-Scroll.in One simple strategy: protect birds that eat the predatory insects. As India struggles to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, it faces a new challenge. Several parts of the country have experienced heavy infestations of locusts – an insect that devours crops and foliage, often leaving devastation in its wake. If there’s a silver lining to this cloud, it is that India has two centuries of experience in dealing with locust swarms. India’s Locust...

-India Spend Dungarpur: Hunger and malnutrition are likely to become more acute among young children and pregnant and lactating women in Rajasthan’s tribal belt as community health workers, who deliver public nutrition schemes, struggle with the food shortages caused by the ongoing lockdown, our field report shows. The delivery of food and ration kits for vulnerable social groups has also been impacted by the extra load of COVID-19 duties assigned to the...

-Hindustan Times The Locust Warning Organisation (LWO) sprayed Malathion 96 and Chlorpyrifos, both organophosphate pesticides, to control the locust swarms across states. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations said on Friday that it may declare the locust invasion a plague if it takes a turn for the worse after breeding by the voracious, crop-crunching insects in India, Pakistan and West Africa. FAO now categorises the locust invasion that has...

-Livemint.com * A ground report reveals pervasive hunger and undernourishment in rural India awash with returning migrants * Just providing rice and wheat at a highly subsidized price may not be enough when day jobs are scant and families have no cash in hand BANDA: Thanks to an all-familiar power cut in the evening, it’s pitch dark in Jhandupurva village. A few torch lights from smart phones pierce through the darkness and illuminate...

-The Telegraph How a put-down propelled Minz to helm of Dumka Varsity Sonajharia Minz still remembers the stinging comment: “Tumse na ho payega (You’re not good enough).” These words from her school maths teacher in Ranchi had propelled Minz, an Oraon tribeswoman from Gumla district in present-day Jharkhand, to resolutely pursue higher studies in mathematics. “I couldn’t get into an English-medium school as I was an Adivasi. But I did well at St Margaret’s,...