-Hindustan Times Creation of jobs, or the lack of a sufficient number of them, has moved to the centre stage of political discourse ahead of the upcoming general elections. New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s National Career Portal — the revamped employment exchange — managed to find 707,000 jobs in 2016-17, or jobs for just 1.8% of the 39.1 million people registered with it, Parliament’s Estimates Committee has observed, HT...

-The Hindu The Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 2018 increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters The National Democratic Alliance government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target areas that have retained some degree of ecological value to turn them into sites for industrial production. This is despite evidence of the damaging effects of such policies. The latest instance of this is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification...

-Hindustan Times The agrarian crisis is one of the factors that may have resulted in the BJP’s loss in three Hindi heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December, according to analysts, and the party clearly doesn’t want it to affect its prospects in the 2019 parliamentary elections. New Delhi: This financial year, 2018-19 could end up being the worst year for farm incomes in almost two decades, government data...

-Counterview.net Sharply contesting the Government of India claim that “open defecation has been entirely or largely eliminated” in the Hindi belt, a recent study, “Changes in open defecation in rural north India: 2014-2018” has found that “between 42% to 57% of rural people over two years old defecate in the open” in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Based on a survey of 1,558 households involving 9,812 individuals, and 156 “qualitative...

-Mongabay.com * In three years, India’s environment ministry approved diversion of over 20,000 hectares of forest land for developmental projects like mining, thermal power plants, irrigation, road and railway projects across India. * Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha together account for over 62 percent of the total forest land diverted during this period. * Diversion of forests for non-forestry projects has always been a contentious issue in India especially in light of poor...