-The Telegraph Lessons to take away from the two recent calamities in NorthEast It is never easy to rationalise tragedy. The two witnessed recently in the Northeast are no exceptions. One, the Assam floods in which the state’s two major rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Barak, and their tributaries wreaked havoc, killing nearly 200 people and, at one point, putting close to 4.5 million people in danger of starvation and disease. Two,...

-India.Mongabay.com * The allocation of Lands for new commercial coal mines is likely to renew issues related to the creation of Land banks in Jharkhand. * Common Lands that people use have been transferred to Land banks over the years, and physical surveys to record actual rights aren’t complete yet. * Lack of effective implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006 on forest Land (also part of Land banks) has been a major...

-The Hindu For public pressure to drive climate action, we need to consider climate catastrophes as largely man-made In the absence of COVID-19, climate change-induced disasters would have been India’s biggest red alert in recent years. The heatwave that scorched Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and New Delhi this year; torrential downpours in south India in 2021; and the super cyclone Amphan that battered West Bengal and Odisha in 2020 are symbols of...

-The Telegraph Senior official says deaths are highest in 'recorded' history of the state Guwahati: Assam has suffered 195 human casualties in the two waves of flood that have hit the state between April 6 and July 15 this year, leaving behind a trail of unprecedented destruction, affecting one third of the state’s over 3.2 crore population and triggering a massive rescue and relief operation. According to chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, besides...

-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for Land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...