-Newsclick.in With wheat stocks at a 14-year low and procurement at a 20-year low, how is the ration system going to deliver this staple to crores of people? At the end of June this year, government procurement of wheat was about 188 lakh tonnes, dramatically down by 57% from last year’s 433 lakh tonnes, as per official figures. This is the lowest procurement amount in the last two decades. It was back...

-Newsclick.in The relatively new and fragile start-up ecosystem is not a solution to the larger problem of pauperisation of the working population of the country. In May 2022, a report in the magazine, The Economist, claimed that “a novel confluence of forces stands to transform India’s economy over the next decade, improving the lives of 1.4 billion people and changing the balance of power in Asia. Technological leaps, the energy transition, and...

-Newsclick.in Politics, not facts, have weaponised demographic claims in India, but the population is still heading for a decline, and that’s true for all communities. For decades, Indian politics has revolved around the bogey of ‘explosive’ population growth. Population is routinely blamed for virtually every socio-economic problem in the country. Until the 1990s, governments actively pursued population ‘control’ measures through means fair and foul. What few mention is that effectively, India’s TFR...

-Newsclick.in In the Health and Survival subindex, India was ranked 146, behind Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. India has ranked 135th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report 2022. On a scale of 0 to 1,India has scored 0.629, which is its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years. However, India has fared more poorly in the subindex Economic Participation and Opportunity, where it ranked 143, falling behind neighboring...

-Newsclick.in As landslides plague Garhwal Himalayas, geologist YP Sundriyal says it confirms scientists’ fear that geologically weak areas will destabilise during monsoons. Leading geologist Prof YP Sundriyal teaches the subject at the Hemavati Bahuguna Garhwal University. In this interview with Newsclick, Sundriyal, who specialises in the Garhwal region of the Himalayan range, expresses concern about the rising frequency of landslides. He believes the government must set up a special fund to maintain...