-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...

-The Telegraph While the BJP and Opposition continue with their political machinations, the larger issues on the ground are these: climatic aberrations and consequent losses How are we supposed to deal with long, dry spells as well as sudden and extreme rainfall in the same season? Or drought in one state and floods in another,for that matter? While the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition continue with their political machinations, the larger...

-The Telegraph In the last two decades, forest and biodiversity conservation in the country has meant ruthless and unjust evictions of the people and communities living in their midst Earlier this month, a small hamlet called Bothli in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district pressed for the legal recognition of its community forest rights. Wildlife conservationists promptly filed a public interest litigation claiming that the people living in the...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Maharashtra police detained five traditional herders from Kachchh on January 7 suspecting these semi-nomadic pastoralists were smuggling camels to slaughterhouses in Hyderabad. Also detained: 58 camels “We have not confiscated these 58 camels,” asserts Inspector Ajay Akare, in charge of the Talegaon Dashasar police station in Amravati district. “We don’t have the powers to do so since Maharashtra has no specific law against cruelty to these animals.” “The camels,” he says, “are...

-The Telegraph In India, inequality has been normalised While we know that inequality is bad, we do not deal with it. In India, we have normalized it, just like brazen communalization, bigotry and untruth. This is perhaps because many of us are complicit in perpetuating the inequality. Some data released this month provide a grim commentary on what is happening in the underbelly of the country. Scan through the regional dailies and you...