Prakash Kumar

Since last few years Grant Funding for climate and broader environment areas is decreasing and in all probability post COVID it will be further decreased.  In 2020 US Grant for this area was in % terms as below, 1.Air, land and water conservation :19  2. Environment education,justice and resource rights :19  3. Sustainable Fishing and agriculture : 16 4.Energy resources and access :18 5.Forestry :1 6. CLIMATE CHANGE: 23 7. Waste management :4  To Restrict warming to 1.5 degree c requires major GHG reductions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. This requires trillions of dollar of capital spending and more funding to improve resilience against physical hazards. Apart from this lot of funding is required for developing scalable low carbon technologies such as  -Renewables Solar/Wind  -Green Hydrogen -Carbon capture , utilization and storage -Natural Climate solutions (NCS) such as reforestation to achieve 1/3rd reductions  -Battery-electric vehicles ...

     India is now a World COVID hotspot. How fast situation reverses, just few months back it seems that India is on top of chart to manage COVID wave one but suddenly a Global problem when Covid wave 2 hit India. But not that we are unaware of it but we allowed this Covid Tsunami to engulf the entire country.      The political leadership which took decision so early in COVID one when death was so less but this time devoted full time to elections and more particularly to West Bengal elections. It looks that the only national agenda is to dethrone Mamata Banerjee. The full state powers were behind it. But what happens at last Didi -O -Didi  failed miserably and TMC back to power in West Bengal. It was a double whammy for BJP losing the West Bengal and also allowing the COVID wave to engulf the country. We failed at almost all steps. Starting from taking the mutation of COVID lightly and also not taking seriously the warning of covid 2 in India th...

Some time back I read an article on improving productivity and came across a fine definition of personal thinking  which all leads to the loss of productivity and slowly affects other sphere of life. To improve productivity we need to understand  and stop these unwanted mind games and idle thought making.  1. Procrastination " I will do it later." 2. Low Confidence " Will I actually succeed." 3. Perfectionism "It is just not good enough." 4. Judgement "What will my network think of me." 5. Competing commitments "If I do this ,will it get in the way of my other Goal."

     Farmers are sitting on protest at Delhi border against the newly enacted farm bills which promises to open up the transaction of primary farm produce with anybody, anywhere and anytime. In short a forward looking reform but without any mechanism to empower farming community to prepare themselves to this level leaving behind the Mandi system and MSP route. I don't understand what was the hurry, first it was promulgated through ordinance and then in a much hurried way passed in parliament. This makes the whole process looks suspicious from the beginning and put this forward looking reform in a mess of controversy. Agriculture is a state subject and having these acts without consulting states  makes the good intention to bad one.  Secondly farmers organizations were also not consulted . In sum total there was no pre-legislative exercise to bring these laws. All major stakeholders were left out of any consultative process before bringing such an important legis...