Affidavit by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in the matter of Sisir Kumar Panda Vs Union of India & Others dated 20/05/2025. The issue pertained to the removal of illegal construction/obstruction caused by the state authorities as well as the private persons in the ecological sensitive zone …
• Punishers the community for 'crimes' like for fuelwood. • Doubles penalty for forest 'crimes' - in reserve forests imprisonment can be till sven years. • No accountability for forest officials. Protected from judicial proceedings while executing the act in 'good faith'. • Empowers the forest department to evict and …
Indian government classifies wetlands as wastelands despite the fact that they serve as reservoirs of ecological diversity. During times of floods, they act as sponge, which hold water and release it slowly, allowing groundwater to recharge. Also, they are excellent cleansers of pollutants discharged into the water upstream. Their value …
"NGOs would be accountable to the state government for their performance' A ploy to kill the independence of NGOs "Ethical standards for the NGOs will be promoted by the government' Government wants to impose its agenda on the NGOs "Legal and administrative action for misappropriation of funds by the NGOs …
The year 2001 may have been declared as the year of volunteers, but the Orissa government has other ideas. Recently, the state finance minister Ram Krushna Patnaik introduced a resolution in the state assembly to curb the powers of some 2,000-odd non-governmental organisations (ngos) operating in the state. "We want …
Why was this resolution introduced? As the state assembly has to still discuss the resolution, it would be unconstitutional for me to reveal the reason. We only want to know how much money, from which all sources and for what purpose the NGOs are getting. We want to make them …
The term cyclone includes all tropical storms. They start as swirls of cloud and rain that eventually intensify into storms.The Indian sub-continent is the worst affected part in the world. Although India accounts for only six per cent of the cyclones worldwide, it records the maximum damage. Past 122 years' …
The 2000 monsoon didn’t keep its date with Dulaiben, 60, resident of Thoridi village in Amreli district of Gujarat. Her eyes stare down the road in the hope of the water tanker that brings 5,000 litres of water for the 600 residents once every week. Her two sons migrated to …
The Employment Guarantee Scheme ( egs ) of Maharash tra is said to be the only one in the world that guaran tees employment on demand. This was for the first time an employment generation programme was conceived to create productive works at the village level. The absence of social …
During the 1999-2000 drought, Down To Earth ( dte ) reported that five villages in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh had enough water during the drought because of the water conservation activities they had undertaken. dte revisited these villages, reeling under the second successive drought. Unlike last year, some of these …
An analysis of the government's failure at drought relief shows some clear loopholes that are not very difficult to plug for a government that is worried about its political future. The most important thing is to plan decentralised, village-level institutions to both manage drought relief and come up with strategic …
The biggest hurdle in providing the much-needed drought relief is corruption in the government machi nery. Rajasthan has spent almost Rs 6,500 crore on drought relief works like employment generation, fodder distribution and drinking water facilities in the past 45 years. Another Rs 628 crore has been spent in the …
Memories are interactive. As the country debates over the selling of the public sector Bharat Aluminium Company ( balco ) to a private company, memories bring the Gandhamardan hills in western Orissa into national imagination. Fifteen years ago, the Gandhamardan hills, rich in biodiversity and bauxite equally, were the platform …
History has seen the management of Indian forests change from being an instrument of regimented exploitation by the British to its present conservation-centered approach. This transition in forest policy has been all but smooth. India's Social Forestry Programme was launched in 1978 to ease pressure on her impoverished natural forests …
The Himalayan newt, also called the Indian salamander, takes shelter among bamboo stumps in and around the hills of Darjeeling. It lives close to calm and still waters. During the monsoons, it feeds on algae, water beetles and bugs. After the showers, it leaps down on insect larvae, snails, slugs …
INDIA might be the software superpower but its remote villages still remain caught in a time warp where the effects of modernistion have not yet filtered down. Even after 54 years of independence, the rhetoric of development and conservation rings hollow without the people's participation in development schemes. Here in …
About 80 tropical cyclones (with wind speeds equal to or greater than 35 knots) form in the world’s waters every year. Of these about 6.5% develop in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. Since the frequency of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal is about 5 to 6 times …
the world's largest rookery of the highly endangered Olive Ridley turtle, Gahirmatha beach in Orissa, is fast becoming their largest graveyard, too. This year's record-breaking mass nesting of 800,000 turtles sent waves of jubilation among conservationists. But, the figure of 6,000 dead turtles washed ashore ebbed this jubilation. Last year …
fires are threatening to destroy large forest patches in the states of Orissa and Uttaranchal. Blazes have been reported from Pinder, Mandakani, Nayar, Yamuna and Bhagirathi valleys of Uttaranchal. Due to lack of rainfall in these areas since September 2000 and consequent dry vegetation, the fires are spreading fast. This …
Past experiences have shown that centralized management of natural resources, based on a culture of exclusion and rules, has not contributed to the sustainable management of natural resources. This important realization has led to a series of policy changes in the recent past that provides an ever-widening democratic space to …
