-The Hindu ‘Report has permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of ghats' Kochi (Kerala): The Kasturirangan report has thrown open the ecologically sensitive areas of Western Ghats to mindless exploitation which would seriously hazard ecology, according to its critics. According to member of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) V.S. Vijayan: the report has in a way permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of the ghats regions of the State. Those...

-The Telegraph Thiruvananthapuram: The Centre's move to implement an ecology panel's report on conservation of the Western Ghats has provoked a call for a 48-hour civil disobedience agitation by the Catholic Church in Kerala, starting Sunday midnight. The Church claims the K. Kasturirangan report, notified on Wednesday, will hit the livelihoods of farmers living in the "high ranges" - foothill areas bordering the Forests - and force them to relocate. Green activists deny...

-The Hindu Warsaw: India, China and other countries in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) group on Tuesday took the position formally that the new climate agreement must not force developing countries to review their volunteered emission reduction targets. Setting themselves up in a direct confrontation with the developed countries, the LMDC made it clear that it was not in favour of doing away with the current differentiation between developing and developed...

-The Hindustan Times I remember her face but not her name. She was one of the 30 people I met one winter afternoon in 2009 at Basaguda village in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit Bijapur district. A thin, tall woman, she stood at the edge of the group, listening attentively to her neighbour who was narrating an incident of an armed attack on the village that had left them homeless for months. When my...

-The Hindu A unique cell phone-based networking system in Chhattisgarh helps Adivasi Gonds share local news and air grievances. Deep in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, a straightforward, earthy man named Naresh Bunkar, field co-ordinator of the Adivasi Santha Manch, picks up his mobile phone and dials +918050068000, a long-distance number in Bangalore. He immediately cuts off and waits. Within seconds, he gets a call from the dialled number, and he hears a...