between food insecurity & farm size, with landless farmers 10 times more likely to skip a meal in the past month compared to large farmers”. Preliminary findings of a survey of more than 1,000 agricultural households across 12 Indian states show that 60% of those who did harvest reported a yield loss, and 1/10th of them could not harvest their crop...