In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few. Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...
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Locust invasions in a number of Indian states have arisen out of climate change induced extreme rainfalls in desert areas
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...
More »Extreme weather events destroying our economy in a big way, indicates official data
Sporadic natural events like floods and droughts have made headlines in recent times. An official report, which was released in April this year, among other things, shows that extreme weather events have taken a huge toll on both human and cattle lives, personal property and crops grown by farmers and farm workers. A chapter on extreme weather events and natural disasters in the report entitled EnviStats India 2019, Vol. I: Environment...
More »PM Fasal Bima Yojana is suffering from low coverage since the last 2 years
The budgetary allocation for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) as a proportion of total budgetary expenditure has been reduced marginally during the Interim Budget 2019-20. It may have happened because the coverage of gross cropped area under the scheme could not keep pace with the target that was set during the last two years. The Status of Implementation of Budget Announcements 2017-18, which was presented during the Union Budget 2018-19,...
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KEY TRENDS • In 2017-18, 24.8 percent of rural working-age men and 74.5 percent of rural working-age (viz. 15-59 years) women were not employed. In urban areas, 25.8 percent of working-age men and 80.2 percent of working-age women were not employed AB • Both the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) and the Consumer Pyramids Survey of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE-CPDX) report the overall unemployment rate to be around 6 per cent in 2018,...
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