The Centre has decided to modify flagship rural development schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) to suit the needs of naxal-affected districts. While the schemes will be made more flexible, funds allocated to them will also increase. The decision was taken at a day-long consultation held …
The recent Supreme Court judgement holding the appointment of Salwa Judum cadres in Chhattisgarh a violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution comes as a political embarrassment for the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which has consistently tried to upscale local resistance (read Salwa Judum) to the …
In April this year, Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra made history. One of its villages became the country’s first to win the right to sell and harvest bamboo. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh handed over transit pass books to residents of Mendha Lekha village, allowing them to exercise community forest rights over …
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 …
Can you love tigers but hate forests? This is the question that troubled me as I visited the middle of India last fortnight. I was in Nagpur, where local politicians, conservationists and officials were discussing what needed to be done in this chronically poor and backward region endowed with forests …
WITHIN six months of its implementation, the Integrated Action Plan (IAP), intended to boost development in Naxalite-affected regions, is heading for a change. At present, the plan is being directed by district-level committees with no public participation. The Planning Commission wants to alter this arrangement by imposing conditions on release …
Chhattisgarh’s tribal population is beginning to get a taste of free press. They have a news service that informs them about events that concern them but rarely find mention in the mainstream media because of the state’s Special Public Security Act of 2005. The law operates as a gag order …
“It’s a question of freedom. Bread and freedom both are important and people must go back to their homes,” said a Supreme Court bench on January 17. It was hearing a petition seeking an independent committee to rehabilitate 40,000 tribals in Chhattisgarh, caught in the crossfire between Maoists and Salwa …
JAINATULLAH Hussain of Kisko block in Lohardaga district is an unhappy man. He had been running a radio show for adolescents who have health-related misconceptions. The programme was broadcast through Prasar Bharti and the airtime was purchased by Manthan Yuva Sansthan, a non-profit he had been working with. Realising the …
2010 was a loud year for the environment. High profile projects—from Vedanta to Posco and Navi Mumbai airport to Lavasa—hit the headlines for non-compliance with environmental regulations. While 2009 was the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, it was only last year that we were all outraged by the …
THE Centre has approved Rs 3,300 crore grants for infrastructural development in 60 Naxalite-affected districts of the country. The scheme Integrated Action Plan for Selected Tribal and Backward Districts was passed on November 26. The scheme will be implemented over the next two years. A government press release said a …
Twenty six-year-old Soyam Hunga has stayed in the Errabore Salwa Judum camp in Chhattisgarh for six years. He is from village Morguda in Dantewada district and moved to the camp, 30 kilometres away, to escape Naxalites. For the first five years, Soyam and his wife did not need to work …
Two tribal villages in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra—Mendha Lekha and Marda— savoured victory when they won community rights over their forest resources in August last year. The rights conferred under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 include the right to collect and sell minor forest produce (MFP). These include tendu …
Around July every year, Laxman Nag, a resident of Kolang village on the outskirts of Kanger National Park in Chhattisgarh, sees crows in his dreams. He sees the birds attacking silk cocoons to pick the larvae inside and wakes up in a sweat. Cocoons in the wild are his main …
Activists said forest dwellers get a raw deal in trade in nationalised MFP items. “Collection of forest produce is hard work. Women trudge through forests for long hours collecting mahua and lac and lug heavy loads, but have to sell their produce at a fraction of the market price,” said …
Can MFP help people break the cycle of poverty in the Naxal–affected districts? There are instances that offer hope. Subelal Markam, a Baiga tribal of Korka village in Madhya Pradesh used to get just Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 per bamboo piece from middlemen. In 2007, the forest department helped …
The paper locates the genesis of the Naxalite movement on the failure of governance to eliminate structural violence inflicted on the Dalits and Adivasis, changes policies which are extremely detrimental to their interests, makes implementing bureaucracy sensitive and accountable, and establish a system for delivery of justice and grievance redressal …
Regardless of the new ban on the Maoists, as long as the Indian government remains better at talking about local-level welfare than doing anything about it, Naxalite rhetoric will continue to find fertile ground.
The Supreme Court, which is hearing writ petitions on the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh asked the National Human Rights Commission to constitute a fact finding committee that would prepare a report on allegations
The iniquitous development agenda pursued by successive governments at the centre and the state has rendered several tribal groups in Orissa, who reside in some of the poorer, more inaccessible districts of the state, largely marginal to the governance process. Arguably, it is this alienation and underdevelopment that has afforded …
