-The Hindu The battle against COVID-19 should also be used as an opportunity to meet India’s ‘One Health’ targets The father of modern pathology, Rudolf Virchow, emphasised in 1856 that there are essentially no dividing lines between animal and human medicine. This concept is ever more salient as the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussions that took place around World Veterinary Day, on April 24, 2021, focused on acknowledging...

Large dams that cause environmental degradation and large-scale displacement, among other things, have been opposed in India by civil society organisations (CSOs), such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). A recently published study by the United Nations University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with other partner organisations reveals that tens of thousands of existing large...

-The Indian Express Evidence-driven approaches, including those tried out in Mexico and Brazil, can remove shortcomings in India’s nutrition schemes. The findings of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) have come as a reality check, and even experts are trying to make sense of it. The survey shows that food security and nutrition in India have worsened since the last NFHS round (2015-16). Among the 22 states and Union Territories (UTs) for...

-The Indian Express Traditional redistribution, which aims to deliver on intangibles like health and education, has ceded to a distinctive ‘New Welfarism’, where Centre is demonstrably providing tangible essentials to citizens The recently released fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) provides reliable and independent evidence to assess micro-development performance under this government. The survey covers many dimensions of health, nutrition, and the overall quality of lives. Here we focus...

-The Indian Express A complacent approach that assumes that all necessary measures, including the Poshan Abhiyan, are in place and the reversal in progress is only momentary will be a sure way to inflict a debilitating, irreversible impact on children’s nutrition and their well-being. Did child undernutrition in India worsen during the COVID-19 pandemic? The consensus is: yes, most likely. But did we do well in reducing child undernutrition before the lockdown?...