Gandhi Jayanti, October 2, this year is going to witness a new movement. Activists belonging to a non-profit, Ekta Parishad, will undertake a Jan Satyagraha Samwad Yatra to highlight the ongoing land and livelihood struggles across the country. The Jan Satyagraha Samwad Yatra will highlight the ongoing land and livelihood …
India's poverty line finally makes headlines. Do a rapid archival search of newspapers, at least of the past 20 years, and one finds that the poverty line never made it to the front pages. In post television boom, it never featured on prime time. But the past one week has …
India's poverty level will go up by 3.6 per cent in rural areas and 2.9 per cent in urban areas if people's expenditure on health is factored in while measuring poverty. A study by the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi redrew the poverty estimates of 2007 (the Planning Commission …
Poverty is becoming hereditary in India, at least for a sizeable population. That is the conclusion derived from a three-decade tracking of poor households in rural India. A survey by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), an international association of researchers and academicians, claims that those who are chronically poor …
At a time when courts hog headlines, this was a conspicuous slip. About two months ago, the Uttarakhand High Court admitted a public interest petition on making gross environmental productivity a co-indicator of the state of the economy along with the standard gross domestic product (GDP). The media did not …
Bhubaneswar Bindhani has not heard of a UNDP Human Development Report Paper, ‘Migration and Human Development’. It is quite likely the authors of the 2009 report did not take note of the fortunes of this resident of Nuagaon village in Odisha’s Nuapada district when they wrote, “migration fosters development of …
The joint committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to enquire into the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of the Forest Rights) Act, 2006, came out with its final report in December 2010. The report …
A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor …
THE Mizoram and Tripura administrations have served notices to families occupying land along the India-Bangladesh border. The land has to be vacated for fencing the border. Nearly 3,900 families along nine border sub-divisions in Tripura have been left homeless as state government failed to rehabilitate and compensate them. The remaining …
THE Union government has proposed giving conclusive ownership titles to landholders across India through the Land Titling Bill 2010. The draft bill, open for public comment till August 31, envisages a transition from registration of sale deeds to registration of ownership, thus ensuring the registration is proof of ownership. At …
Goats are increasingly seen as a threat to the ecology as they feed on any type of plant species. But goat keeping continues to be an important livelihood activity for the resource poor people. BAIF has promoted a number of initiatives with twin goals of helping small farmers in rearing …
Despite its rich resources like forests and minerals, Bundelkhand is a region of distress and crisis. A study fi nds that the distress of the region simply cannot be explained by the absence or irregularity of rainfall. There are long-term structural problems which have had a cumulative effect over the …
SEVERAL hundred landless people formed a human chain on the premises of Raiganj upazila council in Sirajganj Tuesday to press home their demands, including eviction of land grabbers. The demands include eviction of
