-Hindustan Times During the Union Budget presentation, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday had announced that 2022-23 will be considered as the International Year of Millets. “Support will be provided for post-harvest value addition, enhancing domestic consumption, and for branding millet products nationally and internationally,” Sitharaman had said. The government’s assurance will boost states like Karnataka which has moved in the direction to diversify and incentivise production of these super foods. Please click...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Releases new report that presents irrefutable evidence of the benefits of non-chemical agriculture * Yesterday’s Budget promises to promote chemical-free natural farming, but it is a half-hearted promise at best, as no separate allocation has been made in it, says CSE * CSE’s asks: Invest in organic and natural farming. Make it a mass movement New Delhi, February 2, 2022: “Despite the push given to it through periodic...

-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency dated 2nd November, 2021 * India’s 250 million children returning to school after 18 months of school closures and devastating learning loss * The NCEE warns that re-opening schools cannot be “return to school” as normal, and lack of a comprehensive approach will deepen the existing education inequality * Education recovery efforts require a multi-year, radically new approach, NCEE says NEW DELHI: The overwhelming majority...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...