-The Telegraph Amplifying the capacity of mangroves as bio-shields against extreme events possibly helped Bengal tap into MGNREGA funds Within weeks of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, I was watching video clips of the event at the Choto Mollakhali market in the Gosaba block of South 24 Parganas. One message that came through these video clips was that fewer lives were lost where there was coastal vegetation. This positively...

-Business Standard A victim of supply chain disruption is food. Even as the world looks towards India to fill the void created by the Russia-Ukraine war, a drop in paddy acreage is threatening to make the matter worse Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and amid challenges for global food supply, PM Narendra Modi declared that India was capable of "feeding the world". However, instead of feeding the world, the govt soon restricted...

-Down to Earth Lowest amount of rainfall in the last decade; climate change to blame, says Met Paddy cultivation in Jharkhand this Kharif season has taken a huge hit, with most farmers expecting a meagre yield. Monsoon 2022 saw a massive deficit in rainfall — the lowest in the last 10 years.  “I doubt I can harvest even a kilogramme of yield this year,” Mahendra Prasad told Down To Earth. The farmer in...

-Down to Earth Hurdles in availing financial support under Nikshay Poshan Yojana will exacerbate India’s tuberculosis crisis Only two-thirds of people living with tuberculosis benefitted from the Union government’s sole nutrition support scheme last year, highlighting bottlenecks in the fight against a major public health concern. The Nikshay Poshan Yojana entitles every tuberculosis (TB) patient, seeking treatment in either the public or private sector, to a direct benefit transfer (DBT) of Rs 500...

-IndiaToday.in From Assam to Odisha and in many other states, floods were a natural phenomenon. But we turned them into monsoon mayhem by squeezing our rivers. Here is why we must rethink our response to this annual crisis. Every monsoon, lakhs of people in Indian states such as Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are affected by floods when rivers swell and spread their waters amid pounding rain. Hundreds of men,...