-The Pioneer Diwali is four days away, and the state of Delhi’s air has gone to the dogs with the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) stating on Sunday that air pollution has spiked to severest “Dark red”, strengthening arguments of many who claimed that the Supreme Court was “misled into believing that banning firecrackers during Diwali would clean city’s air”. The worsening pollution level substantiates their argument that the problem lies somewhere...
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A farmer's dilemma: Can stubble be more than just waste? -Ritam Halder and Joydeep Thakur
-Hindustan Times With no viable alternative, thousands of farmers set their fields on fire despite being aware of the consequences of the act on the air they breathe. A look at the possible solutions. As the thick white smoke, billowing from a corner of the field filled the air, a 63-year-old farmer was busy moving some of the still-burning hay with a shovel. He was spreading it to another corner to allow the...
More »Pesticide deaths stalk Yavatmal fields: 18 dead, over 800 farmers in hospital -Vivek Deshpande
-The Indian Express The Agriculture Department has meanwhile rushed two ‘Quality Control’ probe teams to Yavatmal and Akola to check if some of the pesticides were spurious. Yavatmal (Maharashra): Devidas Madavi, 57, a farm hand from Kalamb town in Yavatmal district, took up the job of spraying pesticides for the first time this year. By August 19, 12 days after he had used a can to spray pesticides in the cotton fields...
More »UP: Some comic no relief -Abheek Barman
-The Economic Times blog In 2016-17, the average Indian earned Rs 1.12 lakh a year, about Rs 9,300 every month. That year, the average person in Kerala made Rs 1.98 lakh a year, a monthly income of Rs 16,500. Uttar Pradesh is home to 200 million people, the combined population of Italy, South Korea and Spain. Each average person in UP earns Rs 72,300 every year, around Rs 6,000 per month. The...
More »Has the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Brought a Paradigm Shift in Rural Sanitation? -Santosh Mehrotra and Vinod Mishra
-TheWire.in Innovate methods are being used to encourage people to end open defecation, but issues like the underutilisation of funds and use of coercive methods to achieve targets remain. The government has run rural sanitation programmes since the 1980s. Yet, according to Census 2011, only about 30% of all rural households have toilets, and even fewer use those toilets. By contrast, under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, several changes have taken place. Efforts towards...
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