-Hindustan Times The international study includes data from Indian rural areas while measuring the impact of some weather events on suicides. Not only drought but flooding or even extreme rainfall leading to excess water availability is linked to higher cases of suicides among those above the age of 15 years in rural areas, a new study has suggested. In an analysis of 9,456 suicides between 2001 and 2013 in randomly selected rural areas,...

-Hindustan Times While the Centre has been arguing for a two-lane highway with seven-metre carriageways, some HPC members contended that such a broad width would be dangerous for the fragile Himalayan ecology because it is highly susceptible to landslides A Supreme Court (SC) bench on Tuesday heard Ravi Chopra, the chairman of the high-powered committee (HPC), which is reviewing the Char Dham highway project in Uttarakhand, and accepted the final report submitted...

-Hindustan Times Don’t bank on V-shaped recovery. The Centre must discard dogmas, enhance investment News of a contraction of almost 24% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of this year would have come as a shock to every responsible citizen. The degree of contraction exceeds that in any major world economy. This is not surprising as India combined the world’s most stringent lockdown with the weakest economic stimulus. For...

-Hindustan Times Expanding better opportunities with decent wages for frontline workers could also contribute to the revival of the rural economy by putting wages into the hands of many, and take us closer to achieving our health and nutrition goals The unsung heroes of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic have most definitely been the millions of frontline women workers, especially Accredited Social Health Activists (Ashas) who have been working tirelessly at...

ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...