-Scroll.in Frustrated by rules they see as onerous, a bunch of beauticians are speaking up – and sometimes being heard. Nidhi Chander* was full of hope until five years ago. That was when she gave up her job as a beautician at a unisex salon in Pitampura, Delhi, where she was earning Rs 20,000 a month, to work with Urban Clap. She believed the home services start-up would give her the freedoms...

-The Tribune In India, there is a concerted campaign to discredit the arhtiya, building the case for bringing in agri-business companies. There is certainly a need to regulate the middlemen, but the American experience shows how the consolidation of the meat industry, leading to market concentration in the hands of a few companies, is making it difficult for livestock farmers to survive. WHILE Indian policy makers and economists haven’t drawn any lessons...

-Down to Earth Jammu and Kashmir has lost very dense forests, while the North East is top in terms of total forest area loss There has been an INCrease in forest loss in India’s mountainous states along its Himalayan frontier, which are already in the throes of climate change, according to the latest report by the Forest Survey of India (FSI). India’s State of Forest Report is a biennial publication. The report for...

-The Telegraph With a per capita INCome at a whopping $2554, poverty is down; exports are up and GDP is fueled by both agriculture and manufacturing; but the downside is a growing nexus between politics and business There is justifiable pride all around at Bangladesh’s remarkable performance in both the economic and social development dimensions. “Pakistan and India don’t matter. We have done better than both!” The figures speak for themselves. The renowned...

-The Hindu India records 2,59,291 new cases on Thursday Like every wave in the past, cases fuelled by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have initially spread only in the urban areas. However, many rural and semi-rural places recorded a sharp spike in infections in the past week. At the start of this year, 50% of the cases were from urban centres such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. However, the share reduced to...