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“It shall be the duty of every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have Compassion for wild creatures.” – Article 51 A(g), Constitution of India Sometime back I was asked to address online a group of doctors in a premium private medical college and hospital on the ‘’world environment day’’. This is a ritual in which many institutions currently engage as a notional acknowledgement to nature and environment. I asked Google to fetch me the news from across the world of the various environmental disasters and climate…
I look back at the past week with hope and desperation and it explains to me one thing clearly - the move from unorganized to organized sector, comes with a risk. The risk of divisive interests, manipulative possibility and hidden agenda. Let me start from the beginning - 9th Monday - talk to an alternate group on the scheduled (upcoming) talk to a larger nationwide group of wannabe agri-entrepreneurs11th Wednesday - visit another town, engage with about 20 and several agri-entrepreneurs and Farmer Producer Company (FPC) members12th Thursday - sit through government meeting on…
This morning Baskar had shared the data from the External Affairs Ministry on the countries to which Indians migrate out of India when they give up the Indian Citizenship. We have been in the current season of Raattai podcast discussing the issues that contribute or deter vibrant Democracy. In trying to understand the facts related to why Indian's relinquish their citizenship, the following interesting facts came up -- between 2011 and 2022, about 16.6 lakh Indians gave up their citizenshipthe trend shows a consistent growth, except brief lows and the big drop during the pandemic…
Sunday HINDU newspaper is where longer articles are read more often. So, it was not surprising that there was an article targeting the funds allocation for the promotion of natural farming in union budget in this newspaper on 28th July 2024 (link). While the initial part of the article tried to pretend a neutral stand, the title itself was a give away (and considering how many people today don't read articles beyond the title, this was clearly meant to influence) - "Should India focus on natural farming?" the summary that came as a sub-text (which people in policy making may get to read),…
Yesterday, while making the presentation on the SDG ratings for the current year for the state of Tamil Nadu, there were some questions regarding the suicide rate. I ended up looking some data on the same from the 2022 NCRB report. The following graphs that I generated based on the data threw an interesting picture about the state of distress under which people decide to take their own lives. That predominantly those who commit suicide in the state seem to be just school educated, coming from daily wage labour category, with low…