-Down to Earth Land use degradation creates ground for zoonotic disease like COVID-19 as the interaction and physical distance between animals and humans gets closer Land use change, which prepares the ground for zoonoses like the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), should be reversed urgently, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has said. Over 70 per cent of all natural, ice-free land in the world is affected by human use, according to...

-Hindustan Times Move beyond State-market, rural-urban, agri-non agri and welfare-growth binaries. They are linked This has been a difficult three months for India. The policy response to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and the lockdown has forced it to confront long-ignored realities about the Indian Economy — its fragility, regional and spatial concentration and deep structural inequity. It also made visible sources of precarious resilience. Agriculture and associated supply chains, for instance, held...

-Newsclick.in Every step in the direction of opening agriculture to global trade – as announced in the three ordinances by the Modi government – is a step towards reducing domestic food availability. The tropical region can grow a variety of crops which either cannot be grown at all, or for much of the year, in the cold temperate regions of the world where metropolitan capitalism is located. These include beverages, fibres, vegetables...

-Down to Earth Distress among marginal farmers and unavailability of food to migrant labourers has been largely ignored in Union government’s economic stimulus   Agriculture and allied activities are considered ‘essential’ and officially face no restriction to harvest and supply to the market, even in the middle of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. But an agrarian crisis stemming from systemic failures needs to be considered for immediate policy response. The current distress...

-Livemint.com From an already low base, women’s employment has fallen further, and a recovery will be difficult A clutch of early studies on the impact of the lockdown on employment is showing that women’s employment could be particularly badly hit. Given India’s record low female workforce participation rates, growing child care demands, and a looming recession, researchers fear that women could be increasingly shut out of the productive Economy. To estimate the impact...