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 …
pro- and anti- posco groups in Orissa clashed again. It is alleged that the hand of a 58-year old man of the posco -support group was chopped off on May 14 by project opponents led by the posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (ppss). ppss has been actively protesting posco's 12 million …
The surface of our planet is mainly water, yet usable water is in short supply. In some parts of Africa people have to walk several kilometres a day to get water, and they are the lucky ones. There, and in Asia, the prospect of conflicts over water is increasing. A …
What do a student in New York, a farmer near Mexico City, a family in London and a nurse in Bangkok have in common? Increasing trouble paying their grocery bill. Since 2000, the average price of food around the world has nearly doubled. In the UK, food prices are rising …
Participatory water monitoring can be especially important in helping prevent water-related conflicts that may arise in the extractive industry and large-scale agriculture sectors. Participatory water monitoring presents unique challenges, however, because of the complex and highly technical nature of assessing impacts to water and the controversy surrounding the competing demands …
Biofuels are being promoted as energy sources that could reduce both dependence on imported oil and fossil fuel emissions. Currently, a large percentage of biofuels are produced from food crops, a situation that some experts say is leading to food insecurity around the world. Not only are more crops being …
The recent surge in world food prices is already creating havoc in poor countries, and worse is to come. Food riots are spreading across Africa, though many are unreported in the international press. Moreover, the surge in wheat, maize and rice prices seen on commodities markets have not yet fully …
The decline of the political significance of industrial conflicts is not quite a result of the structural changes in management-labour relations (as commonly thought) in these times of globalisation. It is more a consequence of the lack of an appropriate agency and politics among the working classes, despite their increasing …
Until a month ago the Adani Group, the proponent of Mundra sez in Kutch district of Gujarat, had been on a roll, buying land at dirt-cheap rates, though some in the political circle and real-estate market smelled a scam in it. Then something unprecedented happened. The people of Zarapara village …
April 15. Zarapara village, Mundra taluka, Kutch. More than 3,000 men and women gathered to attend a gram sabha meeting called to discuss the transfer of the village grazing land for the Mundra sez. The atmosphere was charged as the taluka development officer (TDO) and the deputy district development officer …
A two-and-a-half-year long fight has resulted in victory for Chhattisgarh villagers. The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd (iffco) withdrew its proposal of setting up a coal-based power plant in Chandan Nagar in Sarguja district in March. "The gram sabha was firm and the result is before us. The pesa act …
Land alienation, poverty amongst scheduled tribes and dalits and lack of access to basic forest resources have contributed to the growth of naxalism, says the Planning Commission. Its report, Development challenges in extremist affected areas, indicts Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. The report also critiques sezs and the complete failure of …
The report, Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas, authored by an expert group set up by the Planning Commission, looks at the Naxalite/Maoist movement in a way that is different from the prevalent official attitude and draws attention to many of the positive effects of the movement. The report rejects …
We've all heard about the deforestation of the Amazon, but what's it like to be caught between the loggers and the people living in the forests? Mauricio Torres is employed by the Brazilian government to monitor this front line. He tells Adrian Barnett how he has come up against corruption …
Fuel shortages in Gaza have again aggravated after Israel halted supplies from April 10-15, following a Palestinian militant attack at Nahal Oz. Though it resumed supplies on April 16, diesel and petrol supply still remain suspended. Recurring fuel cuts in Gaza
on april 15, 2008, the supreme court ordered the National Human Rights Commission to appoint a committee to look into human rights violations by Salwa Judum activists in Chhattisgarh and submit a report within eight weeks of the order. At a hearing on March 31, the bench comprising Chief Justice …
Little did I know that the seven of us would be branded "Maoists' when we set off for a protest rally against posco in Orissa on April 1. We had reached Bhubaneswar a day earlier and booked a taxi to Dhinkia, a hamlet 10 km off Paradip port. A local …
The major steel towns built in the wake of the Second Five-Year Plan were to be "temples' to India's industrial future and secular "modernity'; but soon they were desecrated by ethnic and communal violence. Focusing on two of them, this article shows that the extent of the violence was markedly …
A t the annual conference of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Memphis, Tennessee, US, held from March 25-29, "Displacement, Resettlement and Rehabilitation' was one of the three main themes. The conference was attended by a diverse crowd of applied social scientists from around the world. There were 16 panels …
THE Chichewa people in Malawi have a saying: Njala ndi chilombo. It means "Hunger is a beast". Today, the beast is rampaging around the world and particularly Africa, where shortage of food threatens to undo recent economic and political gains. Climate change is partly to blame. But there is another …
The appreciation for natural resources as a driver of economic development has undergone a dramatic change in the past decades. Although an abundance of resources was generally perceived as advantageous until the 1980s, an influential literature emerged in the 1990s that reached seemingly opposite conclusions. The phrase "natural resource curse" …
