-Society for Social and Economic Research Monograph 20/3 Key Messages Lack of planning and preparation by the Central government for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a massive blow to India’s economy and has caused enormous hardships to working people of the country. Harvesting of Rabi crops • Unplanned and sudden imposition of the lockdown resulted in a massive and unprecedented disruption to agricultural activities such as harvesting, sale of agricultural produce, and purchase...

-The Wire Science NASA released a satellite image last year showing that India, with China, is “greening the world”. The greening has been thanks to the colonial ideologies that have bequeathed the legacy of greening India, which has been upheld by the subsequent governments. The British drafted the FIRst National Forest Policy for India to convert its forests into timber production stands. Decades later, the Indian government safeguarded these stands with...

-The Indian Express Locust attack tracker: The locust menace also hit Andhra Pradesh. In Tamil Nadu too, swarms of a locust species attacked banana, rubber and other crops in some districts. With India battling the worst desert locust outbreak in three decades, the insects have now damaged crops in five states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra — with the Centre issuing a warning to 12 states. With locusts devastating...

-Hindustan Times “It was a small swarm, and spread across 1km-by-1km,” Suwa Lal Jat, joint director of plant protection in Rajasthan’s agriculture department said on Monday. Jaipur: A new swarm of locusts entered Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer on Sunday, officials said Monday. This is the fifth swarm to enter the state in four days from its western border with Pakistan. Since the FIRst locust swarm invaded the state’s Sriganganagar district from Pakistan’s Baluchistan on April...

-Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, January-June, 2020 This note analyses the impact of the lockdown – which brought almost all economic and public activity in India to a halt – on a select group of villages based on a rapid assessment survey conducted by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS) in April 2020. The survey was conducted through telephone interviews of 52 informants from 21 villages across 10...