-The Telegraph For me, the migrant worker crisis has become a much bigger crisis than Coronavirus, says Emmy nominated newscaster Barkha Dutt’s been living dangerously during the last 74 days. She’s leapt into trucks crammed with scores of migrant labourers hitching a lift back to their villages. She’s jumped onto a train about to pull out of Bangalore station and talked to migrant workers returning to Uttar Pradesh. She’s struggled into a...

In the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, desert locust swarms have been seen in parts of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh in the second half of May 2020. The recent attacks by desert locust swarms have caused massive crop damage, depletion in the stock of cattle fodder and destruction of green vegetation in these states. As on 25th May, 2020, over half of Rajasthan’s 33 districts were...

-The Wire Science NASA released a satellite image last year showing that India, with China, is “greening the world”. The greening has been thanks to the colonial ideologies that have bequeathed the legacy of greening India, which has been upheld by the subsequent governments. The BRItish drafted the first National Forest Policy for India to convert its forests into timber production stands. Decades later, the Indian government safeguarded these stands with...

-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...

-Moneycontrol.com The COVID-19 pandemic BRIngs a new perspective to the Sen vs Bhagwati 2014 debate. Just before the general elections in 2014, a rather unlikely fight erupted in the pink papers. In the Left corner, wearing what some people said were BRIght red shorts, was Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen. In the Right corner, wearing true blue shorts, was eminent trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati. The dispute was whether social welfare and health...