The year 2022 was supposed to mark the recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns of the preceding two years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February pushed up prices of food, fuel and fertilizer worldwide. In India consumer price inflation, which had declined to under 5 percent in the September-November period of 2021, has steadily increased, staying above 6 percent throughout 2022.    What happened to rural incomes in 2022? An...

On 6 February, 2023 Southern Turkey and the adjoining areas in Syria were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by several aftershocks. The tremors have flattened buildings and destroyed roads and other infrastructure. At least 35,000 casualties (UPDATE) have occurred across Turkey and Syria, with the vast majority being in the former nation. A news report cited the Turkish environment minister saying that 24,921 buildings across the region had collapsed. What...

Shashikant Warishe was mowed down allegedly by the subject of his last report on a controversial refinery - Newslaundry “He was the only journalist who covered the refinery protests…From the time the protests began until now, he covered everything…other newspapers barely gave coverage to the issue. People here liked him a lot because he was the sole journalist who cared about their issues.” That’s how Dipak Joshi remembers his friend Shashikant Warishe,...

Medianama The Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) floated a second tender in December 2022 for implementation and maintenance of a Master Data Management and de- duplication tool for a State Family Database (SFDB) project. The objective is to assign the ‘Makkal ID’— a unique identification number already allotted to the state’s seven crore residents— to different records across departments. The SFDB is projected to be the “single source of truth” of all...

The World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2022, released in December 2022, provides its readers a plethora of useful statistics and data across the countries pertaining to agriculture and food security. The yearbook by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) primarily covers four themes -- Economic Dimensions of Agriculture; Production, Trade and Prices of Commodities; Food Security and Nutrition; and Sustainability and Environmental Aspects of Agriculture.  While going through the report,...