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Poverty/Inequality

Poverty/Inequality

25 March 2015. Farmer Nityagopal Barman (43) committed suicide, after being unable to repay his loans

AFP

Farmer suicides: What do we know? What does it mean?

21st March 2016

As output is rising at a slower rate since 1990, profitability of farmers is getting adversely affected: for they are not being able to produce at as fast a rate as they had been doing before. Note, decline in public investment is a conscious government decision. There are also other policy changes which aggravated this….

On burning ground: The human cost of India’s push to produce more coal

20th March 2016

Fred Pearce reports: As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation’s coal production by 2020. If it moves forward, India seems set to create a mounting tide of victims — from the cycle-wallahs and refugees of Jharia’s coal fires, to the country’s air quality, to the planet’s climate….

P.Sainath, People's Archive of Rural India

Special: P. Sainath’s award-winning series on rural India’s ‘Thirst Economy’

11th March 2016

This series on rural India’s water crisis won P. Sainath a World Media Summit award under the category of Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries. It zeroes in on the stark contrasts in the consumption and access to water between the rich and poor to illustrate the alarming trend of inequalities in India and abroad….

Video & Report: Is India’s 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?

9th March 2016

Shruti Ravindran reports: In a monograph for a conference on smart cities, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to exclude “millions of poor Indians… For if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.”…

“The mindset of the Indian elite is: the poor are different from me and I don’t want them around”

R. V. Moorthy

Jan Breman: “76 per cent of the Indian population is living in poverty”

23rd February 2016

“India’s economic policies are determined by the World Bank. They are therefore pro-capital, and anti-labour. Today the World Bank’s at the end of its tether. Its formula of formal capital in the informal economy failed because the poor don’t own capital. Having run out of ideas, they’ve now started blaming the poor for being poor.”…

As automation increases in India, so does inequality

21st February 2016

Jahnavi Sen reports: According to a new research paper by Radicka Anand, capital intensity of production has been increasing across industries in the last decade. This is true not only in capital intensive industries (or those industries whose capital intensity is higher than the median of the manufacturing sector), but also for labour intensive industries….

Protesters block Silicon Valley shuttles, smash Google bus window

TheVerge.com

New Book: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

27th January 2016

Douglas Rushkoff writes: We’ve to stop looking at our economy as a broken system, but one that’s working absolutely true to its original design. We are not witnessing capitalism gone wrong — an egalitarian currency system corrupted by greedy bankers — but, rather, capitalism doing exactly what it was programmed to do from the beginning….

NEWS UPDATE #80

22nd January 2016

The Economic Times reports: The Central government has unveiled a new Crop Insurance Scheme with the premium to be paid by farmers as low as 1.5 per cent of the sum assured for all rabi crops and 2 per cent for kharif crops. The scheme comes without any cap on overall premium rate to ensure full claims….

NEWS UPDATE #79

12th January 2016

The Times of India reports: Distress conditions forced about 6 lakh people from Rayalaseema, where the major crop is groundnut, to move to cities in 2015. It works out to migration of around 1,600 persons per day last year. Although the rate dipped in November and December due to the ongoing cultivation, the trend continues….

Video: What it really means when the top 1% own half of India’s wealth

9th January 2016

This short animated video on inequality from Krishi TV shows what it really means when the top 1% of India owns half of the country’s wealth. The benefits of India’s economic growth of the past years have been largely appropriated by this small group, at the expense of the welfare of the majority of Indians….

The world’s wealthiest few can fund an energy revolution

5th January 2016

The personal fortunes of just 782 of the world’s wealthiest people could power half the world—Africa, Latin America, and “most of Asia”—with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, according to a new Friends of the Earth report. Broken down by continent, it would take the wealth of just 53 rich people to power Africa….

World’s richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions

9th December 2015

The richest 10% of people produce half of Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%, British charity Oxfam said in a report released Wednesday. “Rich, high emitters should be held accountable for their emissions, no matter where they live,” Oxfam climate policy head, Tim Gore, said in a recent statement….

World Bank warns climate change could drive millions into extreme poverty

22nd November 2015

Efforts to curb climate change must be twinned with programmes to cut poverty, warns a study of the threat posed by global warming to food security View/download World Bank report pdf): Shock Waves : Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty The Guardian UK The world must pair efforts to stabilise climate change with…

Book: The Secure and the Dispossessed

7th November 2015

(Note: This new book asks, and attempts to answer, the crucial question: What if government and corporate elites have given up on stopping climate change and prefer to try to manage its consequences instead?) The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations Are Shaping a Climate-Changed World Edited by Nick Buxton and Ben…

Credit Suisse: Richest 1% own 53% of India’s wealth

26th October 2015

According to Credit Suisse, India’s wealth increased by $2.284 trillion between 2000 and 2015. Of this rise, the richest 1% has hogged 61% Manas Chakravarty, Live Mint The richest 1% of Indians own 53% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Credit Suisse. The richest 5% own 68.6% of…

Oxfam Report: 10 Million at Risk of Hunger Due to Climate Change and El Niño

9th October 2015

Common Dreams At least ten million of the poorest people face food insecurity in 2015 and 2016 due to extreme weather conditions and the onset of El Niño, Oxfam has reported. In Oxfam’s new report called Entering Uncharted Waters, erratic weather patterns were noted including high temperatures and droughts, disrupting farming seasons around the world….

Pope Francis’ Encyclical on Climate Change – Selected Excerpts

20th June 2015

The Encyclical by Pope Francis is being hailed by environmentalists as the second coming. It’s hardly that, in my view. Nonetheless, I was struck within minutes of starting it, by the incisive and accurate commentary it offers on our true predicament. Here are some passages that resonated with me and that I found highly insightful. Manu…

News update

27th May 2015

Heatwave to worsen over the years: Study Times of India Hyderabad suffers a maximum of five heatwave days’ in a year. According to experts, this number will go up to as many as 40 days per year in the future. This prediction has been made in a paper titled Climate change scenarios for Hyderabad: Integrating uncertainties…

News update

5th May 2015

Will Tesla’s home battery really transform our energy infrastructure? The Guardian UK “The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world,” Tesla founder Elon Musk told reporters as he launched the electric car company’s new home power storage battery. “This is actually within the power of humanity to do. It is…

Narendra Modi’s war on the environment

15th April 2015

Rohini Mohan reports: In under a year, the Modi government has begun to undo policies of fair land acquisition, undermine environmental protection and reverse the fight for tribal rights. The finance, environment and rural-development ministers, and Modi himself, have called these safeguards to protect people’s property, the environment and tribal rights “roadblocks” to economic growth….