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Dear Reader,
One of the vexing issues in the elections to the Uttarakhand assembly, polling for which was held on February 14, is the reality of ‘ghost villages’ – emptied by “distress migration”.
ThePrint reports from the Tehri Garhwal district in the State and points out even on a conservative count, since 2011, 734 villages have been deserted on account of lack of basic facilities – education, employment and healthcare. Ironically, Uttarakhand was carved out of UP in the year 2000 to remove inequities in development.
Another state that has just concluded its tryst with the voters is Goa, where climate change, human greed and policy missteps are increasingly threatening the once flourishing livelihoods of the fishermen community. In its well-researched report, Mojo Story brings to you the plight and travails of Goa’s fishing community.
As India is on the cusp of the decadal review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), pollution has now become the second-largest health risk after malnutrition. In 2019 alone, air pollution took the lives of “1.7 million” Indians. The economic loss caused by this healthcare burden amounted to “$36.8bn or 1.36 per cent" of India’s GDP in the same year. Despite that, The India Forum explains, there is little being done by the government, which continues to deny “conclusive proof” of the correlation between deaths and air pollution. Such ambivalence, it argues, is likely to cost India dearly.
Down To Earth tells the tale of a village in Maharashtra’s Jalna district which, with the participation of the community, transformed itself from a water-scarce village to a water-sufficient one, and became a role model for prudent water management.
And, a recent statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that liberation of Goa from Portuguese rule was delayed by Jawaharlal Nehru due to extraneous reasons raised hackles. Live History India chronicles the events leading up to Goa’s integration with India and analyses the reasons behind the “delay”, including the geopolitical realities of the time.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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