-Livemint.com * The pandemic-induced global pause resulted in several visible environmental gains. Will they last? * A controversy is brewing over the government’s efforts to push through radical changes to the country’s environmental laws, which seek to further dilute environmental protections NAGPUR: Teeming wildlife; cities breathing fresh air; and clearer rivers. Those were all small signs of hope amid a dire, once-in-a-century pandemic. Nature was supposedly healing. At one point in April, an...

-Down to Earth Instead of putting Punjab farMers at the Mercy of big corporates and private players, there is a need to strengthen existing infrastructure The Union government announced three agriculture-related ordinances as part of its novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) relief package — permitting agricultural trade outside the boundaries of market committees, easing regulation and control under the Essential Commodities Act and facilitating contract farming. Out of these, the FarMers’ Produce Trade and...

On June 5th this year, the Stranded Workers Action Network, comprising volunteers from various civil society groups, academics and students enrolled in university education, released its third report entitled ‘To Leave or Not to Leave? Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and Their Journeys Home’. Among other things, the latest report states that nearly four-fifth of migrant workers (out of 5,911) who called SWAN volunteers for help (altogether 821 distress calls were made)...

-The Hindu Leaders should act on the climate crisis with the same alacrity they have shown towards COVID-19 Two interrelated curves began their upward trend two centuries ago with the advent of the industrial age. The first curve was the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (or, more generally, all greenhouse gases, GHGs) and the second was the average global temperature curve. An upward trend Actually, the CO2 curve began its upward march about 18,000...

-The New Indian Express On this single parameter, many Indians would surely fare worse than white AMericans, as the forMer’s almost spontaneous animus against Africans is no less vicious. We are all aware of the large-scale protests, some violent, that shook the United States soon after videos showing how white police officers Mercilessly caused the death of a black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis went viral. As ‘coloured’ people, our natural sympathies...