KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-Hindustan Times The National Remote Sensing Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation has released satellite images of Joshimath, the Uttarakhand town gradually sinking because of land subsidence. It has revealed that a rapid subsidence of 5.4 centimeters has been recorded in 12 days between December 27, 2022 and January 8, 2023. The 12-day period of subsidence has been rapid, because between April 2022 and November 2022, Joshimath saw a slow...

The Telegraph/PTI A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha, however, refused to list the plea for urgent hearing The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a plea on January 16 seeking it’s intervention to declare the crisis in Uttarakhand's land subsidence-hit Joshimath as a national disaster. A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha, however, refused to list the plea, filed by Swami...

-The Telegraph Slushy water is eroding underground rock, accelerating the subsidence in parts of the town, geologist Piyoosh Rautela tells The Telegraph New Delhi: Piyoosh Rautela, a professional geologist, has scrambled over the past week to manage a crisis in Joshimath he had warned about 12 years ago — a spike in the central Himalayan town’s sinking rate triggered by the sudden release of underground water. The water discharge from a burst aquifer...

-Hindustan Times The meeting came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over the Joshimath land subsidence issue and reviewed the situation with Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has held a high-level review meeting on the land subsidence activities in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath and a team of central agencies and experts are assisting the state government to prepare short, medium and long-term remedial measures to deal with...