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...

Jharkhand's government schools have a massive teacher shortage, a survey by Gyan Vigyan Samiti Jharkhand has found. The survey was conducted in 138 primary and upper primary schools between September and October 2022 to assess their condition after the Covid-19 pandemic. Jharkhand's school system was shut for two years, among the longest in the world. Teachers told the surveyors they felt that most students had forgotten how to read and...

-IndiaToday.in Air emergencies, heat waves, Water shortages, street flooding, garbage spillovers, traffic jams and noise pollution… Delhi has become unlivable and no urban planning can fix this unsustainable concrete jungle. It’s time we seriously looked at moving the capital out to let the city heal and live. In the last few years, winter in Delhi has become depressingly synonymous with toxic air pollution. During summers, drinking Water shortages leave the city parched...

-The Hindu Coffee cultivation is becoming an increasingly loss-making proposition in India. Already weighed down by the high cost of inputs and production as well as labour shortage, the industry is now also affected by changes in climate patterns, reports  Mini Tejaswi from Karnataka’s coffee heartland Bose Mandanna was devastated when torrential rains in September thrashed the coffee plants in his plantation and left tender berries and leaves strewn everywhere. The plants...

-IndiaSpend.com Even as the rural employment programme provides low wages, it is a source of income and opportunity for women who have few other avenues of work in rural India and face barriers in migrating out of the village for work Rajsamand, Rajasthan: The year that Chanchal Kumari was born was the year of the drought in Rajasthan--2002. For two years, the state had a severe Water shortage--no water for drinking or...