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 …
The police recently blocked tribal people's protests in South Tripura district in Tripura over the Gumti Hydro-Electric Project commissioned in 1974. The tribal people want the project scrapped and the land given back to them but the state government is not doing that. "Hydel power is still cheaper, much cheaper …
entry of government officials in Chandan Nagar in Sarguja district of Chhattisgarh has been banned with effect from May 1, 2007. This comes after series of long-standing protests by people against a proposed 1,000-mw thermal power plant in the district. iffco Chhattisgarh Power Limited (icpl) is a joint venture between …
Forum to bridge a chasm deepened by breach of faith A piece of cartographic evidence of inequity is often repeated by social activists all over India. In this evidence, maps of forests, minerals, tribal habitation and poorest districts are overlayed and they denote almost the same areas in India. This …
Ethnic conflicts have dogged India since independence. The problem has attracted a lot of scholarship. Amarjyoti Borah talks to two eminent academics who have looked at the problem. Ram Dayal Munda, currently chief advisor, Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, puts the problem of tribal people in the country …
As far as public protests go, Puducherry, formerly Pondicherry, has generally been a backwater. But the government's resolve to fast-track a deep-water port, upgrading the existing fair-weather port, has provoked a chorus of protests from citizens across the board
forest officials of Narmada Valley Development Authority (nvda) launched an operation in March 2007 to shift monkeys and nilgai from an island in the Indira Sagar Reservoir area near Chhanera in Madhya Pradesh's Khandwa district. Intermittent release of Narmada water into the reservoir's catchment area had marooned the animals on …
More than 300 destitute people of South Africa's Johannesburg city are currently facing eviction from their squats. The move is part of Johannesburg's inner-city regeneration programme ahead of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Two stadiums are being readied for the tournament. The process, which has been stalled over the past …
kujang, Jagatsinghpur district, Orissa, April 15, 2007: a contingent of armed policemen at B B High School testifies to mounting tension. The school is the site for a public hearing organised by the Orissa Pollution Control Board. The environmental ramifications of the contentious Posco steel project is up for discussion. …
the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) lifted the freeze on special economic zones (sezs) on April 5, 2007, with some policy dilutions. It fixed the upper limit for sezs at 5,000 hectares. States will decide on the lower limits. The minimum processing area for multi-product and sector-specific sezs will be …
construction on Gujarat's ambitious Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project in Ahmedabad, restarted in the second week of March, 2007. The project had been stalled since August 2006, when heavy floods inundated the city. Following this, the National Institute of Hydrology (nih) and Indian Institute of Technology (iit), Roorkee, were asked to …
To reach Hairpur, a remote fishing village along the West Bengal coast, one has to get off the main road and walk 2.5 km over a broad mud dyke. Access to this path is blocked by a log barrier. Outsiders are not welcome. Haripur villagers have been protesting since last …
Moving towards privatisation of mining in India, the Union government granted Essar Steel Limited a prospecting licence in February 2007 to mine iron ore reserves in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district. The licence was given after the National Mineral Development Corporation's 30-year lease expired on February 3, 2007, without any excavations having …
Action to conserve biodiversity, particularly through the creation of protected areas (PAs), is inherently political. Political ecology is a field of study that embraces the interactions between the way nature is understood and the politics and impacts of environmental action. This paper explores the political ecology of conservation, particularly the …
Decisions that affect how people use land are among the most fraught that any enlightened society has to grapple with. Two claims that typically come out on the short end of the land-use debate are the claims of indigenous people and claims for non-human species. Sometimes claims for indigenous people …
Mozambique plans to upgrade an existing dam construction plan to avoid repeats of the flooding from the Zambezi river which has devastated the country in recent weeks. In the first phase, it will expedite construction of the Mpanda Nkhuwa dam, budgeted at us $2.3 billion, 70 km downstream from the …
Following illegal logging of mahogany trees across Peru's rainforests, the region's indigenous people , who have no contact with the outside world, are now fleeing their tradition territory and seeking shelter in Brazil along its border with Peru. The Brazilian government tracked them during an aerial inspection of the area. …
Livelihoods of fisherfolk is at stake as the Mundra special economic zone (sez) on the northern shore of the Gulf of Kutch gets underway. Potentially the largest sez in the country, it covers 28 km of coastline and is spread across 13,000 hectares (ha). While the Adani Group, the promoters, …
the Delhi High Court has finally taken a stand on the translocation of the substantial monkey population in the capital. It has directed the government to round up the monkeys in mammoth cages and transport them to the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary along the southern fringes of the city. Reactions …
The future of the Tawa Matsya Sangh (tms), a cooperative of fisherfolk operating in the Tawa reservoir in Madhya Pradesh's Hoshangabad district, is firmly on hold. On December 23, 2006, their licence to fish in the reservoir expired, and since then all hell has broken loose. The reservoir was created …
Builders are jumping on to the SEZ bandwagon, distorting priorities Whatever their view on the benefits of Special Economic Zones (sez), most observers agree that the question of land acquisition is problematic. Land required for giant public works such as dams or for large industrial projects was not a contentious …
