-Press released by Christian Aid dated 27 December, 2022 * Study identifies the year’s 10 costliest extreme events influenced by the climate crisis - each caused more than $3 billion in damage. * Report also examines 10 other extreme events that caused massive human and environmental damage, mostly in the poorest countries. * The floods that submerged parts of Pakistan in June displaced 7m people and caused more than $30 billion in estimated...

There is some respite expected for India in terms of prices of imported commodities. This may ease the depletion of its foreign exchange reserves. The country has faced a widening of its merchandise trade deficit from US$ -17.91 billion to US$ -26.91 billion between October 2021 and October 2022. The commodity price data provided by the World Bank in December 2022 (termed as The Pink Sheet) shows that energy prices plummeted by...

-Hindustan Times Farm policymaking slowed down after the repeal of three laws in 2021. But the climate crisis, geopolitical instability and inflation have exacerbated the urgency for reforms In November 2021, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi repealed three contentious farm laws in a dramatic turnaround. The entire episode — from the passage of the laws, the protests that followed and the turnaround — had stalled national agriculture policymaking. Yet, as this column...

Like the fight against poverty and hunger, the progress made by mankind against tuberculosis (TB) in the years up to 2019 has either slowed, stalled, or reversed, and global TB targets are off track due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, although the reported number of people newly diagnosed with TB decreased from 7.1 million to 5.8 million between 2019 and 2020, the number went up to 6.4 million in 2021....

-The Hindu Business Line Policy deficit. The widening trade deficit with China points to a weakness in India’s industrial growth path It was headline news when Chinese customs statistics at the end of September 2022 indicated that for a second calendar year, India’s trade with China would settle at well above $100 billion. That was only partly because of the positive implications of burgeoning trade between the two countries that only two...