Livemint While India staged a double-digit rebound in household consumption in FY22 which is set to expand at over 7% this fiscal, experts point out that India’s consumption story has a weakness — rural folk tightening their belt in the face of inflation.  The silver lining is that the worst may be over, unless El Nino conditions disrupt the arrival of the rains and dampen a consumption revival, experts said. Gross domestic product...

Hindu Businessline El Nino is one piece in the mammoth jigsaw puzzle that the Pacific Ocean and its seasonal climatic patterns typify. Being the largest single body of water, the Pacific has an outsized influence on weather and climate across the globe. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water gets pushed back East of the Pacific, towards the West coast of the Americas.  Generally, El Niño occurs more frequently than...

-The Hindu Women on period not allowed to have meals with men, legislators say citing custom Guwahati: A proposed Bill on granting a day’s leave to school and college-going girls and women in jobs was not found worthy of discussion in the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly. Congress MLA Ninong Ering had on March 11 brought a private member’s resolution seeking the introduction of a bill granting menstrual leave “as it is very disturbing for...

-The Telegraph Below-normal and drought are the new normal. Since 2012 there has only been one normal monsoon. Monsoons follow their own patterns, unpredictable as they may be. In the past, certain periods, spanning a decade or sometimes two, have had higher frequencies of droughts and at the moment, we seem to be stuck in such a cycle. Between 1900 and the year 2000, there was one drought per decade. But...

-The Hindu Decreasing monsoon rainfall is associated with natural changes in the subtropical Pacific Ocean Northeast India, one of the wettest places on the Earth has been experiencing rapid drying, especially in the last 30 years. Some places which used to get as high as 3,000 mm of rain during the monsoon season have seen a drop of about 25-30%. A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, and...