-Citizen's Report on Year Two of the NDA-II Government 2020-2021: Promises and Reality, Civil Society Initiative, Coordinated by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan, released in July, 2021  “Promises & Reality – Citizens’ Report on the Year Two of the NDA II Government, 2020-21” is a collective work by eminent members and organisations of the Indian civil society. The report covers a wide array of concerns and issues in thematic areas including health,...

Forest fires are not just confined to countries like the United States of America (California, 2020), Brazil (Amazon forest, 2019-2020) or Australia (2019-20); they happen every year across many states in India too. Media reports suggest that forest fires have taken place in the recent months in Odisha's Simlipal National Park, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, among other states. Forest fires have also been reported this year in Nagaland-Manipur border (Dzukou...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-The Hindu With better governance, northern States can bring their health systems on a par with southern States In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been vociferous demands to strengthen the country’s public health system. Many erudite articles have stressed the need to revamp the system quickly so that we are better prepared to handle such emergencies in the future. Once the present crisis is over, however, public health will...

Large dams that cause environmental degradation and large-scale displacement, among other things, have been opposed in India by civil society organisations (CSOs), such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). A recently published study by the United Nations University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with other partner organisations reveals that tens of thousands of existing large...