-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 In the U.S., India and Brazil, messianic populism, polarisation and insularity have made the pandemic that much worse A year and counting into the greatest health crisis the world has faced in over a century we can identify one overwhelming factor that separates the countries that have done relatively well from those that have been complete disasters:Autocrcy elected autocrats. By any measure the most dismal performers in the democratic world...

-IndiaSpend.com MIGrant workers in different states have been struggling to find work, wages and rations, say activists and researchers. The Public Distribution System must be universalised, they say, and free rations must be provided for at least six more months. Bengaluru: Sudhir Paswan, 29, is back to square one--in his village in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, counting his losses. It has been more than a week since he returned, after failing to secure...

-The New Indian Express An analysis by The New Indian Express shows that it is not just petrol and diesel prices that are scalding you. Prices of edible oil, tea, and pulses have seen a double-digit growth in the last year. When the April 2021 retail inflation came down to a modest 4.29%, an attempt MIGht have been made to communicate a false sense of relief. The real picture, though, is very...

-Newslaundry.com And of a crisis of economic distress and hunger that’s gone largely unreported. The defining image of this second wave of the pandemic in India has now become the hundreds of shallow graves along the Ganga and other rivers, replacing the searing images of burning pyres. These graves are a stark reminder not just of the discrepancy in death data between the official and the actual, but they also hint at...