-The Hindu Regional parties express anguish; No violence reported from any part of Valley. On August 5, the day the Central Government ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in 2019, people observed a shutdown, most markets remained closed and the regional parties expressed their anguish. However, the BJP held celebrations in Jammu and Srinagar. While the authorities decided not to block the Internet facility, extra deployments were made across the Valley. The shutdown resulted...

-Press release by Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA Kisan Swaraj) dated 2 August, 2021 170 individuals and organizations along with the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA Kisan Swaraj) have written to the FSSAI urging it to scrap its plans to make synthetic/ chemical fortification of foods mandatory in India [1]. They cited detrimental and irreversible health and socio-economic impacts such as market shifts in favor of large...

-GaonConnection.com The Indian government is considering ‘mandatory’ food fortification in the country. Several health experts have written to FSSAI calling the decision ‘a blanket approach’ to meet the complexity of malnutrition in the country. Details here. At least 170 people and organisations, including medical experts and nutritionists, have today, on August 2, written a letter to Ashok Kumar Mishra, the assistant director of Food Fortification Resource Centre, department that regulates food under...

-The Telegraph Trying to make labour force survey results look artificially attractive by the government may only be an attempt at self-deception  The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey data for July 2019 to June 2020 released by the Central Government shows a rise in the labour force participation rate and a fall in the unemployment rate even when the economy registered a sharp deceleration in the rate of growth. This is surprising...

-Scroll.in The pandemic has starkly revealed that India has failed to provide even basic health-care to the majority of its citizens. As the gravest health emergency to overwhelm the globe in a century continues to rage, the unbridled Covid-19 virus has laid bare the abject failure of India’s health system to secure even elementary levels of health-care for its people. Everything fell short disastrously, sometimes catastrophically: hospital beds, doctors, nurses, testing kits, medical...