-TheWire.in While hundreds of houses are still under water, the storms triggered by the cyclone have inundated ponds and Farmlands with saline water, possibly making the land uncultivable for years. Sunderbans: Cyclones are now routine in the Sunderbans. After Amphan caused widespread damage last year, Yaas has led to more damage. “People didn’t die this time in the cyclone, but they might die of poverty. We lost all our means of livelihood. How...

-The Hindu/ PTI This is the first time in the history of Jharkhand that the State is facing such a severe cyclonic storm. As storm 'Yaas' enters Jharkhand, the State remains on high alert and has evacuated about 12,000 people to safer zones while operations are still on to minimise damage from the cyclone that pounded neighbouring Odisha and West Bengal, officials said Wednesday. The storm has weakened into a deep depression, and...

-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...

-Countercurrents.org More than half of rural households in India are landless, or almost so. This deprives them of the most obvious asset needed for sustainable livelihoods and food security in villages–Farmland. After  agriculture the next most important source of rural livelihood in India is dairy farming but here too the household with Farmland has free access to crop residues which is increasingly not available to landless households who  have to incur extra...

-Hindustan Times Studies that measure the contribution of MGNREGS towards improving the adaptive capacity of the beneficiary households have remained few and far between. While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been a valuable employment tool and safety net, as seen in the migrant crisis, its role in building ecosystems resilient to the climate crisis is being increasingly recognised. There is now an urgent need to bring upfront...