-Down to Earth Farmers in the state are not getting urea; if they are, it is at almost double the price Urea prices are skyrocketing in Chhattisgarh due to the government’s decisions these days. So bad is the situation that farmers are being forced to buy urea on the black market and then cultivate paddy at a higher cost and bear the losses. Due to this, farmers from Raipur, Mahasamund, Bilaspur and...

-Down to Earth Climate change, desertification and the sustainability-affordability linkage three extremely critical issues facing India today Bhupender Yadav, Union minister of environment, forests and climate change, released Down to Earth’s Annual State of India’s Environment Report 2022 at the Anil Agarwal Dialogue organised by Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) March 1, 2022. “Reducing consumption and forming a self-restrained society is the only way that we can live with nature...

-Down to Earth blog Women workers in garment industry share stories of gender discrimination, insensitive treatment and government apathy  The garment industry has long been under the microscope for flouting labour codes, breaking environmental norms, violating human rights, pay structures and much more. The women garment workers who attended an orientation workshop at a hotel on Delhi-Gurugram road October 2021, headed by Society for Labour and Development (SLD), know about these flaws. In...

-Down to Earth Since its launch in 2016, India’s flagship crop insurance scheme has seen a consistent fall in acreage and number of farmers covered Even if a single farmer’s crop is damaged in a village he will get the benefits of insurance  - Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said while launching the government’s flagship Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) from Madhya Pradesh in 2016. The words, however, mean nothing to the farmers...

-Newsclick.in India's recorded forest cover stands at 77.53 million ha. The forest cover on these lands is estimated to be 51.66 million ha- as much as 34% of the area classified as forests (25.87 million ha) is missing in the assessment. A Down to Earth (DTE) analysis has revealed many holes in the forest cover estimations of the recently released The India State of Forest Report 2021 (ISFR 2021). As per DTE,...