Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Jagan Prasad Tehriya Vs State of Uttar Pradesh dated 23/05/2025. The applicant has alleged large-scale illegal felling of green trees within the Agra district, Uttar Pradesh. The application revealed instances of illegal tree felling at Fatehabad, Sadar, Kiraoli and Agra …
WOMEN are the worst victims of environmental degradation. A number of voluntary organisations now realise the crucial linkages between women and the environment and that only by empowering rural women so they have greater control over natural resources can they have better control of their own lives. Controlling commons THE …
AT FIRST sight, Gandruk village, which is high up in the middle Himalayas, seems no different from other villages on a popular trekking route in Nepal. Children and dogs scamper about, seemingly oblivious of the mid-day heat. But, on closer scrutiny, differences become manifest. For a start, the village is …
NESTLED amid pine forests, apple orchards and vegetable gardens at Kausani, in UP"s Almora district, is Lakshmi Ashram, a residential school begun 45 years ago and featuring a distinctive pattern of education, placing special emphasis on ecological consciousness. The students come mostly from remote hill villages and from extremely poor …
What makes the King Mahendra Trust different from other NGOs working in the field of nature conservation? The Trust is the only non-governmental organisation which has been established through an Act of Parliament. It is guided by an independent, autonomous board of trustees. We are self-sustaining. Our approach is also …
IN A PROGRAMME conducted by the Academy for Development of Science in Karjat in Maharashtra, farmers all over the country collected some 365 local varieties of rice in as many days. As many as 325 of these were not documented in the 60,000-long official list of the rice plant (Oryza …
MANY varieties of crops in the higher Himalaya are rapidly disappearing, resulting in an alarming decrease in crop diversity in the Garhwal Himalaya, according to scientists at the G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development. The Garhwal Himalaya is a repository of many lesser-known and unexploited crops, but …
AFTER all these years, Subhas Mukhopadhyay must be used to taking awards in his stride. Long before prizes and awards came his way (starting with the Sahitya Akademi award that he won in 1964), those of us who knew Subhasda in the 1940s remember him as a soft-spoken communist poet. …
THREE YEARS after the National Wasteland Development Board (NWDB) launched the "Greening the Himalaya" project in the Jadhera panchayat of Himachal Pradesh, the balding hills of the panchayat are turning green once more. But this achievement is not so much due to the NWDB as because of the villagers of …
INDIAN VILLAGERS don't just pick up any cow-pat they find. Even this lowly excrement, so prominently strewn around, is governed by a complex set of ownership rules in rural India, and is not to be collected and used by anybody. It all depends on local village rules, on who is …
A visit to Kabir Basti, 60 km from Jaisalmer, reveals an affluent village of about 70 households. Every house is a pucca structure, made of the local yellow granite and arranged in neat, well-planned rows, with plenty of space in between. The children are healthy, the village has its own …
The Indian space programme has come of age with the flawless blast-off of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) in May 1992, after two successive miscarriages in 1987 and 1988. The rocket successfully placed the 106-kg Stretched Rohini Satellite Series-C (SROSS-C) into a 450-km orbit. For good measure, it also …
THE VILLAGE of Seed stands out as a green oasis in Rajasthan's denuded Aravallis. Its gram sabha meets regularly and, being a gramdan village, it has full control over all the land within the village boundary, including erstwhile government land. Rawat was the adhyaksha (chairperson) of Seed's gram sabha from …
THAT rural Indian women are the worst victims of environmental degradation is well-known. But what happens when women assert themselves? This is the story of the four-year-long struggle of the women of Muvasa village in the Panchmahals district of Gujarat who made degraded common land arable. To my mind, it …
ABOUT 60 km from the historical town of Bijapur is a latter-day human-made wonder - the Chikka- padasalagi barrage. This half-km long dam on the River Krishna is testimony to the collective will and undaunted efforts of the people from 21 villages around the Jamkhandi taluk of Karnataka's Bijapur district. …
Social media agency, Resonance is based in Shanghai’s trendy French concession area. The metropolis is also a draw for a new generation of young Chinese who are leaving rural areas in droves to live in the cities. So if the young are leaving the land who’s now going to grow …
