-The Hindu Agency failed to gauge the magnitude of the excess rainfall in 2019, 2020 The India Meteorological Department (IMD) may introduce new monsoon models this year to better forecast changes in rainfall. At a day-long meet, via videoconference, involving several senior meteorologists across the IMD’s offices and those from affiliated climate research institutes, discussions took place on the accuracy of the existing models, emerging weather models and their strengths and weaknesses in...

-Hindustan Times The average annual per capita income of households interviewed in the LASI survey conducted in 2017-18 is ₹44,901. This is just about 39% of the per capita income in the same year according to the National Account Statistics India’s per capita annual income in 2019-20 was ₹1,26,968, according to provisional estimates published on January 7. This average, given India’s large income inequality, is not representative of the earnings of average...

-Hindustan Times CAG reports in the past have been questioned by critics, for instance its estimate that the 2007-2008 allocation of 2G spectrum had caused a notional loss to the exchequer of ₹1.76 lakh crore, and that the allotment of coal blocks had caused a similar loss of ₹1.86 lakh crore. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), Girish Chandra Murmu, says the government auditor is adopting a policy of “constructive...

A recent report by Christian Aid -- an international NGO based out of London -- says that the world was not just hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it actually faced massive loss of lives and livelihoods owing to the intensification of the ongoing climate crisis. Climate-related disasters varied from fires in Australia and the United States, floods in China, India and Japan to storms in Europe and the...

-Down to Earth Bihar reported the highest prevalence of the disease   A higher proportion of children under the age of five in the villages had diarrhoea than their counterparts in the cities in 17 of the 22 Indian states and Union territories (UT) covered by the 2019-2020 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5). This urban-rural gap was significant in Maharastra — in the two weeks prior to the survey, 6.6 per cent children...