-Article-14.com As the Supreme Court demands an oxygen-supply plan from the Centre, caught off guard by an exploding pandemic, the Collector of a remote, tribal district tells us how he set up five oxygen plants ahead of the second Covid wave. New Delhi: In a hearing on 5 May 2021, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to, within a day, present a plan to provide hospitals of Delhi the 900 metric tonnes...

-Press release by International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems dated 30th March, 2021 * New report sounds alarm on control of food tech, farming data, and corporate takeover of UN multilateral agencies. * Civil society  and social movements can fight back, boosting post-pandemic resilience, slashing agriculture’s GHG emissions by 75%, and shifting $4 trillion to sustainable food and farming. The future planned by agribusiness giants could accelerate environmental breakdown and jeopardize...

When a massive sum of public money is spent on a programme like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA)--a demand-driven programme, there is likelihood of financial misappropriations and mismanagement. Thankfully there are checks and balances in the rural employment guarantee legislation to counter such malpractices. It is worth noting that the total allocation under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) for 2020-21 was Rs. 1,11,500.00 crore (R.E.), up...

-The Hindu Allowing a scribe for candidate not largesse, says bench The government is not conferring a “largesse” on disabled people by facilitating a scribe during the course of the Civil Services Examination, the Supreme Court held in a judgment on Thursday. The Union Public Service Commission and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), by allowing a scribe, are not allowing them a “privilege”, a Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud declared...

Commenting on the recently released fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data for 17 states and five Union Territories (UTs) in an article published in The Indian Express (dated 6th January, 2021), Arvind Subramanian and his co-authors have stated that India has made progress on certain outcomes, including infant mortality rate (IMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and neonatal mortality rate (NNMR). Relying on various rounds of NFHS data,...