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...

-Down to Earth India’s tribal communities have been pushed away from alluvial plains and fertile river basins, into the harshest ecological regions, the report notes   India’s tribal communities form 8.6 per cent of the country’s population according to the 2011 Census. But they are at the bottom of the country’s development pyramid even after 75 years of independence, according to a new report released November 28, 2022. The Tribal Development Report 2022,...

On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...

-Hindustan Times The National Council of Applied Economic Research recently conducted a study, titled, Livelihood and Health Challenges of Riverine Communities of the River Ganga, in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Tata Centre for Development to explore the social & economic engagement of the riverine communities on the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. A large section of the population living in the Ganga river basin still depends on the...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Releases new report that presents irrefutable evidence of the benefits of non-chemical agriculture * Yesterday’s Budget promises to promote chemical-free natural farming, but it is a half-hearted promise at best, as no separate allocation has been made in it, says CSE * CSE’s asks: Invest in organic and natural farming. Make it a mass movement New Delhi, February 2, 2022: “Despite the push given to it through periodic...