-Hindustan Times Earlier this week, the ministry released a user manual for online submission of an undertaking on no increase in pollution load due to expansion, on its Parivesh website. The environment ministry has allowed companies operating in several industries, including some polluting ones, to expand capacities on the basis of a self-certification that this will not “increase the pollution load”, creating the room for potential misdeclaration (and misuse), especially in light...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...

-The Hindu Many countries are sending emergency use equipment to India to fight COVID-19 Around 15 countries including the US, Russia, France and the United Kingdom are rushing critical emergency use equipment to enable India counter the COVID-19’s deadly second wave. A compilation from the Ministry of External Affairs showed that countries are sending hundreds of oxygen concentrators, respirators and large quantities of liquid oxygen to help ease the difficult situation facing...

-The Indian Express The rescue work was going on till late on Friday night “to locate the remainder persons still stuck under snow or stranded at work sites since late evening”. After a glacier near Niti Valley in Uttarakhand broke off Friday, rescue operations by the Army managed to rescue nearly 300 people who were working at a Border Roads Organisation camp in the area till late in the evening. The rescue...

-The Indian Express The pandemic revealed the precarious state of India’s informal sector. Localised production, trade and markets offer a better alternative to existing paradigm of development. Another wave of COVID, another round of lockdowns, another long journey back home for migrant workers. If there is one lesson we are learning after a year of COVID-19, it is that we have not learnt any lessons, at least not the crucial ones. 2020 exposed...