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 …
Amartya Sen’s felicitous metaphor which celebrated an aspect of an open middle class Indian society has been harshly disproved by no less a person than the mild-mannered Manmohan Singh when he followed the practice of Indira Gandhi in seeing a “foreign hand” behind democratic opposition. Even when the prime minister …
Today, people are protesting against illegal and unjust land grabbing across the country, and it is clear for all to see that the process of land acquisition is unjust and driven by private interests. At this time, the UPA government is introducing a Bill that will supposedly address these issues. …
This study reviews the experience of cooperation in selected international river basins and during selected time periods in those basins. The review is from a country perspective and focuses on the countries’ perceived risks and opportunities in engaging in regional cooperation deals in response to the prospects for cooperation. It …
Repeated court orders fail to save part of the primitive mountain range in Alwar from mining Call it sheer callousness of the Rajasthan government or connivance between administrative officials and mining mafia, two hills of the primitive Aravalli mountain range have been literally razed to the ground and beyond within …
Preparations for the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development have begun, but the first round of preparatory meetings did not address important issues such as sustainable resource use, production and consumption.
How much of the benefits of economic growth accrue directly to farmers and workers who lose their livelihoods when agricultural land is taken over for development? If handled properly, the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill 2011 offers an opportunity for equitably addressing the interests of diverse sections affected …
Despite being dotted with industries, Gujarat's rich coastline is plagued by voices of dissent. Coastal communities have of late realised that the fruits of industrialisation were either too sour, or not for them at all.
The study, worth Nu 2M, World Wildlife Fund officials said would focus on the snow leopard population and their places of existence to help prioritise the best areas for conservation. WWF conservation director Vijay Moktan said there were no studies done at the park nor were there any local expert …
There is not just a crisis of development today, but also a crisis of ideas for emancipatory forms of development. What is needed from progressives is a rigorous theory that must acknowledge what is present (class exploitation, imperialism, national and social oppression, profit-driven ecological destruction, gross commercialisation of all spheres …
This article presents an investigation into strategies employed by privately-owned companies to gain access to land for resource extraction in Jharkhand where much of the land being put under the shovel is inalienable adivasi or tribal land and deedless commons. It concludes that although policy reforms are welcome, cosmetic changes …
Nearly all our fresh water comes from obscure underground deposits – now satellites and radioactive isotopes are telling us how much we have to go round.
Conflict, population displacement and high food prices mean millions of people in South Sudan face hunger this year, two U.N. food agencies said on Wednesday. The number of people with insecure food supplies has risen to 4.7 million in 2012 from 3.3 million in 2011, a report by the Food …
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon) is an island in the Indian Ocean about 28 kilometers (18 mi.) off the southeastern coast of India, in a strategic location near major Indian Ocean sea lanes. Over one-third of Sri Lanka’s population – 8.7 million people – …
Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing …
The mainstream paradigm of understanding grass-root environmentalism in India as “environmentalism of the poor” might be challenged by an alternative prototype forest movement in the Bengal Dooars prior to the Chipko movement. It was fought against the exploitative design of ecosystem governance under the taungya method of artificial regeneration as …
Refusing to be deterred by the biting cold, the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and Jobat dam-affected adivasi oustees successfully completed three full weeks (21 days) of their indefinite action at the Agricultural and Seed Production Farm, Jobat where they have occupied and have been cultivating government-owned land. Except for the …
This is then the challenge of 2012 and beyond. The world is on the boil and the steam of anger will not dissipate. The question is whether these protests can be channeled to etch new, better pathways of growth.
This paper focuses on the causes of ecosystem degradation. Historically, poor communities have been identified as among the key degrading agents. The thesis of this paper is that such communities do not voluntarily destroy the resource base which is the source of their livelihoods and provides them sustenance. Therefore, the …
Between June 2000 and August 2003 Punjab, the most prosperous of Pakistan's four provinces, experienced an unusually intense struggle for proprietary rights between the tenant farmers and state institutions over land that the former had tilled for over nine decades.
