-Down to Earth Child marriages surged after COVID-19 first wave; streamlined state efforts helped arrest the trend, claim officials As many as 3,970 villages in Odisha were declared child marriage-free between January and the first week of July 2021. The development has coincided with second wave of the Novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic; the state had registered a surge in child marriages during the first wave. In 2020, only 62 villages were declared...

-TheWire.in Every sanitation worker’s life in India is a nightmare on any ordinary day. Add to this the callousness of administrations leaving them to face the virus without gear and training and the result is pure hell. Bokaro (Jharkhand): As the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic tightens its grip on the country, the Chas Municipal Corporation in Jharkhand’s Bokaro district appears to have learned a few things from the last time...

-Down to Earth Solutions based on going back to nature do exist, but to make a tangible impact on climate change, they need to be executed at scale and with adequate support from both the developed and developing world Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is one of the key focus areas of the upcoming 26th Conference of Parties (CoP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow. ‘We’re part of...

-Down to Earth Scarcity, conservation, equitable and fair use of limited resources does not apply to them. Migration is an important phenomenon with considerable social, economic and cultural implications. The ‘ghost-villages’ of Uttarakhand are well-known, abandoned by the local population who had left in search of employment, education, health, water and food security, and basic infrastructure. The Novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is not just a health crisis. It has highlighted the underlying economic...

-The Hindu The Government needs to reverse its neglect and policy missteps as key indicators show the sector has resilience The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic could be slowly receding with a decline in the official estimates of daily infections and deaths. The economy is also very gradually getting back to normal, with many States beginning to ease some of the restrictions imposed in their lockdowns. However, the challenge of an...