-Countercurrents.org In the death of Fr Stan Swamy on July 5, 2021, who was an “under trial” detainee languishing in the custody of the authorities, India has lost a courageous campaigner for adivasi rights. The manner in which the 84-year old Jesuit priest was forced to die has shaken the conscience of the nation. What hurts the feelings of any one with a true sense of justice is that the authorities...

-Down to Earth The water requirement for the Bunder mine and ore processing plant is about 5.9 million cubic meters in a year The proposed diamond mine in the Buxwaha protected forest region in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh may have a greater ecological impact on the region than projected so far.  The project threatens to further deplete the already scarce water reserve of the drought-prone Bundelkhand region to excavate about five million...

-Moneylife.in Amid reports of malfunctioning ventilators procured with support from the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund), there is a new revelation about different prices paid to the government-owned company and other private players.    As per information obtained by Delhi-based right to information (RTI) Activist, commodore (Cmde) Lokesh Batra (retd), the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) spent Rs2,332.22 crore for buying 58,850...

-The Hindu Business Line The development economist, now part of Tamil Nadu’s Economic Advisory Council, says that public expenditure on health is just 0.6 per cent of the state domestic product, one of the lowest ratios among Indian states * Universal quality education, health care and social security are still distant goals * A well-designed system of emergency cash transfers would be quite useful in this situation of recurrent crises, which may last...

-CBGAIndia.in India’s response to the pandemic has depended heavily on the exploited labour of women workers, most of them from marginalised backgrounds. These are ASHAs or Accredited Social Health Activists, the cadre of frontline health workers that has been mobilised for everything from door-to-door surveys, distributing medicine kits, measuring oxygen saturation, monitoring containment zones and spreading awareness about vaccines. 70,000 such women recently went on strike in Maharashtra demanding higher pay,...