Their secret is quick and efficient public-health systemsTHE phone rings and a doctor picks up. “Sir, we’ve run out of ventilators. What do we do when more patients come?” Soon after, a grim medic explains that the disease they are battling kills three in four victims. There is no vaccine or treatment.Such talk has become commonplace in the time of covid-19. Yet this scene has nothing to do with the current pandemic.

AFGHANISTAN’s seven-day “reduction in violence” plan negotiated by the US and the Taliban commenced on February 21. Subsequently, the two erstwhile warring parties signed a deal on February 28, to bring peace to Afghanistan. America promised phased withdrawal of its military forces from Afghanistan. It is hoped that this will mark the beginning of end of the American involvement in nearly two-decade-old Afghan war which began after the September 11 attacks.The ambiguous US-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, was negotiated for more than a year.

IT is well established that Bihar has a long history of migration of labourers in large numbers and the intensifying agrarian crisis has contributed to increased migration from the state to all parts of the  country and abroad. Soon after the announcement of the coronavirus lockdown, industries, factories and shops across the country were shut down and the migrant workers were forced to return to their state.The workers have not been paid and all modes of transport were also stopped. Soon they ran out of money and rations.

THE Covid-19 pandemic has intensified and reinforced the authoritarian set-up which had been ushered in by the Modi government. The authoritarian trend had begun with the Modi government being installed in office in May 2014. It got consolidated with its return to power in May 2019. Now one year hence, the extraordinary situation created by the Covid pandemic has been fully utilised to strengthen the authoritarian regime. Even before the virus hit India with full force, the government was pre-occupied with suppressing the anti-CAA/NRC protests.

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had released a Draft Notification on Environment Impact Assessment 2020 (EIA Notification 2020) on 12 March 2020, on the eve of the world’s largest nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and had called for responses in the next 60 days. This time period is scheduled to expire next week on 11 May 2020. EIA Notification 2020 is to replace and supersede EIA Notification 2006 and the many amendments issued since then.