Order of the Supreme Court in the matter of Sugra Adiwasi & Others Vs Pathranand & Others dated 29/04/2025. The bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Joymalya Bagchi directed the state of Madhya Pradesh as well as the central government through the the Ministries of Tribal Affairs and …
ELEPHANTS are fast becoming a law and order problem in some parts of the country. A herd of elephants crossed over from Bihar into the tribal district of Sarguja in MP, attacking villages and fields. In the last few years, officials say 14 people have been killed but tribals say …
THE BOOK under review is an exhaustive, intensely researched, painstaking study of the social organisation of the Munda of Central India. This area is not the same as the historical or the political region, and is being increasingly referred to now as middle India. The author disarmingly admits he was …
"MAVA NATE Mava Raj" (our government in our village) is the slogan Sarvodaya workers raised at a 1988 meeting in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, to educate people about village democracy. After the slogan-shouting, an old, "illiterate" Maria Gond adivasi, clad in a loin-cloth, stunned the Sarvodaya workers by asking, "You people …
THE alleged rape in Brazil of an 18-year-old teacher by Paulinho Paiakan, chief of the Kayapo tribe, may be seen as symbolic of the rape of the Amazon rainforests using as a lure the theory that marketing forest produce is more economically beneficial and ecologically friendly than selling timber. Attracted …
DURING the dissemination of an improved, smoke-removing chulha (called nada chulha to honour the women of Nada, a harijan village, who developed it), I visited hundreds of rural kitchens in seven northern states to train local women as chulha mistris (stove repairers). In talking with the Nada housewives using the …
CATCHING rats the way Irula tribals do is not only environmentally safe but also cost-effective -- for they don't use poison or chemicals. All they need are their bare hands. Field trials in controlling rat numbers using these methods were conducted in 1984 by the Irula Snake Catcher's Industrial Cooperative …
RESIDENTS of Domiasiat and Wahkaliar villages near Cherrapunji in Meghalaya have formed village action committees to resist a proposed uranium mine in the region. Students, welfare organisations and opposition parties in the state have joined hands to form the Khasi Jaintia Environment Protection Council (KJEPC) to support them. KJEPC convener …
WHEN SLIGHTLY built Saif Ali, 22, looks out from his home in Choti Nahar, on the outskirts of Pathankot on the highway to Gurdaspur, he sees the blue-grey hills of the Dhauladhar range in the distance. It's not just physical distance that separates him from the mountains, it's a whole …
THE NISGA: are a proud people who live in the Naas river valley of northwestern British Columbia in Canada. Today, they are still attached to their land. Joseph Gosnell, a NISGA:, who was in Rio, puts it this way, "Ours is a land like no other. Rich in salmon, steelhead, …
NOT EVERYTHING was smooth sailing for the indigenous community in Rio. Shock and outrage gripped the community when Paulinho Paiacan, one of the chiefs of the Caiapo nation in the Brazilian Amazon region, was accused of having raped a white woman. Paiacan, incidentally, was the winner of the UN Environment …
THE FIRST World has just discovered the relationship between environment and indigenous people. This is the primary reason for putting indigenous people on the environmental agenda. They have realised that if the world's rainforests are in danger so are the forest's inhabitants. "If they go, so do the forests," says …
THE RIO Earth Summit was probably the biggest media event of any UN conference in history, much more so than the last big bash -- the women's conference at Nairobi. Women are only women, after all, but the earth is the mother of us all. Something like the fear of …
IN October 1991, when the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a fresh budget for the Koel Karo hydro-electric project near Ranchi, it began a fresh chapter in the protests and agitations that have chequered the 20-year history of the project, the longest fight against any dam in the …
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 …
ARUNACHAL Pradesh is one of the greenest states in India. Yet today, despite having only seven persons to a square kilometre and about 8.4 million ha of rich vegetation, the state is gravely threatened by deforestation. Forest officials claim an almost 14 per cent increase in forest cover between 1980 …
Energy problems have reached alarming proportions in the Tawang and Bomdilla areas. Since the last five years, Choizm, of Khamba hamlet of Lohu basti in Tawang, has been hiring help at the rate of Rs 40 per day and paying Rs 1,000 for a truckload of firewood. She has also …
Arunachal Pradesh's tribals believe they have an absolute right over the state's land and forests. The state takes a different view of the matter. The entire area lying between the McMohan Line and the Inner Line is technically owned by the state. In actual practice, government land constitutes only 26.16 …
IS one born a woman or does one become one? Were women all through history burdened by inequitous norms and rules even during the period when surplus accumulation did not form the basis of social order? Are women innately non-violent and nurturing beings, particularly in interacting with nature? The two …
It is popular in periods of Hindu religious fasting like Navratri. It is also commonly found on the shelves of health food stores. But for the tribals in the Sahyadri hills in Maharashtra, buckwheat is a way of life. Unlike in the hilly regions of northern India where kuttu, as …
BIOLOGY Yellow pigment clue to evolution Bilirubin, responsible for the yellowish tinge in the skin, eyes and nails of jaundice patients, has for the first time been identified in plants. The pigment was discovered in Strelitzia reginae Aiton, commonly know as the Bird of Paradise plant. It is indigenous to …
