-Vikalp.ind.in During the late 1950s when villages near the Kyasanur Forest in Karnataka started to become crowded, farmers began to clear the forest to find new land for agriculture as well as for construction of houses and roads. This brought them to close contact with the primates in the forest. When Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) outbreak took place among monkeys, the virus did not take much time to jump species and...

-The Indian Express Privatisation does not make a self-reliant nation. A decentralised, people-centric approach to development will help Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of self-reliance was of simple living and self-sufficiency. The basic idea was to use local resources and a local workforce for the production of commodities for local consumption to the extent possible, with minimal dependence on the outside world. But the Indian government’s clarion call for “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India) has...

-Livemint.com Global warming, winter storms in the Arabian peninsula and pre-monsoon rains, all played a part As readers of this column will know, I host a weekly podcast called the Mint Climate Change Tracker which looks at the challenges posed by a rapidly heating planet. The second season began on 15 May with a new focus. Each episode now features an expert who helps demystify issues related to national and global conversations...

-The Indian Express A meaningful comparison of India with its largest neighbours — Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — is a much better way to understand the spread of the pandemic and assess the effectiveness of responses to contain it. A comparison of India’s situation with its neighbours is much more meaningful than the comparisons regularly put out by the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, where India is almost always...

-TheWire.in There remains a wide chasm between the financial resources committed in budgets and the actual expenditure aimed at providing social security benefits for workers. The unprecedented crisis that the unplanned lockdown pushed workers into has once again forced social activists and researchers to contemplate over whether a legislation passed in 2008 by parliament could have provided relief to workers. Careful scrutiny of the financial resources as committed in budgets and the actual...