Women-led and women’s rights organizations are on the frontlines of today’s humanitarian crises—but many are at risk of disappearing. As global needs rise due to conflict, climate change, and displacement, deep cuts to foreign aid are threatening organizations that provide life-saving services for women and girls. In March 2025, UN …
This paper addresses two related topics: 1) the circular link between food insecurity and conflict, and 2) the potential role of food security interventions in reducing the risk of violent conflicts. As the 2011 World Development Report notes, conflict comes in many forms. While the traditional security paradigm has focused …
A quarter of Liberia’s total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits, an investigation by Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) shows. Unless this crisis is tackled …
Buddhadeb Ghosh (“What Made the ‘Unwilling Farmers’ Unwilling? A Note on Singur”, EPW, 11 August 2012) has made important observations that help us understand the Singur story better. However, I fi nd some of his arguments problematic. (Letters)
Going through the data and analysis by Buddhadeb Ghosh the information about 6% of the stated unwilling landowners holding 36% of the land points towards a clear class contradiction. What also contributed to this perception is that during the movement and even in the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, …
As the world urbanizes, global health challenges are increasingly concentrated in cities. Currently, over 80% of the population in Latin America already lives in cities. The African urban population is projected to double in the next decade and China has urbanized in thirty years at a rate it took Europe …
An examination of the landholdings of those farmers who were unwilling to sell their holdings to facilitate the Tata car factory in Singur suggests that only a very small number among them had substantial holdings and livelihoods tied to them. What then was the real reason for the protests in …
The events of 18 July in the Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki which ended with the murder of a company manager were not a sudden confl agration. Anger at the plant had been building up for months over the management's refusal to recognise an elected union; workers were increasingly frustrated …
For the villagers around the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu who are agitating against its commissioning, it is as if they are facing a second Emergency, albeit a silent one. False cases have been slapped against them, their leaders have been charged with sedition and waging war against …
A fundamental principle of livelihood is that work has a foundational value. It is opposed to the labour-commodity process where the foundational value of work is thoroughly undermined and where work is disembedded from society and taken out of it. In adivasi livelihoods, work is foundational and only through work …
WHO and partners hope that they can fi nally rid the world of polio. But insurgency, Taliban-initiated boycotts, and a US$1 billion funding defi cit will not make it an easy task. Dara Mohammadi reports.
An angry protest is gathering momentum in Mithi Virdi, a picturesque village in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district. Four villages have united forces to oppose a nuclear plant coming up in their vicinity. Mithi Virdi is likely to become as famous as Jaitapur and Kudankulam. In 2008, Mithi Virdi was placed on …
This new report released by Greenpeace has found that large clusters of coal fired power plants proposed in Vidarbha may bring down the future availability of water in the Wardha river by 40% and affect irrigation for about 1 lakh hectares of farmland in the future. In the backdrop of …
This collection of papers was presented at a conference on linkages between climate change, water, conflict and migration, held in September 2011 at The Hague, in the Netherlands, where the discussion focused on: capacity building and resilience in climate hotspots; conflict prevention; and a legal framework to protect environmental migrants. …
Dewas town and industrial area has been witnessing water crisis for more than two decades and is heavily dependent on ground water resources. Madhya Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (MPSIDC) with active support from Dewas Industrial Association (DIA) planned a privatised industrial water supply project for industries in Dewas through …
Recent decades of globalisation provide a new starting point for the study of south Asia by highlighting critical human issues that force history into the present and generate new productive conversations between history and social science. One fundamental issue is the increasing inequality in wealth and control over human resources, …
