-Newsclick.in The results show how strong the pull of caste identity is. Nothing else explains why JD-U’s vote share did not shrink disastrously. The Bihar Assembly elections turned out to be a breathlessly close race, with the National Democratic Alliance pipping the Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance to the post. Yet the award for man of the match must go to Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, who took on the combined might...

-Down to Earth Shaibal Gupta, social scientist at Asian Development Research Institute, spoke to DTE on Bihar polls and its national importance It is D-day after the first election in India amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The process of counting the votes cast in the Bihar Assembly elections started November 10, 2020 morning. But an increased number of electronic voting machines have slowed the process down and only about a...

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which was released on July 6th (observed as World Zoonoses Day by research institutions and non-governmental organisations across the globe) this year, says that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases in humans are estIMAted to have an anIMAl origin. Likewise, almost three-fourth of all new and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic i.e. these diseases...

-Down to Earth Sharad Chandra, director, flood forecast monitoring division, Central Water Commission, spoke to DTE on increasing instances of urban flooding   Urban flooding is increasingly becoming a common occurrence in India, the latest victim being Hyderabad. The city received unusually heavy rainfall October 13-14, 2020, due to a deep depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal. Heavy damage to property, roads and human lives were reported. Experts have argued that...

-Financial Express Only three crops -- groundnut, jowar and moong -- have recorded higher arrivals on year (see chart). Even in the case of jowar and moong, arrivals fell in the largest-producing states of Maharashtra (-39%) and Rajasthan (-7%), respectively. Amid the row over the three new federal farm laws aimed at giving unfettered market access to farmers, the producers of various crops seem to have started to rely much less on...