-Down to Earth Land use degradation creates ground for zoonotic disease like COVID-19 as the interaction and physical distance between animals and humans gets closer Land use change, which prepares the ground for zoonoses like the novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), should be reversed urgently, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has said. Over 70 per cent of all natural, ice-free land in the world is affected by human use, according to...

-The Indian Express Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi said UP now accounts for 18 per cent of the total workers employed under MGNREGA in the country and has generated 7.93 crore man-days. Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday said that it has engaged 57.13 lakh workers under the MGNREGS, thereby emerging as the top state in the country to give employment under the rural employment guarantee scheme. Briefing mediapersons here,...

-Hindustan Times Move beyond State-market, rural-urban, agri-non agri and welfare-growth binaries. They are linked This has been a difficult three months for India. The policy response to the Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and the lockdown has forced it to confront long-ignored realities about the Indian economy — its fragility, regional and spatial concentration and deep structural inequity. It also made visible sources of precarious resilience. Agriculture and associated supply chains, for instance, held...

-Scroll.in Fiscally austere policies will only serve to further escalate the revenue shortfall and debt problems. Several economists and businessmen have expressed their disappointment with the contents of the financial package announced by the government to face the unprecedented economic crisis brought about by the Covid-19-induced lockdown, the suddenness and severity of which had itself surprised many epidemiologists. The callousness toward the migrants and lack of immediate preparation to send them back –...

-The Indian Express Delhi Coronavirus news update: All three municipal corporations in Delhi are ruled by the BJP, and have targeted the AAP-led Delhi government on this issue in the past too. The three municipal corporations of Delhi said on Thursday that “there have been 2,098 funerals of Covid-19 positive patients” at the designated crematoriums and burial grounds under their jurisdiction so far. The last rites of an additional “over 200 suspected...