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 India’s leaders must recommit themselves to the ideas and activism of environmentalists involved with Uttarakhand Following flash floods at Chamoli in Uttarakhand, defence personnel are looking for missing persons in a mélange of rock, mud, water, and debris, airlifting rations to inaccessible villages, and repairing bridges and telecommunication networks. Social scientists are assessing the disaster’s impact on the region’s economy. Scientists and policy makers are debating whether climate change or...

-Hindustan Times Most forecasters, institutional and private, have revised their GDP estimates for both 2020-21 and 2021-22. India imposed one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns -- it went on for 68 days -- starting on March 25 to curb the spread of Covid-19 infections. It was this lockdown which triggered a record contraction of 24% in India’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of fiscal 2020-21. The economic shock...

-The Hindu The Uttarakhand government continues to ignore Evidence that hydropower projects in the fragile region exacerbate disasters In 2018, while travelling through the villages near the India-China border in Niti Valley in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, I stopped at Reni village, the birthplace of the iconic Chipko movement. The way to Reni was dotted with hydropower projects that were marred by controversy. The villagers complained about the rampant flouting of norms by...

-Hindustan Times While it is a welcome attempt to provide worth to housework, steps to reduce and redistribute such work are perhaps more important than asking for women’s unpaid work to be monetised, even notionally. They are important to ensure women’s rights and a sense of social justice. In January, the Supreme Court directed an insurance company to pay a higher claim amount by taking into account the unpaid work performed by...