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1 week ago | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
Patna's Baansghat Crematorium at the height of the second COVID-19 wave. On March 13, 2020, Government of India’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) released the latest life expectancy data of the country.
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1 week ago | 
htsyndication.com | Richard Mahapatra
New Delhi, May 27 -- On March 13, 2020, Government of India's Press Information Bureau (PIB) released the latest life expectancy data of the country.
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1 month ago | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
There has been a slight change in the political discourse on India's population woes. Population control has been India's professed national policy, with the two-child norm being the default template to implement it. However, since the 1970s, political leaders have refrained from making population control an electoral issue. Prime Minister Narendra Modi breached this lakshman rekha in 2019.
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1 month ago | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
For 60 years until 2019, the US had maintained the agricultural trade balance. What happened after that? It is a simple case of Americans consuming more and more produce that is available round the year. These are also the products that the US has not been able to produce in abundance and at economical costs, because other countries are better suited to grow them. The US is, in fact, a beneficiary of the globalised food trade regime.
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2 months ago | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
The world is in debt. From developed economies to developing ones, public debt has reached a historic level—and along with it, the burden of servicing these loans. In 2024, the US, for the first time, spent more on debt servicing than on the military. The UK is in a situation popularly termed a “debt death spiral”. At the World Economic Forum held in January in Davos, Switzerland, Zimbabwean Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube spoke of his country’s debt crisis: “We’ve even got a tax now on fast food.
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2 months ago | 
htsyndication.com | Richard Mahapatra
New Delhi, April 2 -- The world is in debt. From developed economies to developing ones, public debt has reached a historic level-and along with it, the burden of servicing these loans. In 2024, the US, for the first time, spent more on debt servicing than on the military. The UK is in a situation popularly termed a "debt death spiral".
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Mar 6, 2025 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
A woman labourer working for a water conservation project under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur district. “How do you spend your day?” This casual question, if answered for a country, can unveil a lot about our socio-economic status — particularly on gender gaps.
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Mar 4, 2025 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
Five years have passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. But before one considers consigning the deadly memories to oblivion, an obvious question remains: Are we really out of the spectre of COVID-19? As of May 2023, COVID-19 is not a global health emergency. But the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve into new variants, and afflict and kill people.
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Feb 1, 2025 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
In her speech for the Union Budget 2025-26, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman laid out the tenets for Developed India (Viksit Bharat) by 2047. Two of them are: “Hundred per cent skilled labour with meaningful employment; and seventy per cent women in economic activities.” By all arguments, employment, and particularly more women joining the workforce, is the springboard to encash the “demographic dividend” that India is endowed with.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra
Most of the world’s young billionaires inherited their riches. This is a sign of the “billionaire colonialism” setting in. Wealth operates like a fast-breeding nuclear reactor — it generates more with each passing generation, at least for the already super-rich. The unprecedented accumulation of wealth today, along with the growing number of billionaires, is not primarily driven by business successes or innovations. Instead, most new billionaires have entered the elite club through inheritance.
