-Down to Earth Water bodies have become even more critical in current times when cities are facing the challenge of rapid, unplanned urbanisation Lakes and wetlands are an important part of urban ecosystem. They perform significant environmental, social and economic functions — from being a source of drinking water and recharging groundwater to supporting biodiversity and providing livelihoods. Their role becomes even more critical in the present context, when cities are facing the...
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In its letter to Shri Hardeep Puri, civil society activists and eminent citizens press for 100 days of guaranteed employment for each individual worker in urban areas
-Press release by Peoples' Action for Employment Guarantee, dated 29th July, 2020 The present Covid -19 crisis has brought to the fore the importance of MGNREGA in providing employment to rural workers as well as to those urban workers who due to lack of employment opportunities in urban areas were forced to migrate back to their villages. The Central Government is planning to launch an urban employment guarantee (UEG) programme at...
More »Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »Are we ready to use drones to map India? -Shyam Krishnakumar & Titiksha Vashist
-The New Indian Express The Survey of India plans to use drones to create a high-resolution map of every inch of India. It comes with unprecedented privacy and security challenges The Survey of India (SoI) has embarked upon an ambitious project of using drone imaging to create an ultra-high resolution spatial and topographic map of India. Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, calls it the biggest endeavour in Indian...
More »Sewer deaths: Centre calls for quick response units
-The Hindu Stress on trained cleaners, protective gear New Delhi: Concerned by the incidents of workers dying while cleaning sewers and septic tanks, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has asked all States and Union Territories to set up emergency response sanitation units (ERSU), which would include trained cleaners wearing protective gear. In letters to all Chief Secretaries on July 12, Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra wrote: “The...
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