Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
Why have you asked for changes in the Forest (Conservation) Act? Actually the entire Forest (Conservation) Act needs to be reviewed with a wider perspective. The overall concept of forest conservation should be given a dynamism so that it changes with the needs of the people. The term forest has …
THEORITICAL and empirical studies of collective management of natural resources have proved the efficacy of common property as an efficient institutional arrangement. In India, joint forest management (JFM), involving partnerships between forest-based communities and the forest departments for the protection and management of forests, was initially successful but certain core …
ON THE face of it, democracy in India has won a small battle. People's aspirations have been met by the creation of the three new states - Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand. The people agitated for decades against apathy and skewed development of the mother states - Madhya Pradesh (MP), Uttar …
RAIPUR'S air is euphoric. The secretariat, earlier the main civil hospital of the city, still smells of fresh paint. A huge cutout of chief minister Ajit Jogi overlooks its premises, while residents of Raipur eagerly debate the future of this natural resource-rich state and the opportunities it brings. The general …
WHILE the first chief minister of Uttaranchal was being sworn in at midnight on November 9, 2000, many leaders who fought for statehood swore to continue the struggle. "It is not over yet," summed up Kamla Pant, a leader at the forefront of the movement and member of the Uttrakhand …
ON NOVEMBER 15, 2000 when the collective dream of some 22 million people for half-a-century rolled into reality, there was hardly anybody to celebrate. Jharkhand, India's youngest state and one of the richest, was born at midnight. Twenty minutes later, a new government was sworn in to chart out its …
the controversial move by the Andhra Pradesh ( ap ) government to give the industry access to degraded forest lands for plantation and other agro-forestry activities through the Joint Forest Management ( jfm ) institutions has sparked off a storm of protests in the state. Over 600 Vana Suraksha Samitis …
a thriving timber trade business is taking its toll on the forests of North West Frontier Province ( nwfp ) in Pakistan. Manshera district in Hazara division, one of the two main forested areas of nwfp , had a forest cover of 83,966 hectare (ha) in 1979. The cover had …
a storm is brewing in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It is not one that augurs well for a state known for the progress heralded by its computer-friendly and media-savvy chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. The state government is at an advanced stage of signing a memorandum of understanding ( …
It is introspection time. As the country's forest bureaucracy sits down to assess the progress of the joint forest management (JFM) programme, a decade after it was introduced in 1990, what comes out clearly is that its success has been limited to only some parts of the country. Even today, …
Once again we have a new minister and once again we have pious statements. For the first time, however a minister has admitted that 350 million people in India are dependent upon the forest for their livelihood. While all this is fine and a lot of the right words have …
It was a real pleasure to go with President K R Narayanan to Hamirpura village. People always come to the Rashtrapati Bhawan estate to receive awards from the President. The fact that the President went to the village himself to honour it is a remarkable thing in itself. It is …
it was an event the villagers of Alwar district will not forget in a hurry. Four helicopters, numerous vehicles, a posse of policemen and 30,000-odd villagers had gathered in Hamirpura village in Thanagazi block of Alwar to welcome India's first citizen. And savour the fruits of their hard labour. The …
There was a time when people from other villagers were not interested in getting their daughters married to men from Guraiya village. They had a reason. During summer, the women were forced to carry drinking water from the river Bebas, three kilometres away. Now, it is the other way round. …
A tale of two villages There are about 600,000 villages in India. And perhaps as many kinds of environmental problems they face. It is easy to accept defeat. But Bhaonta-Kolyala did not it's an unusual ritual the villages of Bhaonta-Kolyala follow. Every year, they pour water into a johad - …
"The forest was dense till the 1960s," recalls Suryabhan Khorbade of Sayagata village in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district. During the British rule, people were allowed to enter the forests at their own will. But after Independence, when the forest department stepped in, there was a ban on access to the forests. …
Obensao Kikon (63) belongs to Wokha district in Nagaland. An :rdent jungle burner' at one time, his stint as the chairperson of the Market Federation of Nagaland changed his outlook. Thereafter, there has been no looking back. His 615-ha land in Wokha is full of teak and bamboo trees. He …
It is an oft-repeated story of dense forests being reduced to shrubs and coppice. In the case of Melaghar village in Sonmara subdivision, the 1971 Bangladesh war responsible for the wanton felling of the then abundant sal, teak and bamboo forests. A large number of refugees from across the border …
How can there be sustainable development when so many people are dependent on forests for their livelihood? Sustainable development generates revenue. One must understand that there is no trade-off between sustainability and development in the long-term perspective. When sustainability is achieved, there will be a transitional period when you have …
THE reds are being forced to turn green in the Nizamabad, Adilabad and Warangal districts of the Telangana region where the people have embraced the Andhra Pradesh government's joint forest management (JFM) programme in a big way. What is unusual is that forest officials move around freely in the remote …
