-Article-14.com In the sprawling rural hinterland beyond the Taj Mahal, in a region dotted with hospitals, we found a deluge of unreported and unrecorded sickness and death, because the administration of chief minister Yogi Adityanath discourages record keeping, restricts testing and insists the pandemic is under control. Agra (Uttar Pradesh): In normal times, only a few bodies were cremated every week at the Poiya Ghat crematorium in rural Agra, 12 km and...

-The Indian Express In a nation where access to education remains a fundamental issue and where an individual’s success largely depends on access to resources, shaped by socio-economic and caste advantages, 'merit' is just another form of discrimination. While a Public health crisis grips the nation, the recent incident at IIT Kharagpur where a professor named Seema Singh at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences allegedly made casteist slurs during a...

-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, dated 10th May, 2021 At a time when the country is facing the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, the need for a universal food security system has become all the more important. In a press statement dated 10th May, 2021, the Right to Food Campaign, a civil society group working for the elimination of hunger and undernutrition in the country, has expressed its shock and...

-Hindustan Times The Centre and states are at war, but India urgently needs a coordinated response. It’s not too late. But soon it will be In an influential paper published over a decade ago, the economist Lant Pritchett described India as a “flailing State” — in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national level (and, in some cases, state level) remained sound and functional but was no longer...

-Financial Express If patents continue to determine global access to vaccines and drugs, then fighting Covid-19 will remain a distant dream for most countries Vaccines are badly required by the world, as are drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, and medical equipment like ventilators and oxygen concentrators. A large number of countries, particularly low- and middle-income ones, are struggling to access vaccines, drugs and equipment. There cannot be a more important occasion than the...