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The Public Newsense

A quarterly newsletter offering our readers insights and updates on a diverse range of topics; find news on consumer protection, electricity governance, environment and climate action, solid waste management, and sustainable transport, among others.
Edition: January - March 2018
15th March is World Consumer Rights Day, an annual occasion for celebration, impact and global solidarity within the international consumer movement. Each year, consumer organisations mark the day by joining together to highlight and raise…
Edition: July - September 2020
COVID-19 pandemic, virus, lockdown, GDP, economic slowdown, and vaccine - these are some of the words that have occupied our brains from the last 6-7 months. The pandemic we are facing right now has taken its toll on individuals, as well as on…
Edition: July - September 2020
The much awaited Consumer Protection Act 2019 with new significant features, has come into force,  replacing the earlier Consumer Protection Act 1986. The Act aims at protecting the rights of consumers by establishing the Central…
Edition: July - September 2020
Introduction As kids, most of us would have played with a magnifying lens to direct sunlight onto a piece of paper. What happens next? It starts burning, right? Likewise,  Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants such as parabolic trough…
Edition: July - September 2020
Since the beginning of September, buses have started to ply the roads of Chennai.  Many, no doubt, sighed in relief as public transport, especially buses, are a lifeline. Buses mean mobility, buses mean livelihood and therefore survival. The…
Edition: July - September 2020
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that our cities are pedestrian-unfriendly. For years, Indian cities have widened roads at the expense of footpaths, pushed pedestrians towards foot overbridges and subways so that they don’t get in…
Edition: April-June 2020
When we talk of food, the focus usually is on how nutritious/tasty/pricey it is, and seldom on how the food has been produced. Modern food production is an exploitatory industry established on the back of fossil fuels, chemical …
Edition: April-June 2020
Various countries in the grip of COVID-19 pandemic have resorted to lockdown as one of the main strategies to delay the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). For India, which had one of the most stringent lockdowns in…
Edition: April-June 2020
Roads and Mobility have become a sine qua non to a country’s development. They are an essential part of human life. Though roads and advances in transportation have helped humans fulfill their need to move from place to place, it has not been…
Edition: April-June 2020
Modern life is so separated from the source of food that we hardly know what we put into our bodies. Not only do we live far from farmlands, that we have lost our ancient connection to the soil, but the foods that we now eat are processed in so many…