-TheWire.in States like Delhi (despite its unique multi-party governance architecture), West Bengal, Kerala (or even Goa and Sikkim) perform better compared to UP when it comes to being measured for securing access to basic social, economic services. In a veiled attack against BJP’s political opponents, accusing them of promising ‘freebies’ (revdi) in exchange for electoral votes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday cautioned people, especially the youth, against this “revdi culture”, saying...

-The Telegraph Lessons to take away from the two recent calamities in NorthEast It is never easy to rationalise tragedy. The two witnessed recently in the Northeast are no exceptions. One, the Assam floods in which the state’s two major rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Barak, and their tributaries wreaked havoc, killing nearly 200 people and, at one point, putting close to 4.5 million people in Danger of starvation and disease. Two,...

-RuralIndiaOnline.com In this region of the Himalayas, shepherds brave the wet and cold weather to graze their sheep and goats. They also protect them from wild animals on the Gangotri range where they live for up to nine months a year “In a year we lose many animals to leopards. They come at night and snatch them away,” says shepherd Gaur Singh Thakur. Even the native Bhutia dog, Sheroo, cannot keep them...

-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-TheWire.in * A position paper drafted by a group of experts under the National Education Policy 2020 advances a misguided idea of nutrition couched in the language of nationalism. * The paper recommends that meat and eggs be removed from midday meals and from children’s lessons, but on unscientific grounds and through statements devoid of evidence. * The paper also uses conflates wildly different – and potentially Dangerous – terms like “gene-diet interactions”,...