-The Telegraph At the same time, health officials iterated that people need two doses for full immunisation The Union health ministry on Thursday claimed the Covid-19 vaccines used in India offered nearly the same protective effect against death after the first dose as after the second dose, baffling experts who said the claim contradicted research and observations. At the same time, health officials iterated that people need two doses for full immunisation. An exercise...

-Counterview.net The people of Kendrapada district of Odisha are fighting peacefully for last two years to save their river Kharasrota. This river is the lifeline of farmers, fishing communities and other communities living besides the river. The Kharasrota river is the source of life and livelihoods for the people of Odisha in general and people of Kendrapada and Jajpur in particular. The successive governments have failed to provide safe drinking water to...

-Frontline.thehindu.com The RBI’s proposal to loosen regulations for private lenders in the microfinance space will have disastrous consequences for the poor, especially women in rural areas. Microfinance, a category of financial services aimed at serving people from low-income households who lack access to conventional banking credit and services, was originally designed by international finance capital institutions such as the World Bank as an alternative to providing direct concessional credit to the poor—which...

-Civil Society News, Gurugram THROUGHOUT the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic, the extent of the tragedy in India was mostly unknown. How many people had really died? Were they men or women? Information was anecdotal and speculative. This April, there were queues at crematoriums and burial grounds, but even as bodies piled up there were no reliable figures to go by. We now have some figures based on data-hunting...

-The Telegraph The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has topped the education ministry’s ranking under the National Institutional Ranking Framework this year JNU has held on to the second spot in the government’s ranking of universities this year while the Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University have improved their places despite all three facing campus turmoil and government attempts to dilute their character. The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has topped the...