Tapasya is a journalist writing about policy and resource governance. They are interested in reporting on local and hyperlocal issues in the context of larger political structures, with a focus on Jammu and Kashmir. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi (2018-19), they have previously written for The Diplomat, StoriesAsia and The Third Pole. Tapasya enjoys writing poetry and watching films in their free time.
Union government asks two prominent nonprofits to quit seeking donations in areas where the government runs schemes.
Internal files of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change reveal it had been planning to weaken tribal rights over forests since 2019. Modi government’s new Forest Conservation Rules made it easier for industries to grab their traditional homelands.
Vedanta’s pig iron industry in Goa got clearance to expand despite being caught emitting dangerous substance for more than a decade. It went to great lengths to dodge environmental laws and avoid paying for pollution mitigation efforts.
The move could stop millions of poor children without Aadhaar from having healthy meal, and violates a Supreme Court order that no subsidy or service may be denied to children for want of Aadhaar
The Union government used a flawed set of data to mask the gloomier death count calculated by the UN body, and ignored a robust number thrown up by another of its own survey. The data was so unreliable that 20 of the 36 states and Union territories saw more registered deaths than what the government claims died.
Former J&K BJP legislator Vikram Randhawa accused BJP's Union minister Jitendra Singh of profiting from corruption in Jammu's mining department after being being slapped with Rs 96 lakh penalty for illegal river mining. The accusations were withdrawn and guns holstered. But penalty documents and inquiry committee reports reveal how Jammu's mining department abandoned penalties worth Rs 6.68 crore on stone crushers operating illegally around Tawi and how miners had it easy.
Through death register data obtained from across the country, The Reporters’ Collective estimates that in the pandemic 3,59,496 more people died than in a normal year in just 3 states where officially only 28,609 died of Covid. Experts fear relatives of thousands of Covid-19 victims will be excluded from compensation due to lack of medical records, poor testing and red-tape despite the Centre initiating compensation procedure on the instructions of the Supreme Court.
Data from thousands of pages of death registers maintained by municipalities in Gujarat show an excess death count of 16,892 for just 6% of the state's population during the pandemic. When projected across the state, the figure zooms to a staggering 281,000.
Under its commercial coal mining auctions, the Modi govt has sold off at least two coal blocks for rates cheaper than their 2015 prices. As a result Chhattisgarh will end up losing Rs 900 crore every year and over Rs 24,000 crore over decades.