Shadow of Covid lingers over the erstwhile Kingdom of Cooch Behar
The princely state of Cooch Behar merged with the Dominion of India on August 8, 1949 and became a part of the State of West Bengal on January 1, 1950.…
COVID Response Watch
Public life in MP disrupted by heavy rains linked to climate change
Roads are crumbling, bridges are collapsing and railway lines are flooded . The surging waters from the rivers are drowning entire villages all around. It has rained so much that…
Hanging by a thread, Sheffield of the East
Sometimes it was a rise in pig iron prices due to disruption of supply chains due to the Covid pandemic. Now you can find the Ukraine War as a reason…
Malnutrition and death of children decreased in the system, increased in reality
In Maharashtra, the administration has been claiming that there is a steady decline in the number of malnutrition and child deaths in the state. But, in recent figures that have…
When Forest Rights meets Right to Education
With the horrors of the deadly virus still in the air, this would appear to be like a remarkable fairy tale in the post-Covid pandemic scenario, almost like a dream…
Uttarakhand In Need of Climate Resilient Agriculture Practices
In the last few years, we have been witnessing erratic, unpredictable and unexpected changes in climate, which are more perceptible in the Himalayan region of the country. These changes are…
Human trafficking on the rise again in post-Covid period
The world may have come to a standstill due to the Covid epidemic, but it turns out human trafficking smugglers never stopped their work. They continued to prey on children…
Threat of state-takeover of forests alarms Tripura’s indigenous people
The lingering and fractured memories of three decades of CPM rule in Tripura are not so rosy anymore, even as the people today seem totally distraught and disgusted with the…
Azadi ka Amrit: Between compulsive flag-waving and conditional rations
The Modi government's publicity blitzkrieg around the 75th anniversary of independence masks a steadily worsening hunger and livelihood crisis. Recent research has revealed growing numbers of severely malnourished children –…
The plight of homemakers, post-Covid-19
Sarmishtha, a mother of two is a homemaker in the Cachar area of Assam. She says that though none in her family were infected during the second Covid wave in…
Women Frontline Warriors and Covid-19- Part Two
[In Part One of this article, we examined the restrictions in extending Rs.50 lakh compensation to the next of kin of Covid-19 frontline warriors who died after contracting Covid-19 while…
Inflation and malnourishment devastating MP’s poor
“Whatever the government kept claiming, our income has not increased. Poverty has increased after the Covid pandemic. Yes, it is true that cheap food grains are still available from the…
Women Frontline Warriors and Covid-19 – Part One
"Is beemari se bachne ke liye jo hamare dhaal hain jaise hamare doctor, swasthyakarmi, safai karmachari aur police aadi, unka samman karen, unhen sahyog den. In yoddhaon ki karo dekhbhaal…
Maharashtra farmers in the grip of monsoon disaster
In Maharashtra, it was first the uncertainty of the weather. Then followed the hailstorm and now it is the heavy rains that have spoiled the calculations of the state’s farmers.…
Endless wait for petrol turns life upside down for Sri Lankans
People following the 2022 Sri Lanka political-economy crisis will be able to decipher that the two are closely linked. Political eruptions in Sri Lanka since April have usually followed intense…
Covid impact in the land of terracotta
Bhutnath Kumbhakar, a master terracotta craftsman, heard that an emergency situation had developed and so he would not be permitted go out of the campus. The nationwide lockdown started due…
Climate change wreaks havoc in Uttarakhand’s mountainous terrain
Indiscriminate road building and hydropower projects are increasing the vulnerability of the mountainous areas of Uttarakhand to the impact of climate change that is manifesting in the form of cloud…
No Russian roulette: The hunger emergency and the global corporate system
As government efforts to contain it fails even in rich nations, the world’s hunger and livelihoods crisis is rapidly escalating into an emergency. Western leaders and media have been blaming…
Malnutrition spreading around India’s financial capital
While population and average wealth of residents grows in India’s metros, malnutrition and hunger too are spreading equally fast in their periphery. Mumbai, considered to be the country’s financial…
Climate change disturbs monsoon patterns. Rain plays hide and seek with MP farmers
“Each time the rains failed our tubewell came to the rescue. This time the water table went down a lot by the end of May. There was hardly any irrigation…
How Sri Lanka’s militarized response to Covid led to the unraveling of a nation
Note: This is the second in a series of articles on the economic and social crisis in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Covid-19 by journalist Tushar Dhara who was in…
Sri Lanka’s economy hits “rock bottom” as the country faces hunger, malnutrition and starvation
Note: This is the first in a series of articles on the economic and social crisis in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Covid-19 by journalist Tushar Dhara who was…
Bengal’s patachitra artists paint their way through Covid crisis
We are humans Sons of one mother One could be Hindu One could be Muslim The tribals call their god Gurung and Marung The Christians call him God The Muslims…
Empty promises of employment for Bihar’s returning migrant workers
Shamshad Ansari, a resident of 'Babu Ke Bhatkan', a village in Siwan district in Bihar, is a matriculation pass and has been working as a driver in Saudi Arabia since…
Vignettes of Covid-induced economic misery
“So, Durga Puja is coming, it is not even 14 weeks from now…”. “The days are so tough, we are almost forgetting the taste of fish or meat” said Mahesh,…
Two years after Covid lockdown the pain of Bihar’s migrant labour continues
The entire world witnessed how lakhs of migrant workers from around India had returned to their home-state Bihar during the Covid lockdown in early 2020. Where are they after a…
Covid impact on India’s industrial sectors
The impact of the Covid pandemic on Indian companies has not been uniform across all sectors. In fact, the pandemic had come as a boon to some sectors and a…
Covid period saw jump in unnatural tiger deaths
The impact of Covid has also affected the world of wildlife in India An especially high price during the epidemic period has been paid by tigers in the country. According…
Covid impact on India’s corporate sector: Part Two
The halting recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid pandemic received an unexpected blow from the Ukraine war. India’s corporate world is now struggling to cope with this double-trouble…
Corporate Sector booms while India wilts during Covid Pandemic
Covid impact on India’s corporate sector The halting recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid pandemic received an unexpected blow from the Ukraine war. India’s corporate world is now…
Covid impact on India’s animals and livestock
Can animals get infected with the Covid virus? What are the chances for human-to-animal and animal-to-human transmission of the virus? Among numerous other uncertainties, these two also remained the prominent…
Child begging on the rise after Covid pandemic
“ My father sleeps in the house or he fights with my mother after drinking alcohol. He says that his factory has been closed during Covid. They don't have any…
Covid-hit Adivasis of MP under attack from communal forces
In the post-Covid era, even while the deprivations and despair of the pandemic and lockdowns continue, not only Muslims and Christians, Adivasis too are being systematically attacked by the Sangh…
Despite Covid lessons India’s healthcare system remains dysfunctional
Has anything changed in the Indian healthcare system – in terms of facilities or quality of care - because of the traumatic experience of Covid over the last two years?…
Forest rights violations under cover of Covid
>> The young one had gone to the city to earn his livelihood and food for his poor family. The pandemic and lockdown stopped all work and all earnings. Thereby…
Covid-19: When will the profiteering of private hospitals be curbed?
The first and second waves of the Covid pandemic in India saw health personnel in both government and private hospitals risking their lives to save patients, often working late hours…
Covid becomes excuse to attempt eviction of Rajaji National Park forest dwellers
Close to Saharanpur in Western UP and Haridwar and Dehradun in the hill state of Uttarakhand, sprawls the dense forests of the Rajaji National Park. With elephant corridors stretching across…
Food and books used to stop school dropout trend in the post-Covid period
The Covid lockdowns saw thousands of children deprived of schooling across the country and even after resumption of classes many from poorer families have not returned to school. In Bihar’s…
A pandemic of human rights violations in Madhya Pradesh
In early April this year there was outrage across the country when photographs emerged of eight journalists and theatre artists stripped to their underwear in a police station in Madhya…
Mahua bumper harvest brings cheer to Adivasis hit by Covid economic woes
The happiness of 65-year-old Santo Bai, an Adivasi in Madhya Pradesh, knows no bounds. After suffering during the Covid pandemic she is now bursting with happiness because the Mahua flower,…
Demonetisation, GST and Covid doom India’s handloom sector
The centuries old Indian handloom industry, spread across multiple and remote geographical terrains across the country, was in serious crisis for a long time and a combination of demonetization, GST…
Debt and bureaucracy deal death blow to MP farmers reeling from Covid impact
“The farmer also wants to live, sir! But he is forced to take a loan. This is done not once, but over and over again. First, to sow the crop,…
Durga sculptors of Kumartali survive the pandemic
Amidst the maze of lanes and by-lanes, it’s an obscure alley in North Calcutta, close to the famous Sobhabazar and Sutanuti, with its incredible, inherited kaleidoscope of architecture with unique…
Covid-induced poverty and rising power bills make an explosive combination
In mid-February this year the police in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh registered a case against Kisan Gupta a resident of the city’s Vallabh Nagar slum. The case against…
Pandemic Impact on Food Prices— Part Two
Agriculture is the only sector of the Indian economy that posted a positive growth of 3.4% in the pandemic year of 2020–21. But this stability in production did not reflect…
Bhil women solve village water crisis using Covid pandemic relief
Since March 2020 the Covid pandemic has created great misery around the country, whether due to repeated lockdowns or the havoc wreaked by the second wave in May last year.…
Impact of the Covid Pandemic on Food Prices in India- Part One
In the 3–4 months before the Covid pandemic set in early 2020, potato prices were ruling high at around Rs.30–35 per kg in the retail markets. India’s potato farmers who…
How patients were ripped-off by private hospitals during the Covid pandemic
SATHI, a Pune-based NGO, has brought out a compendium of 23 testimonies from patients or their kin, documenting price gouging by private hospitals in Maharashtra. The report, ‘Patients’ voices during…
The Ukraine war and the impending pandemic of hunger-Part One
For the world’s vulnerable populations already reeling from one of the worst economic shocks and an unprecedented hunger and livelihoods crisis resulting from the Covid-19 lockdowns, Russia’s war in…
‘Let them eat Amrit’: After Covid a pandemic of extreme hunger awaits India
The Modi government’s indifference to the plight of the poor is now pathological. The Indian government’s rhetoric about ‘Amrit Kaal,’ an era of plenty, masks a consistent denial of the…
Covid-19 and Health Insurance in India – Part Two
The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a rush in the Indian middle class to get health insurance policies. The Indian government too came up with some new health insurance instruments exclusively to…
Covid vaccination fears persist in remote villages
In November last year the Indian government launched its 'Har Ghar Dastak' Covid-19 inoculation campaign to increase vaccination coverage nationwide. Under the campaign health workers would go door-to-door to vaccinate people eligible…
Covid-19 and Health Insurance in India- Part One
The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a rush in the Indian middle class to get health insurance policies. The Indian government too came up with some new health insurance instruments exclusively to…
How Covid in India became cover for rampant human rights violations
Even while a draconian lockdown was underway in late March 2020, and as thousands of migrant workers and their emaciated families escaped the pandemic in a helpless long march on…
Open school systems come to the rescue of girls forced to dropout from school due to pandemic
In March 2020, just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, all that 16-year-old Zubeida Ali, a student in Lalwadi village of Rajasthan’s Tonk district wanted most was to be…
Experts: No health risk for majority of people in fourth wave of pandemic
A sense of complacency has crept in the hearts and minds of people who otherwise have been wary of contracting COVID in the last three years. People are setting out for travel, arranging and participating…
The Indian Railways and Covid – Part II
It is the largest employer in India and eighth largest in the world. It is also the fourth longest railway network in the world sprawling out to a total…
Maharashtra: Lakhs of doses of Covid vaccine go waste
On 27 February this year, in Maharashtra, about 40 thousand doses of Covid vaccine were dumped in the garbage can. Not only this, in the next five days, a further…
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