-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...

-The Hindu Public places and spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely, says Bench The Supreme Court on Tuesday held the protests led by scores of mothers, children and senior citizens of Shaheen Bagh against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act by blockading a public road in the national capital were “not acceptable”. A Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said public places and spaces could not be occupied indefinitely. The court recognised that peaceful protests...

-The Hindu A Court order, on Delhi’s slum dwellings, threatens to undo the promise of the right to housing offered in earlier verdicts In a short order with devastating consequences, the Supreme Court of India on August 31 ordered the removal of about 48,000 slum dwellings situated along the railway tracks in Delhi. A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, in one of his last orders before his retirement, directed State...

-Down to Earth The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths...

-The Indian Express June 5 was World Environment Day. We must strive to preserve our environment better if we want to prevent pandemics like COVID-19 This year’s celebration of World Environment Day — on June 5 — has been different compared to all the previous years, as human civilisation faces one of its biggest crises. The COVID-19 pandemic is larger than the environmental crisis of the 1960s and ’70s, which prompted the...