-The Indian Express Anganwadi workers, teachers, nurses are paid low salaries, their work devalued Frontline workers providing basic services through various government programmes form the backbone of the country’s social welfare system. India’s ability to achieve its SDGs or to have a healthy skilled workforce that contributes towards economic progress or social and human development depends to a large extent on the performance of teachers, nurses, anganwadi workers, panchayat secretaries and...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The Indian Express Data collated from the Reserve Bank of India over the last five years shows that growth in credit outstanding for the priority sector has traditionally been rising at a much faster rate than the growth in gross bank credit An uptick in the economy is clear from the improvement in gross bank credit availability but unlike in the past, lending to the priority sector continues to trail, posting single-digit...

-The Hindu The Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 2018 increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters The National Democratic Alliance government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target areas that have retained some degree of ecological value to turn them into sites for industrial production. This is despite evidence of the damaging effects of such policies. The latest instance of this is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification...

-Mongabay.com * In three years, India’s environment ministry approved diversion of over 20,000 hectares of forest land for developmental projects like mining, thermal power plants, irrigation, road and railway projects across India. * Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha together account for over 62 percent of the total forest land diverted during this period. * Diversion of forests for non-forestry projects has always been a contentious issue in India especially in light of poor...