-The Hindu The Pandora Papers have only highlighted the need for concerted steps to alter the global financial architecture The Pandora Papers, published on October 3, once again expose the illegal activities of the rich and the mighty across the world. The Pandora Papers investigation is “the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration, involving more than 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries”. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has researched...

-The Hindu ‘Private hospitals procure vaccines directly from manufacturers, so no data available’ The Health Ministry says it does not know how many COVID-19 vaccines were procured by private players, nor does it have separate data on how many vaccine doses were administered by private hospitals and service providers, according to its response to a Right to Information request filed by Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd). Despite the fact that the government had reserved...

-The Hindu The Quarterly Employment Survey for the April-June quarter throws up some perplexing numbers The Labour Bureau released the results of the All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (QES) for the first quarter (FQ) of 2021 (April to June). The survey covers establishments employing 10 or more workers in the organised segment in nine sectors (manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/BPO, and financial service activities). These sectors account...

-Hindustan Times HT has analysed unit-level data from the latest Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (SAS) to answer some of these questions. Have tractors finally replaced bullock carts and private dairies the milk-animal in the Indian farmer’s house? Vigilante groups (“gau rakshaks”) claiming to be protecting cows have been making news (for the wrong reasons) in the past few years in India....

-The Hindu Average precipitation tendency has been decreasing, especially the monsoon rains: IMD official Chandigarh: The hill state of Himachal Pradesh has been gradually witnessing lesser snow in the past decade and the area under the snow is also decreasing. The trend triggered by climate change has alarmed environmentalists, considering the importance of seasonal snow cover as a major input in controlling the hydrology of the river basins in the ecological fragile...