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...

Editorial team, Carbon Copy  Ongoing shifts in rainfall and temperature caused by climate change are likely to increase the debt burden faced by rural households, particularly of marginalised groups in dry areas, an editorial in Carbon Copy magazine said. The piece cited a study in the journal Climate Change that argues that changes in climate, along with existing socio-economic differences - caste and landholding in particular — will deepen the size...

-India Spend More than 50% of rural households are reported to have functional household tapwater connections under the Jal Jeevan Mission. But does this translate into availability of water for the rural poor? Banda, Baghpat and Bengaluru: "We drink whatever quality water we can get," says Munni Devi, a Dalit worker who lives in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). "Of course we get sick, but we don't have any other choice....

Is India a country where most people eat vegetarian food? The answer to this question is a bit complex. The consumption of either vegetarian or non-vegetarian food depends not just on one's personal choice but also on one’s geographical location, caste and religious background, gender and marital status. There are other determining factors as well behind a person's choice of food.  The results of the newly released data of the fifth...

-Scroll.in There is an entangled web of issues related to caste, class and religion that defines disparate land imaginaries in the state. In Uttarakhand, land is a political flashpoint. A controversial 2018 law introduced by state legislature now allows outsiders to buy land in the Himalayan state. In 2018, as these laws were coming into force, I asked Bhim, an elderly man from a backward caste, what he thought about it all....