-Newsclick.in The swollen River Ganga is posing a serious threat of floods in state capital Patna as well, as water has entered low lying areas in past 48 hours. Patna: More than 17 lakh people have been affected by the floods in Bihar. The floods have claimed the lives of half a dozen people, washed away hundreds of thatched huts, severely damaged houses, roads, bridges and standing crops worth crores, officials said...

-Down to Earth The Taliban are set to overtake Kabul; but an expert believes they will spare the age-old Karez system of underground aqueducts in the country given its importance The resurgent Taliban is on the victory march to Kabul. It has already taken provincial capitals as well as Afghanistan’s third-largest city of Herat. As the Taliban appear at the gates of Kabul again after two decades, fears have grown about what...

-Scroll.in The pandemic has starkly revealed that India has failed to provide even basic health-care to the majority of its citizens. As the gravest health emergency to overwhelm the globe in a century continues to rage, the unbridled Covid-19 virus has laid bare the abject failure of India’s health system to secure even elementary levels of health-care for its people. Everything fell short disastrously, sometimes catastrophically: hospital beds, doctors, nurses, testing kits, medical...

-Livemint Lounge Climate change is making the monsoon more erratic and violent. Lounge speaks to experts to understand the forces shaping India's season of rains When we talk about climate change impacts, the word that’s often used is “unprecedented”, that which can’t be measured by any given yardstick. Something unprecedented happened over the Western Ghats between 19-25 July. For about a week, a large section of the range, especially in Maharashtra, was...

-Down to Earth The need of the hour is to put halt large hydel-power projects in the Himalayas. Can small hydropower plants offer a sustainable solution? Hydropower is a renewable and non-polluting source of energy. India has an economically exploitable and viable hydropower potential, which is estimated to be about 84,000 megawatt at 60 per cent load factor. It has an installed capacity of 148,701 MW, according to the National Hydroelectric Power...