KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Hindu The nomadic communities of J&K have been offered smart cards and free transport to aid their biannual migration For centuries, Jammu and Kashmir’s nomadic community, known as Gujjars and Bakerwals, have undertaken arduous journeys on foot as part of their seasonal migration to find better pastures for their livestock. They often lose cattle and, on occasion, family members to accidents and hardships along the way. However, technological solutions and transport...

-Down to Earth New government report finds fewer indigenous individuals among these species, although experts blame non-registration of breeds as a reason. The origins of over half of India’s cattle, sheep, goats, horses, ponies, mules, donkeys and pigs are not known, according to a new report on the country’s livestock released by the government recently. The country’s water buffaloes too have fewer purebred individuals, although its camels still have that distinction according to...

-Down to Earth Chinese medicine responsible for decline in donkey population; lack of grazing areas and mechanisation responsible for camel’s decline The population of donkeys and camels in Gujarat has declined 71 per cent and nine per cent respectively, the state’s livestock minister told the legislative assembly recently. Gujarat’s mules and donkeys had declined to 11,291 in the 2019 Livestock Census, from 38,993 in 2012, Raghavji Patel told the assembly in an answer...

-Down to Earth Post mechanisation, for the first time there is innovation in farm equipment to revive bullocks and aid small farmers Simhachalam calls himself a ‘bullock entrepreneur’. Each agricultural season, this farmer from Andhra Pradesh’s Sangra village travels with his pair of bullocks to work on other people’s farms in nearby villages for a fee. Like most other parts of the country, bullocks in these tribal villages are traditionally used only for...