-Business Standard Since jobs will remain scarce for the foreseeable future, an unemployment allowance should be the next big social-security initiative, writes T N Ninan Crises in the Indian economy used to be the “normal”. In the 12 years from 1962 to 1974, India fought three wars, suffered four droughts that produced famine in places like Bihar, and lived through the first oil shock, which saw a quadrupling of crude oil prices. The...

-Down to Earth The Kala Talab has been filled with fly ash and soil to build residential colonies in the east Rajasthan city on the Chambal, resulting in crocodile deaths Some 50 mugger crocodiles have died in the last one month in a prominent waterbody of Rajasthan’s Kota city as a result of it being filled up for developmental activities, locals and wildlife activists have alleged. The Kala Talab (‘black pool’) is connected...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-The Telegraph They also torched the office of a weigh bridge and damaged it, pelted stones and blocked roads, demanding that all should get adequate bonds to store their produce Jalpaiguri: Violence sparked in three locations on the outskirts of Jalpaiguri town, on Thursday as hundreds of potato farmers, who crowded in front of cold storages to collect bonds to store their produce, resorted to protests after alleging anomalies in the distribution...

-Down to Earth China and India might be some of the countries where the green transition may also be slowed down because Russia would shift their energy exports to them, experts say India used 13 per cent more coal to generate electricity in 2021 than the previous year, given the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This figure is going to increase in the future,...