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 There is an urgency to adopt global labour standards and improve national-level labour registries for home-based workers, organisation says in its new report There is a need to develop effective policies for home-based workers and ensure their proper implementation even as the practice had increased since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a new report. Just 10 countries had ratified the Convention on...

-The Hindu Federalism and good governance need engagement between people and officials, as the MGNREGA programme shows It is 45 days and counting since lakhs of farmers have gathered in Delhi protesting against the farm laws. Leaving aside the merits and demerits of the laws, many are aggrieved about the process of promulgation of the laws as it lacked any consultation with those that the laws are purportedly meant to serve. Very often,...

-Down to Earth This water causes diarrhoeal diseases that kill 800 children every day, mostly in India, Afghanistan and Congo To limit the spread of disease and reduce environmental pollution, human waste (excreta) needs to be safely contained and effectively treated. Yet 4.2 billion people, more than half of the world’s population, lack access to safe sanitation. In developing countries, each person produces, on average, six litres of toilet wastewater each day. Based...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...