-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-Down to Earth More than half of population without access to banking lives in 7 developing countries: World Bank India is among seven countries home to half the world’s 1.4 billion adults without access to formal banking, a recent World Bank report has flagged. The report also noted that in Sub-Saharan Africa, young adults (ages 15–24) make up almost 40 per cent of those without access to banking. But in some European and...

-Down to Earth The administration, however, has not compensated other Mitanins’ work adequately and has thus been misusing their sense of social commitment 50-year-old Saraswati Kaushik’s day starts at 5 am. After preparing food for the family and an hour or two of farm work, she goes for home visits in her ‘para’ (locality) to check on pregnant mothers, infants, kids below five years of age, elderly people in need of treatment...

-Mongabay.com - Perennial waterlogging in agricultural fields of Charkhi Dadri is making them uncultivable. Farmers are adopting alternate occupations or taking land on lease in other villages to continue farming. - While groundwater scarcity is a problem in many parts of North India, some 319 villages in Haryana have the opposite issue of waterlogging because of high groundwater levels. - Government interventions, saline water draining attempts and subsidies for crop diversification, along with...

-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated 30 January, 2022 The stress on the economy became evident, especially in the aftermath of the raging pandemic from the 7.3% contraction in GDP in 2020-21. The distress faced by poorer households has continued over a period of time with the pandemic acting as a catalyst in increasing the woes of such households. In a latest round of survey conducted by People’s Research on...