-Down to Earth The region, with eight per cent of India’s total geographical area, has 25 per cent of India’s forest cover India’s northeastern region — comprising Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura — is a unique biodiversity hotspot. The region, however, faces many environmental problems. Successive Indian forest surveys in 2015, 2017 and 2019 reported net deforestation of 628, 630 and 765 square kilometres in the region respectively. This...

-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: Hundreds of activists of AIKSCC (All-India Kisan Sangarsh Coordination Committee) have participated in several protest meets in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on Sunday. They held demonstrations to protests against three recent Agricultural Ordinances and Electricity Amendment Bill, saying the moves will cause harm to the primary sector. Demonstrations were held in 400 villages in Andhra Pradesh and 250 villages in Telangana. The AIKSCC demanded that the Union Government withdraw...

The newly released Special Bulletin on Maternal Mortality in India 2016-18 shows that India's maternal mortality ratio (MMRatio) has reduced from 130 maternal deaths per one lakh live births during 2014-16 to 122 during 2015-17, and it further dropped to 113 during 2016-18. According to the Sample Registration System (SRS), the MMRatio refers to the number of women who die as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbearing in a...

-Outlook India Merit, not inclusion. ‘Holistic’ instead of ‘liberal’. Shallow eclecticism rather than criticality: NEP 2020 is full of pious keywords that mask a violent lurch back towards hierarchy and unfreedoms. The past decade has witnessed tumultuous events and changes in the history of Indian higher education. In part, some of these stand out as they are recent, and still alive in public memory. These have ranged from fierce student protests demanding...

-Business Standard Wants one-third of beneficiaries to be women, says wages should not be less than urban state minimum pay, with provision to revise in line with cost of living Civil society activists have recommended mandatory 100 days of guaranteed employment for urban unemployed under any Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme planned by the government. In a letter to union urban development minister Hardeep Puri, People’s Action for Employment Guarantee, (PAEG) which had worked...