-CaravanMagazine.in As swarms of desert locusts descended upon India this year, toxic insecticides were sprayed over two lakh hectares of land to contain their spread. But the measure could have serious environmental and health consequences. India’s Locust Warning Organization, or LWO, a body under the ministry of agriculture, uses fifteen different formulations of eight insecticides for controlling their spread. Five of these insecticides are banned, restricted or withdrawn in one or...
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The Lockdown Revealed the Extent of Poverty and Misery Faced by Migrant Workers -Arabinda K. Padhee, Basanta K. Kar and Pranab R Choudhury
-TheWire.in This lockdown hunger is not the only worry. Post-COVID, access to safe and nutritious foods would be uncertain if adequate policy measures are not taken. The COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened India’s hunger and malnutrition woes, more so for the millions of informal workers, on their way back home or struggling to meet two ends in their urban and rural homes. Their embedded informality over labour, land and housing tenure has...
More »There’s no one to fill Mahalanobis’s shoes -Atanu Biswas
-The Hindu India needs a top statistician to frame data-based policies for welfare and development In Poverty and Famines (1981), Amartya Sen argued that poor distribution of food, wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding were important reasons for the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, while Madhusree Mukerjee, in her 2010 book, Churchill’s Secret War, wrote of the role of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his wartime Cabinet’s decisions and “denial policy”...
More »EIA Legitimised Environmental Destruction. Now, Govt ‘Renovates’ it for the Worst. -Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli
-TheWire.in The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), a legal process that effectively grants projects like mines, dams and industries access to land, water, forests and other environmental resources has been used in India since 1994. On March 12, 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, the environment ministry put out a draft proposal to amend the EIA norms. The last date for public comments is June 30, 2020. The EIA was designed within...
More »Lockdown further impoverishes those who were living on the edges of existence even during normal times, finds a new report
A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...
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